The Cold Comes from Below

The Cold Comes from Below

Dr. Marcus Hayes had spent the last nine winters in the Arctic, but he'd never felt cold like this before.

The storm had rolled in from the north, unexpected and unnatural. The entire outpost — Station Veritas — was buried under five feet of snow in a matter of hours. Communications went dark. Generators began to fail. The cold pressed through steel and flesh like a living thing.

But the real terror didn’t come from the storm.

It came from what the storm uncovered.

The day before the whiteout, Marcus and his team — a small group of climatologists and geologists — were conducting seismic scans near an ancient glacial shelf. Readings showed hollow pockets far below, too symmetrical to be natural.

Curious, they drilled.

At a depth of 300 feet, they hit something strange — a thick black material that wasn't ice, stone, or metal.

It pulsed when touched.

And then the headaches started.

“Just altitude sickness,” Dr. Claire Sato insisted, clutching her temple as she reviewed the data. “Or pressure. Or... maybe just nerves.”

But Marcus wasn’t so sure. Half the team reported vivid dreams. All the same dream: A black city buried in the ice. Endless corridors. A cold that whispered secrets.

Then came the humming.

First, through their instruments. Then through the walls. Eventually, it was in their teeth — a low frequency drone that never stopped.

And then, the ice cracked.

It started in the middle of the night. A deep rumble shook the station, waking the team. Monitors spiked with seismic activity.

Claire went out first to check the fissure site.

She never came back.

They found her boot the next morning… sitting neatly on the ice, upright and warm, as if just removed.

There was no blood. No tracks. Just smooth, polished ice beneath it — as if something had melted the surface from below.

Panic set in.

Marcus tried to radio for help — nothing. The satellite phone returned only static. The backup generator failed by dusk. The cold deepened, unnatural and relentless, seeping into bones even through insulated suits.

One by one, the others began to change.

Raj, the youngest, stood in the snow for two hours without a jacket, whispering in a language no one recognized.

Helena locked herself in the storage freezer, scratching circles into the walls with her fingernails until she passed out.

And Dr. Tran simply walked outside... and disappeared into the blizzard, eyes glassy, hands bare, smiling.

Marcus barricaded himself in Lab 3, surrounded by data sheets and field recordings. He played one loop again and again: the strange hum they’d recorded deep beneath the glacier.

Slowed down, it wasn’t just a sound.

It was a voice.

Not speaking words — but summoning. Beckoning. Like a call across time.

That’s when the scratching began.

From under the floor.

He broke through the panel beneath the lab and found frost-covered soil—impossible, since they were standing on meters of glacial ice.

And in that soil, the edge of something buried: a smooth, black obelisk covered in markings that shimmered faintly in the dark.

He touched it.

The room went silent.

The storm outside stopped.

And then… the ice began to melt.

Through the observation window, Marcus watched the snow retreat as if pulled backward by unseen hands. In the distance, the glacier split open like a wound.

From within, it emerged.

A figure — humanoid but impossibly tall. Its skin glistened like obsidian, limbs too long, joints bending wrong. It had no eyes, but it turned its face toward the station.

And began walking.

Every step echoed like thunder.

Marcus ran.

He made it to the emergency snowcat and drove blind into the storm, the sound of cracking ice behind him. The figure didn’t follow.

But the cold did.

He was found three days later by a Canadian rescue team, 200 miles south of the station, half-frozen and delirious.

He was the only survivor.

When they returned to Station Veritas, it was gone.

Not destroyed — gone.

No structures, no debris, no signs anyone had ever been there. Just untouched snow and a deep circular crater where the glacier had collapsed.

And at the center: a single black shard… still warm.

Summary:

In The Cold Comes from Below, a research team in the Arctic drills too deep and uncovers something ancient and alive beneath the ice — something that whispers in dreams, hums in the earth, and brings a cold no fire can warm. As madness spreads and the temperature drops, only one survivor remains to tell the story… and even he isn’t sure what’s real.