Arthur grabs the binoculars from Harold, who is staring at Jacquelyn kneeling over the class garbage can in a state of nausea. Arthur wishes to examine the field for what Jacquelyn was just looking at.

The snow also… looks wrong to Arthur. It’s falling too quickly. It’s not floating down or being moved by wind. It’s… eerie.

He doesn't notice it. Rather, he stares at the trees mostly and only skims past the football field where Jacquelyn had faced her grim truth.

Christa sits next to Jacquelyn while gently rubbing her back to help deal with her retching. Jacquelyn heaves again.

Everyone in the class, including those staring at the field and those staring into the hallway through the door window, have noticed her fear and terror. The tension they’re feeling increases accordingly.

"...What's wrong with her?"

Maxwell breaks the silence first. Christa prompts Jacquelyn to answer.

"What's wrong, Jackie? What did you see out there?"

Arthur continues looking out the windows. He is not so phased by Jacquelyn’s reaction but more so by the trees.

"I-It's... frozen... How the fuck does a tree freeze like that? That doesn't happen even in winter... w-wait... look look, more of the trees are shattering."

“Huh?”

While Christa is helping Jacquelyn, Alice grabs the binoculars from Arthur to see the sight of the trees continue to shatter. She calls her classmates,

"Hey everyone! There are more trees breaking!"

All of the students, including those at the door, move over to the windows overlooking the field. They witness as, one by one, all of the trees start shattering into unrecognizable piles of icy splinters.

Harold notices the cars in the parking lot as well. The windshields and car windows which were merely cracked start shattering. Even the roofs and hoods of the cars show small cracks and deformations in them now.

Ms. Rowfield isn't very concerned about this since none of those cars are hers; her current residence is mere walking distance from the school.

She stays beside Jacquelyn, thinking to herself about what it all means. She thinks about Ajax and Shaula who still haven’t woken up. She looks over at them still lying on the floor.

I wish I were dreaming like they are than dealing with this shit...

Some of the students don't fully grasp the significance of what they were seeing, as tree after tree topples and disintegrates. The implications of what it means for trees to shatter rather than topple or break.

It means that outside of the school, it isn’t just snowing: the temperature is also far colder than even an Arctic winter. But Harold speaks up, with the realization of just how cold it is outside,

"Hey, maybe... maybe we should stay away from the windows, guys... if it's cold enough for trees to shatter, then even people would freeze and break apart, right?"

Arthur and Alice realize Harold’s concerns and start getting nervous at this possibility. The other students, who had just earlier been taking pictures of the white field and the frozen trees, start to back away from the windows.

Water is a special kind of liquid in that when it freezes the solid form of water, ice, is less dense than liquid water. In practice, this means that water contained within something, if frozen, can disrupt or break the container.

During winter, trees are able to stave off the cold because the water in the trees is diverted away from the tree cells in a long process starting in the fall season.

If water were to remain in the cells and flow freely within the trees, the tree's trunk and branches would rupture and the expansion of water upon changing state from solid to liquid would kill the tree.

Instead, normally the tree is unharmed by the cold in the winter season because of the defence protocols that evolution gave these trees.

However, this is the start of summer. The water that circulates in the trees during this season has frozen solid and, as a result, expanded within the trees, causing small cracks to form in hundreds of spots along the branches of the tree, as well as the tree trunk.

As the trees froze, the numerous cracks continued to form and ended up compromising the integrity of the trunk structures, turning the trees from testaments to billions of years of natural selection into brittle ice statues.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Furthermore, these trees had frozen quickly at a temperature far colder than the average winter.

The trees continue toppling until all of them are no more.

"What's going on? How… How did the trees freeze so quickly?"

Maxwell asks this question but no one has an answer. Someone asks a question however.

"...if it's that cold outside, then why isn't it cold in this classroom? It doesn't even feel slightly colder, right?"

Jordan makes this observation with a calm tone. All of the air from inside the classroom is circulated with the school ventilation system from the outside air.

It would make sense for the air to get colder inside as well. In such a cold snap, shouldn’t they be... dead? Terror invades the hearts of the students as they consider such a possibility.

"Maybe, there's a delay? Like the outside air hasn't reached the classrooms yet?"

Arthur makes this point, himself unsure about the current situation.

"But, the snow from the hallways came from the outside, right? That snow could have come from the HVAC, couldn't it?"

Alice, Arthur and Harold are confused.

"Snow in the hallways? What are--"

Jacquelyn raises her head from the trash can. She realizes that nobody has noticed yet. Nobody has been made to face it yet.

So... wouldn't it be better for them not to know? Wouldn't it harm their behaviour in this situation to know what she knows right now? They'd start panicking… just like she is...

Jacquelyn runs to the curtains and frantically closes them one by one. She pushes Maxwell out of the way as well as the other students. Maxwell snaps at her,

"Hey, you bitch! What's your problem!"

"Shut the fuck up, you prick! Get away from the windows! Don't look there! Don't look outside!"

Jacquelyn screams frantically, her face reeking of desperation. Maxwell wants to retort but he starts to fear her expression. His instincts tell him to relent to her fear, for she knows something he doesn’t yet.

"W-Why not, Jackie? What happened?"

Ms. Rowfield speaks in concern for Jackie.

"Ms. Rowfield, I c-can't tell you. I-It's too--"

"Jackie, please, now is not the time to hide facts from me, it'll affect how we handle this crisis! Could you just tell me and the class? Or… how about just me? I’m sure there’s--"

"No! No, no, no! Ms. Rowfield, you don't understand! You don't fucking understand! What are you going to do for them, huh? Put them back together!? Huh!? You're just a teacher, shut the fuck up, please, Jesus Christ!!"

Jacquelyn screams in terrified distress. Nobody should see them. Nobody should see them.

Jacquelyn knows what has happened. There had been a few questions she wished to have answered.

First off, where are the students who normally have a phys-ed class on the field? Where did they go? Well, the answer is that they’re on the field right now.

What are the piles of rocks? The students.

Jacquelyn could see blue and dark red among the rocks and... a frozen head through the binoculars. Blue is the colour of their gym uniforms, she’s seen it many times.

Dark red is the colour of their shattered remains.

Those weren’t rocks, they were the crystallized, disintegrated remains of the students, dark from their bloody cross sections and further obscured by the frost and snow falling down over them.

It was the middle of a soccer match at 10 am, right before Ajax and Shaula fell unconscious.

A special co-ed game allowing the boys and girls to play alongside each other. Jenny Abraham was on one side and her team started with the ball since they scored the previous goal.

A ‘winner’s ball’ rule. The other player opposing her then was Daniel Zhang, a prominent player among the boys, already six foot four inches tall.

Jenny ran to kick the ball to one of her teammates, her left foot struck and... the ball shattered.

All of a sudden, the heat had been robbed from it so quickly that it froze into a rigid and brittle structure, as if it had been turned to glass. This fragile sphere fragmented as it hit Jenny's foot.

Jenny fell backwards and Daniel fell forwards.

The blood in their circulatory system had frozen instantly. Every single capillary had ruptured including the ones in their lungs, eyes and brain.

The marrow in their bones had expanded from the freezing process so quickly that the normally strong bones of these two teenagers had splintered; every single bone fell apart.

Their digestive systems were destroyed. Their aortas, pulmonary veins and arteries and all smaller blood vessels were torn and resolidified into a fragile collection of ice.

Their hearts had disintegrated. Their souls had passed on before Jenny had even kicked the ball. Jenny had died. Daniel had died.

Then, their corpses toppled and crumbled into small pieces of dark red and blue. As soon as they fragmented, snow fell on their bodies, slowly hiding the cruelty of what had happened.

Every single teenager on that field as well as the gym teachers met the same fate. Each of their bodies shattered and crumbled into unrecognizable states, a mixture of dark red and the blue of the school colours.

The heat was instantaneously robbed from the surrounding area, not just from the students. Even the air composed of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapour, carbon dioxide and a mixture of constituent gases reverted to a solid state and started falling to the ground as snow.

It fell quickly as it was undeterred by air resistance.

Jacquelyn had seen the scattered dark coloured debris on the ground with spots of blue being covered by layers of frozen air and water vapour.

The sight of a shattered head made things crystal clear for her. No one must see that. No one must face it. A horror beyond her words to describe. Something in real life, not a studio effect or CGI.

Real frozen bodies, robbed of their lives.

As Jacquelyn moves to close the last curtain, she looks through it and sees something. Flickers across the field. Fire.

The ritual of water has concluded. The ritual of fire begins.