The tundra of the deserted Arctic Ocean island could be blanketed in frost and snow again in mere moments after a blizzard's cleansing.
Chunks of corpses, wrapped in thick layers of ice and snow, were no different from the stones scattered across the frozen earth. The smooth surface of the snow trembled, and a human-shaped layer of snow rose and fell faintly.
Bang!
A fist, frozen bluish with cold, smashed through the ice and reached out. Its five fingers spread wide and pushed the body up. The man's frost-covered black hair had frozen into one solid mass.
He took several breaths, and only after a while did heat begin to rise from his body again, driving away the cold and melting all the ice chips clinging to him.
"Fuck!"
His bare upper body was covered in black blood scabs, and his left arm was gone. As he rose, he stomped the ice apart step by step, seemingly searching for something.
At last, the warden guarding Wolf Tower stood upon the tundra, staring for a long time at the scattered mounds of snow. Then his knees slammed down onto the ground. Amid the howling blizzard, he repeatedly smashed his forehead against the ice, kowtowing three times.
The frigid wind came and went swiftly, then abruptly died away before long. The deathly silent ice field became utterly soundless.
Bucky knelt blankly on the ice without rising. Suddenly, his ears twitched. He hurried several meters to the right, blasted through the ice with one punch, and frantically clawed through the hard corpse chunks, dirt, and rocks with his lone arm.
He dug out a middle-aged man whose face had frozen blue and purple. His eyelids fluttered faintly. Both legs had been cleanly severed below the knees, but he had been fortunate enough not