In the back of my mind, I had been keeping count of the seconds left. With the door having closed tightly behind me, the timer passed zero and the moment had come. Only, I couldn't feel the shake or fire of the atomic bomb. There was not even a rumble.

Inside this steel prison, I felt absolutely nothing. The wheel of the vault had turned and with it, we were completely cut off from the outside world. There was only the stench of torn bodies and ruptured bowels now. An eerie grey light filled the chamber, with no discernable source. It illuminated the skull-headed man at the end of the room, making it look as if the walls stretched on forever around from him. This was his domain.

He said he had been expecting me. Then, he motioned for me to sit. As much as I was able, I tried to. My body, an amorphous mass of tentacles, slid back against the vault door and settled in. Somehow, I knew I wasn't getting out of here without having a little chat.

Though I could still feel my cells outside, I had lost all sense of their position relative to mine. Usually, I could tell whereabout in space all of my parts were. But now, I felt distant. So far away that their voices were barely heard. This was unsettling, as I knew my Power had no real spacial limitations. I could control my cells on the other side of the universe if I wanted. They only had to be carrying my unstable name in their genes.

Because of this, I knew I was not just far away. I was somewhere beneath the clarity of reality but above the infinite void, between my life and my Power. In a realm much like the invisible channel. A metaphysical place.

"What do you want?" I asked him, voice guttural as always. No emotion slipped through.

He responded with the tone of a friendly neighbor. One raspy and tired beyond measure, but a neighbor all the same. "I wanted to meet you," he said, "and ask you a question."

While I listened to what he had to say, I went on gathering up the dead bodies and consuming them. Now that the blast was over, the only threat was this strange individual. Thus, I couldn't be staying long. Not with so many unknown variables. Despite all my confidence, I knew that if he kept me in this box until my connections faded, I might be in real danger. So I would fight if I had to.

"Please never try," he warned, reading my thoughts. The pale orbs of his eyes darted to and fro over the remaining dead, reminding me of their fate. "Your sickle is lost, my snake, but the cleaver still rattles in these bones. And so, so thirsty it remains... Besides, my love, I mean only to share your affirmation today."

I wanted Walter at my side to deal with this cryptic entity. But as I called to him, looking inside my Power, I found nothing but emptiness.

The Skeleton's Power could read my thoughts, predict the future, and block me from my inner forms. Worse still, as I sent out cells to test his flesh, I found nothing but solid bone. His eyes and his skeleton were utterly solid. Neither acid nor heat caused an ounce of change in them, down to the very atomic level. They were an impassable wall.

Quickly, I came to a conclusion. "This can't be real," I said. "You're some kind of psychic class, aren't you? This is why they keep you so far away from the Earth."

"Close enough," the skeleton laughed. "It's true, I am a spirit. What humanity would call a ghost. But what difference does it make between dream and reality when the boundaries fall? And that is our business, isn't it...? To sort possible from actual, though no division neatly sticks. It's all just spiders in the brain, spinning webs to catch flies, trying to stave off their own master, time. In the end, it's not clear if word or deed is what kills. But only the spirit lives on. That much is sure. So do not always try so hard to be rational according to passing vagaries. Sometimes you must be suprarational to catch the biggest picture."

Since Walter was not going to be of any help, I did my best to follow what he meant and ground it in practical terms. "Maybe it's worse, then. Maybe you're a localized reality warper. Something I truly can't fight rationally." People only ever speculated that they existed, spinning horror stories about sleeping gods; a true world ender. If ever a single man possessed so much Power, nothing could stop him. Except, "They did stop you, didn't they?" I knew he was following my thoughts, so I simply continued them aloud. "Seraph trapped you in here in a pocket dimension. It's your own personal Tartarus. That's the only possible answer."

"He assumes so much." The skeleton's eyes drifted away contemplatively, suddenly speaking to himself. "There have been so many now that I fight to keep your pretty little faces from blurring together. The Revenant; The Stranger; The Wiseman; and now, the Vessel. Each a Hero of their own distant worlds. Yes, that's right. You must forgive me. I've been drifting a long way while I waited... Drifting across so many new horizons." Then, his gaze came back to me. More impatiently this time, he explained. "Seraph anxiously keeps me while I watch. That's all I do. Though I used to be an adventurer of a sort, I think. We led... a daring expedition to the North. Through all kinds of miserable cold and privation; monsters slithering under our skin the entire way, begging for a taste of hell. And I can't quite remember now, but between the frostbite and the lead in our rations driving us mad, well... I died somewhat close to the end. Just before Heinrich and Mann reached... the... the cave."

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No matter where I looked, I couldn't find a secondary body. Nor could I find any escape from this room. Since I still had time before my connections decayed, I put off a frontal assault. I let him say what he wanted to say. All the while, my discomfort at the total loss of control ratcheted up.

Finally, the staring skull got to the point. "They drug my still-warm corpse into the cave while God looked on approvingly. Though their minds blared static, their intention with me dripped wetly off the tongue. Such things never need to be spoken, of course. They never did get to the good cuts, though. Such a waste and a tragedy. Instead, they saw something else in the cave. Something they never expected."

While he spoke, visions flashed through my mind's eye. They were projected directly into my brain, these memories that were not mine. And I saw that he meant what he said very literally.

There was a ship standing lonely amongst the fields of jagged ice. It had been years at sea already for the crew on their long voyage. Risk and bitter conditions marked their expedition to find a route that might revolutionize the world. The coveted Northern Pass was their aim, and their guiding star was the glory of their nation.

One by one, the costs mounted while the fruit of their labor refused to appear. Finally, as winter set in, so too did the impassable freeze, trapping them dead in place for months. They waited for a thaw, but without progress or hope. Spring came and went, but still no freedom to press on. Only growing hunger.

The white hellscape buckled, slowly creeping up the ship's hull. The crush of the ice advanced and, amongst the earth's gnawing grip and the jagged spikes, the wood creaked and moaned. Inch by inch, her bones snapped and her flesh impaled; ruined beyond repair.

No longer a worthy vessel, the remaining men set off with what supplies remained. They went to march beyond hope for survival across the desolate polar lands, praying for the sight of home. Day by day their numbers dwindled until at last, after four long months, only three were left alive.

The compasses had been lost along the way, right along with their minds. They were not officers or brave men, these three. Having survived two months after the exhaustion of all rations, it was unclear if they were men at all.

The eyes I shared in bearing witness to this memory belonged to the man long dead before me. His name had been Booker and he was one of the three. Mann and Heinrich were the others. Together they moved by sheer will, day in and out, deeper into the white abyss.

They had no idea now which direction might take them home. Still, they walked on.

After Booker's death, his friends brought the body along with them as an act of penitent desperation to a quiet place. Their need had already surpassed their humanity and, had it not been for the last shreds of their grief, they would not have waited. They would have torn in like animals to the feast. This time was different, however. They knew this would be their last meal and with their own deaths approaching, the remnants of shame returned.

As they came upon a place to rest and commit their sin, they decided a funeral and a fire was in order. So they set about burning the very last of their equipment. The words of remembrance they spoke were short as none had known the others before this voyage. They had become brothers through suffering instead. And that is exactly how they sent him off before the knives came out. As a brother.

The memory around me grew fuzzy. Since Booker could not stand to watch his friends do the deed, we moved forward until the fire burned out. Once in the dark of the cave, time passed with no way to measure it. The two men did not go outside or move. They would only awake once a day to eat, then return to their catatonic state.

The mouth of the cave was small, but its twisting passage ran on out of sight. It was enough to provide insulation, but they did not bother looking any deeper than was needed to check predators.

On the third day, it was Mann who sat up and dared to open his eyes. All of a sudden, a thought had come crawling out of the static to the forefront of his consciousness. It was a solemn realization that in the face of death, there remained only one decision to make. He refused to abnegate this choice and die by chance, right here in the middle of the cave. The powerful desire arose that his death should at least express his life and for the first time since the freeze had set in, he found himself thinking of more than hunger.

His hand fell on Heinrich's shoulder and he shook his friend, attempting to wake them. "Heinrich," he called. "Wake up. I need to ask you something."

The man's emaciated body stirred and he rolled over. After taking a long time to think, Heinrich nodded. "I know what you're going to ask..." he said. "But it is up to you. I am happy where I am..." 

Mann had been going to ask him where he wanted to die. Whether naked, screaming manically in the blizzard outside, or whispering in the blackest pit of the cave. That his friend had dismissed the question entirely did not sit right with him at all. "Don't you want to make this choice?"

"My body made it for me. I-I can't feel my legs... But if you have the strength to drag me... I think it might be warmer... down in the cave."

Mann was uncertain he could do both at this point. If he drug his friend, there was a steep drop they would have to go down, beyond the bend. The energy it would take to climb back out and pull himself to die in the cold, where he wished too, would scarcely be found. But perhaps this was more meaningful, he thought. 

Digging his jagged nails into his friend's blackened legs, he pulled with all his might. Down the tunnel, they went until they came to the drop, and there was nothing else to do but fall. Nothing could hurt them worse than the frostbite had. A broken ankle for Mann and a collarbone for Heinrich was no exception, and the two of them could finally rest.

Laying side by side on the rock, it was Mann who chanced to look up, desperately wondering if he might still have the strength to go it alone. What he saw brought an instant end to his thoughts. It was calm that took over as he stared in awe. 

The cave's termination was a single chamber. The barest gloom of light penetrated down from above in the form of a beam, landing on a rocky throne. Through craggy seams of ice and stone, the path ended at his feet.

Quietly, Mann told Heinrich. "It's a... person."

There, wrapped in white furs, a primal man sat completely still. His face was veiled in matted, black locks, while his chest neither rose nor fell. His skin was icy pale and his eyes were half-lidded. Only as the two survivors crawled near did the eyes fully opened.

Then, he spoke.