Marvel: Zombies

The bitter wind swept up goose-feather snow, grinding it into gray-white grains of icy salt that struck him full in the face.

Between heaven and earth, nothing remained but this monotonous white and air frozen brittle. One breath of it filled his lungs with biting chill.

Stephen Fang braced himself against the wind, trudging through snow that reached past his ankles.

He wore a thin trench coat, its shoulders blanketed in snow. The wind had whipped his hair into a mess, and his face was even paler than the snowfield, carrying the exhaustion of someone who had crawled up from the eighteenth level of hell only to be thrown into an ice cellar.

His eyelids drooped as though he could fall asleep standing at any moment, yet he forced himself onward through sheer stubbornness.

He looked up.

A temple.

Its walls were dull gray, its tiles buried beneath thick snow, icicles hanging from the eaves and glinting with a cold, hard light beneath the weak daylight.

The old door was chipped and mottled with peeling paint, carrying the plain simplicity forged by time, as though the boundless Snowfield had worn away all its edges and colors.

There was no immortal aura drifting about, nor any magical radiance flashing wildly.

It simply stood there—quiet, plain, even somewhat shabby.

Like an old monk who had seen through the affairs of the world and could no longer be bothered with mortal concerns, dozing in some forgotten corner of time.

Stephen Fang dragged his leaden feet to the entrance.

He did not raise a hand or knock on the door ring.

Creak—

The mottled wooden door opened inward on its own.

As if it had waited for him for a very, very long time and had finally reached this moment, silently inviting him inside.