Prologue

They were just on their way home from the farmhouse and stopped their old, rusty-red Jeep at the exact same spot they used to for years. Five miles from the farm, two miles from home. As always, they left the driver's door open and would walk the rest of the way on foot. Every single time. The car would be gone by the next morning anyway. It always was.

Between them and the town lay a white, even plain as far as the eye could see. It was afternoon now and the sun had dipped far below the edge of the mountains ahead. The men could already see faint lights in the windows of their two houses, even though it would still be an hour's walk. The deceitful nature of the cold Nordic deserts was not for the ill-prepared. Both men knew how easy it was to get lost in plain sight.

Each time, exactly two hundred and thirty-five steps from the car they would pass what the men would unanimously refer to as ‘the rotten egg’. A massive black rock, in the middle of the otherwise empty white fields. The men, having grown rather used to its curious appearance, would usually pass by without so much as turning their heads.

Today something was different.
Right in the middle of the wide, bumpy black surface, just at eye level, was…a hole.

Thorinn took a careful step towards the rock, squinting, trying to remember whether there had always been a hole punched through and he just never paid it any attention. On closer inspection, the hole didn’t seem to be going through the rock at all, and Thorinn wasn’t quite certain what exactly he was looking at. The hole’s edges were frayed and subtly swayed in the gentle breeze, and it looked somewhat as if a gigantic pencil had been pushed through from the other side. After some time, enough to let the cold slither into his thick boots and nibble on his toes, Thorinn exhaled and watched his breath evaporate before his eyes. It appeared to be a hole in the world itself. As if the world were merely a drawing on a piece of paper, and beneath it was nothing but darkness. A darkness so dense and so vast, it almost felt alive. Whilst Thorinn struggled to look away, Magnus refused to look at all, his eyes fixed on the trampled path at their feet. For another moment, Thorinn wondered whether he should say something, or perhaps even be brave enough to reach out and run his fingers along the coarse outlines of the strange tear in the world. Instead, he chose to walk on. Strangeness, after all, you came by quite a lot around here.

But then his gaze was lured back. Something had moved. Thorinn stopped in his tracks and stared back into the dark void. This time, however, the void was looking back. 

An ice-cold shudder ran from Thorinn’s neck to the soles of his feet. The urge to just blindly run away almost made him lose his footing. As much as he wanted to avert his gaze, he stared into the darkness, afraid to blink. Whatever was there disappeared so quickly that Thorinn wondered whether he’d only imagined it, but deep down in his bones he knew he couldn’t have, and he wouldn’t just stand there to await its return. He turned on his heel and picked up his pace, feeling the tension in his shoulders ease with each step he managed to put between himself and this…whatever it was. Magnus silently followed, and when Thorinn shot him a quick glance, he was still staring at his feet.

They walked in silence until they reached the very beginning of the paved road leading into the village, but instead of going their separate ways, they paused. 

“Should we tell someone?” Thorinn asked, staring straight ahead.

“I don’t know, Thorinn. Maybe this really wasn’t anything worth talking about. Maybe we’ll just create a fuss for no reason,” Magnus replied. Thorinn shoved both hands into his coat pockets and curled his toes in a futile effort to warm them up. It was cold, and all they wanted to do was go back home, back into the safety of their own houses. But neither of them moved, both rooted to the ground right before the sharp concrete edge of the pathway.

“Then so be it,” Thorinn continued. “I’d rather make a fuss for no reason than keep quiet about something that might turn into a problem. Don’t you think it could? Be a problem, I mean.”

All he heard was Magnus’ long, sharp exhale. Thorinn knew what he was asking of him. Magnus had always been the one who preferred flying under the radar as much as he could. Screaming trouble where there might be none was not something he was easily convinced of. He finally cleared his throat and rubbed his neck underneath the high collar of his coat.

“I’ll tell Marie tonight, you tell Orla. Let’s wait to hear what they think and then decide,” he said, but just as he was about to take the first step forward, away from their conversation, he stopped himself and shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other. 

“Something was…looking.”

He looked up, met Thorinn’s eyes and both men stared at each other in silence for a while. Thorinn slowly nodded, and both knew nothing else needed to be said. 

They’d both seen it. 

And it had seen them too.