Thin Ice Novels & Stories

Even in that moment, with my body genuinely failing me, some deeply trained instinct insisted I could manage this the way I’d managed everything else — quietly, invisibly, without anyone noticing the wall was actually cracking. I skated back to my position as the whistle blew again, telling myself to focus, to breathe, to do exactly what years of training had prepared me to do. My vision narrowed instead, the edges of my sight going soft and unreliable, the ice in front of me somehow both too close and impossibly far away at once. My glove felt heavier than it should have. My legs, seconds earlier fully responsive, now seemed to be operating on a slight delay, as though the signals traveling

Something that made every primitive survival instinct I had start screaming warnings. The temperature in the room felt like it had physically dropped. I could almost see my breath, though I knew that was impossible. It was like standing too close to a frozen lake, feeling the cold radiating up from depths you couldn't fathom. His stillness was more threatening than any movement could have been. It was the stillness of a predator that had locked onto its target, that was calculating distance and angle and opportunity. The stillness that comes right before violence.

The Icehotel rose like a frozen monument to dominance beneath the merciless Arctic night. Carved entirely from massive blocks of crystal-clear ice, the private luxury suite glowed with soft embedded blue lights that made every surface shimmer like living diamond. The air was sharp, pure, and biting — cold enough that every breath hung in visible clouds, yet precisely controlled so bare skin could endure the exquisite torment.

“You know how your fire burns? Burns to a crisp? And ice is meant to freeze? Ice fire does two things. Not only does it instantly freeze upon contact, it melts way faster than lava” Kieran scoffed in disbelief. “See for yourself” she gestured to the battle below them. Snow still had his body protected and he was making a beeline for that throne and so was Agira. He slid beneath one of the creatures freezing it with barely a touch, and shot his leg back crumbling what was once life. He punched another and there was a lot of seeable cold air. Snow’s fist had passed through the creature and first the arm fell off and the body slowly crumbled before him, and it was nothing more than a worthless

The snow was coming down hard, the flakes small and sharp, more like ice droplets than the fluffy white puffs one usually thought of when considering this particular type of precipitation. But after a century or so of living in the Village, Cornelius Cane had grown immune to the cold and the various forms of solid water the clouds heaved down upon them.

The scream tore through my throat, but the only response was the whistling wind. I reached the opening in the ice, skidding through my final steps over the snow accumulated along the lakeshore. I fell to my knees so close to the crack that the cold immediately penetrated the fabric of my pants. The hole in the ice was smaller than I expected—narrow, irregular, surrounded by thick slabs of broken ice that still quietly cracked against one another as the water moved beneath them. The edges were sharp, translucent in some places, thick enough to reveal how deep the lake’s frozen layer truly was.

A slight smile creeped on my face. Flash back “ Commander Robins, I secured the target, obtained the answers we were looking for. I don’t think the target is of much use to us anymore. It looks as though he is touch and go. I had to use extreme measures to get the answers we sought. He was tight lipped for a while. The primary target is located in the middle of the Arctic, held up on one of the water rigs used for aquamarine sciences. He stated that the target has about 20 armed guards. 3 that follows him wherever he goes. We had schematics of the rig right here, sir.”

It felt like standing at the edge of a frozen lake. Beautiful and Terrifying. One wrong step, and everything could shatter. “Don’t hope too much, Toby,” I whispered into the darkness. My heart ignored me. It already has.

Zane's POV The ice is the only place where my mind quiets. Out here, it's just the scrape of blades against frozen water, the sharp bite of cold air in my lungs, the burn of muscles pushing harder, faster. It's where I can almost forget the chaos consuming everything else. Almost. I dig my edges in harder, accelerating around the curve. Sweat drips down my spine despite the chill. My stick cracks against the puck, sending it flying toward the net with brutal force.

“It’s close. Closer than it should be.” “How do you know?” he asked softly. “Because it’s calling,” she said. “And it knows we’re coming.” Hours passed. The path widened briefly before dipping into a gorge and a valley carved by ancient rivers and long since frozen solid. Jagged spears of ice jutted from the ground like broken glass. The snow here was stained gray, as if the world itself had been burned and refrozen. They descended carefully, boots slipping on the frost-slick stone. Aria’s fingers brushed the wall beside her for balance and and jerked back as she felt the faintest pulse beneath the ice.