We trudged through the unending expanse of the white wasteland, a desolation of ice and snow that seemed to drink the warmth from breath to bones. The air crackled with an otherworldly chill, and as the relentless wind howled it carried with it the distant moans of an abyssal realm. It started as a mere whisper among us, a lone voice recounting visions of dark apparitions, shadows that danced like malevolent specters above an unseen fire. We dismissed it as madness but as if approaching inch by inch as we traveled mile by mile, they would inevitably materialize before us all —a congregation of unfathomable entities.

These spectral forms rose from the white desert up into the frigid air like tendrils of smoke, drawing slowly ever closer as we marched. Each of my party spoke of what they could see beyond the glare of light reflected from the white surface so bright it stole our vision whenever we did not shield our eyes with a mask or a shred of fabric as a blindfold. We all heard the whispers upon the shrieking wind that spoke of so many sorts of death, each more grotesque and twisted than the last.

It defied reason—a shadow rising like ethereal smoke against the glaring daylight. By the time I had accepted that this great expanse would never end, I too had seen them close enough to have discerned their faces.