The gate mocks me, taunting me with the knowledge of the new beginning, no right now to me it's the end. In the middle of the woods the arch of the branch hovers over me and causes me to see things I ought not. And the deep shadows of dusk play with my eyes.

Cold peirces through my gloves, prickling my skin. In the distance I see the distinct maroon of warm blood staining the snow. My brain knows it's the entrails of a deer, leftover from a hunter earlier in the day. But my mind envisions what it could be, what it may be, and what it will be. It reminds me of all the people I care about that I'll lose when the ground threatens to swallow us whole, and the wind is eager to tear us in two. It's the blood on my hands, the blood on all of our hands, and there's nothing I can do but weep, weep for another type of lost one. The one's who won't make it, who won't survive the rending, the end of an end.

With the metallic tang of blood in the back of my throat, another object intertwines with the visions inside. I pick it up, the skull of a small animal buried in the snow. Time has made the bone bare. How quickly is the hourglass dropping the sands of time? The skull in my hand insists the last sand will soon drop and the hourglass will need to be flipped, so it can all start again. But in the turning, the world will shake.

When I escape through the gate with the few others going with me, I leave too many behind to be destroyed. A trail of red leaks out of the eye socket of the skull and I drop it. It rolls toward the discarded entrails. The blood in my mind will never wash off.