What The Ice left Behind

Four years after the glaciers cracked open and breathed ancient disease into the world, humanity has nearly vanished. The thaw left behind ruins, silence... and things that were never meant to exist. Illinois is one of them. Once human, now a six‑foot, scaled mutation with claws and a heartbeat that still remembers kindness, she wanders the Meltwind searching for a place she can belong. The Onecs-mindless, blood‑seeking remnants of the infected-roam the edges of her path, but they are not what she fears most. It's her reflection. Her memories. The question of who she is now that the world has ended. Then she meets Levi. A quiet, sharp‑eyed survivor who claims her name is short for "Leviathan," Levi carries no visible scars-but her past is the one wrapped in shadows. Illinois soon learns Levi escaped an asylum the night the outbreak began, and the truth about who she was before the world fell may be more dangerous than the creatures outside. Together, the two form an uneasy alliance, bound by necessity and the fragile hope that they don't have to face the end alone. But trust is hard to build when both of them are hiding pieces of themselves... and when the thawed disease is still changing the world in ways neither of them fully understands. In a landscape shaped by loss and mutation, Illinois and Levi must decide what it means to survive-and what it means to stay human-when everything familiar has melted away.