Bleeding Cold

Prologue: The Dawn of the Cold

They called it the Shift.

It wasn’t a war, not exactly. Not a bomb, not a virus, not one great moment of collapse. It was slower than that. More surgical.

The grid failed first.

Rolling blackouts swept the southern corridors. Backup generators in the coastal cities choked on salt air and age. By the time Washington went dark, it was already too late. Satellites blinked out like tired eyes. Pipes burst. Borders blurred.

And then the cold came.

Not a seasonal frost; not a winter storm. A shift in the jet stream, or a tilt in the earth’s breath—no one left could say for sure. What they knew was this: the temperature kept falling. And it didn’t stop.

In two months, half the continent was below freezing. In six, it was buried beneath ice.

The government fractured. First in whispers, then in screams. Whole states went silent. Convoys vanished. Civilian broadcasts promised aid, but nothing arrived. The rich retreated into protected zones—tech compounds, arctic bunkers, sealed research cities—built back when “climate collapse” was still a talking point, not prophecy.

The largest of these so-called “safe zones” was called the Citadel. It was built as much to keep things in as out; some thought more-so.

A network of fusion towers surrounded by perimeter walls and thermal shielding, designed for research and “resource management.” No one outside knew what that meant. They only knew the towers still glowed while the world went gray.

Broadcasts continued.

Polished faces in government-issue uniforms said, “We’re rebuilding.”

They said, “Help is coming. The perimeter is secure.”