Section 1:

     White. Wind. Blur.

     Deep howls swept across the thick bedding of snow in waves. Little crystals darted over the small inclines and past the mini divots, finding no resting place. The trees standing amidst it all either stood strong or gave under the blizzard's might. There was no in-between. Tall, sheer rocks stacked up against the ice, standing alone being their testiment of strength. The rocks stood around the trees as islands poking out of a raging ocean, though few, they stood strong in clusters.

     Diverging from these massive stones was a lone figure covered in thick furs. The person was easily played with by the wind as he marched at a steady pace through the snow. Pulling his homemade coat around himself tightly, the man made his way slowly towards something the storm wouldn't let him see just yet.

     Finally, peeking through the foggy snow was a sad looking cobblestonestone lump poking out of the ground. A weak orange light within wiggled their way out through the cracks of the crudely crafted door.

     When Steve pushed past such a door, he was met with little but a dying fire in the crumbling fireplace and a pile of blankets to the left of it he called his bed. After struggling to shut the crooked door behind him -- a task he was all too familiar with -- the human sat with his legs crossed in front of the small fireplace, pulling out the ice covered wood from his inventory.

     As he let the remaining fumes of the fire die out, Steve scraped off the layer of ice around the firewood he had just gathered as he sat there. If he did this quick enough, he would find the wood had been surprisingly well preserved; still dry. When the first log had all its ice chipped away, he tossed it into the fire. It gladly began eating at the wood, excitedly asking for more to feast on. Pretty soon Steve had given the fire its fill of oak logs, and he set to carving away the ice on the backup ones, which he had stacked along the wall the door was on, in the corner that likely got the least breeze of all.

     Once done, Steve slipped under his blankets, not even caring to take off his coat and similarly sewen fur pants that slipped over his original pair, mostly because it was too cold for that. He laid down with his head beside the fireplace, waiting for the storm to end. His stomach growled from deep inside the thick coat, testifying to the world, the hunger Steve had been ignoring... This was real pain.. Not...whatever happened back there.

     Feeling just as cold as he did outside, the human curled up while laying on his side, facing away from the warmpth of the fire, waiting patiently for the storm to come to an end.

     ...Hours later, it hadn't. The storm still raged outside his doors even after he had slipped in and out of consciousness several times. Finally, Steve sighed, sitting up at last. He added some more logs to the fire as he sat and waited for something to happen, or for some brilliant idea to strike him. None came. He denied anything having to do with hunting or leaving this place. He was content here.. But for how long..?

     In his memories, he remembered the excitement, the adventures; everything about exploring he had so dearly loved... But, not anymore. As he had observed...he had lost interest in the concept entirely. It just didn't motivate him like it used to.

     And what was the point of exploring if you no longer enjoyed it?...

Section 2:

     When Steve woke from having finally gone to sleep, the rattle of his wooden door fighting against the wind had ceased, telling the man that the storm had ended at last. He sat up and looked around. Much snow had crept through the cracks between cobblestone, easily showing how formidable the human's fortress really was.

     Pushing the blankets off of him, Steve sat with his back leaning against the wall of the cold stones. His mind wandered in and out of the present until he questioned whether he was dreaming or not. That would be nice... If all of this was nothing but one big, long..nightmare... He clamped his eyes tightly, feeling the frost that had built on his eyebrows and refused to come off on their own. He sat there patiently, waiting for something to happen.

     Nothing did.

     With a heavy sigh, Steve opened his eyes again. This time his blue (orbs)?lol) landed on a lone book sitting there on the other side of the cobble house, a fresh layer of powdered snow from last night having crept up on the object to hide its cover. All the better it did. It pained the human to see the taunting look in his journal's eyes; the way it mocked him for being too much of a chicken to even open the darn thing up and write out the last pages that needed to be written. The longer he stalled on writing the moment in his life he most dreaded, the more names it made up to use as insults toward his cowardice. Unlike Lumpy, it hated his guts, and that made it all the easier to toss out.

     The wood door opened inward, outside revealing the bright snow that layered several feet above the earth. The pages of that journal waved in the wind as it was viciously tossed out the door, plummeting into the cool, white powder. With a huff, Steve slammed the door behind him, leaving the book to freeze with all the rest of the painful memories it held.

     The human sat again in the darkness. The fire had long ago fizzled out and died. He set to sitting again, allowing his brain to drift in and out of reality once more. But then, his stomach reminded him of the necessary building block of life he was missing out on: food. Steve had ignored its complaining long enough. He didn't really see the point, but heading out to hunt would make for a fine way to kill time.

     As he exited the, now mound of snow, the human paused a moment as he passed the journal he had thrown out, staring down blankly at its open pages. With a small scowl, he kicked some snow over it to cover it up... Maybe that would help. Struggling through the near waste deep powder, Steve briefly pondered if there even was any creature within miles to hunt.

     The sky had darkened when he returned. His right arm was bleeding through his coat, an arrow still poking through it. He trudged through the snow at a slow pace, relieved when he finally came to the door of his safe space. He practically, no, he literally fell through the door, hitting his head on the ground after such an entrance. Steve tightly clutched his arm as he fell, heeding it from being shaken too much.

     The door was closed and a fire was returned to its youth. Steve had to cut off the sleeve of his fur coat and rip a piece off of his shirt so he could properly tend to his wound. The arrow had dug itself in deep, and the potion effect that had pried its way into his bloodstream gave him the feeling that every fiber of his being was chained to the floor. It was a struggle to pull the arrow-head out, but, he managed. And he managed it without a single cry or shout.

     He broke the blood tipped arrow once it was between both of his hands, and threw it into the fire in front of him. Then he worked on cleaning and bandaging his wound. He did little else afterwards but slip back on the coat sleeve he had cut off -- not having the energy to sew it back together -- and brush the cold white powder from his hair. His wound still ached and stung, but there was nothing else he could do about it. The pain almost comforted him, in a sense, reminding him there was still adventure to be had out there...

     It wasn't enough. Steve fell back to sleep in the same state he had woken up in.

     His stomach urged the rest of him awake again, groaning in full force, threatening his brain with cannibalism if it didn't tell the rest of his body to get up and eat something. Steve rose from his bed as a puppet might. Alright, it was do or die now. His body had made that clear. His wound from last night hadn't healed any either, since there was no food in his system to be used for that. Again, Steve was forced out into the wilderness.

     Again, he found nothing but nearly frozen zombies, driven to him by the scent of his clotting blood. These ghouls were easily avoided, for the weather did the majority of the work. (And this is where I stopped to have that really long break. Oof) Still he searched, finding exactly what he had expected: nothing... Perhaps cannibalism wasn't too bad of an idea after all.

     The human returned to base empty handed, hungrier than he remembered ever being in his life. Thought it a better time than never to try out tree bark for the first time. Trees were plants, and you could eat plants.

     Digging the blade of his axe in-between some wood and its bark with his one good hand, Steve thought through his long-term plans here. So far he had made no such plans. His only real goal was not to die, and that wasn't doing so well. Having a decent chip of bark in his left hand -- the other one he could barely even move -- Steve examined it briefly before taking a big chomp out of it. The wood was almost impossible to break apart with just one's teeth, so it took him a while to chew the woody material enough for him to swallow. The little bit he did swallow was clearly enough to excite his stomach, for it leapt with joy as it devoured whatever it had been given. Steve coughed. The bark was a little scratchy in his throat. It certainly wasn't the most enjoyable thing to chew either, but it did work as a source of food, little it was. Steve continued feasting in silence, ears tuned into the winds' hollers outside, double checking each sound to make sure it was not the masked cry of a freezing ghoul.

     The navy skies eventually turned black, and again the world was a frozen wasteland with no light but the one fireplace Steve sat in front of. Surely, it couldn't end like this. Not after so long. Not after so much fighting. The human stared into the flames, no emotion entering his features as his sore jaw chewed idly at the last bit of bark from the log he had stripped earlier. Surely he wouldn't end like this. He had never pictured how he would go before, but it sure wouldn't have been dying of starvation in a frozen tundra because he simply had nowhere else to go. It would have been even more of a let-down than how Steven had died. At least he had... What did he have..?

     Curious to figure this out for himself, Steve reached over to the right side of the fireplace, picking up a nearly frozen shut book he had left there with some other useless items of his. It was Steven's last book. Internally, Steve scolded himself for letting it fall into such a harsh state. That was the last book of the human before him, his role model, the one he literally named himself after! Such a book deserved more respect.

     Steve carefully chiseled off the thin layer of ice from the book and opened it up. Tucked inside, right in the center of the hundred or so warm pages, was the same letter Steve had first read many months ago. Quietly, Steve cleared his throat and began reading aloud, hoping that might help him better comprehend its words.

     "I am writing today..not because I have finally found signs of recovery here, but... quite the opposite, actually. I am afraid this is where my adventure e-nds..." He began, having to break for a moment as his own current situation, he felt, overlapped with the very scenario he was reading.

     "I had a dream about this once. About me sitting alone in a cave, struggling to write with a broken arm. For years I have tried to keep myself from such a fate, but...here I am.. finally ready to accept it. Heh.. Took me long enough." For a moment Steve wondered which arm.

     "I had a good run. My research has been spread across so much of the world now, waiting for the right hands to pick them up." Whose hands? "I still can't help but question how much I have yet to figure out; all the hidden mysteries I have yet to reveal. Oh well... I will just leave those for someone else, I guess." If only Steve could say he knew half the things Steven had written about. "Hopefully to someone who is more immune to the virus than me, I say as it eats away at my broken limbs. I have been fighting this off for ages it seems. But soon, I shall be just as dead as the rest of them... I pray the same fate does not come for you. It certainly isn't the most elegant way to go... heh." Steve remembered being bitten by zombies several times before, and it never had that same effect, so he must be the person Steven was talking to, then..

     "It is likely that my body will never be found, and that what I am writing right now will never be read. But, in the slim cha-nce that it is, and the one who finds it is still alive and well..." I guess that would be him Speaking to Steve then.. "may the night's grace be upon you. For you are not just a survivor;... the last of your k-ind," Steve had to put the letter down and wait. That word 'just' really bothered him. Being the last of his kind...? It was a hard concept to wrap one's head around. Even after spending so much of his life believing he was all alone, it still hit him hard every time to think that the truth. Before he even took notice of how he was feeling, Steve felt two tears roll down his cheeks in unison.

     It wasn't that hard to think about...when Hero was around...

     Great. Now he just needed something to distract himself with before he completely fell apart. Quickly, the human picked the letter back up and began reading again, sniffling away the need to cry when it was time to speak again.

     "For you are not just a survivor -- the last of your k-hhh..." A sob broke loose without warning. Even though he was alone, Steve was ashamed at himself for having such a hard time keeping himself together, but for some reason he just couldn't get past that part of the letter. The wind outside muffled the soft sobs and attempts he made to calm himself down. The dark abyss outside acted as a perfect barrier to any who could be potentially listening in; and still it wasn't enough to ease the man's conscience. He still felt terrible, and asking himself what Hero might have done to help him only made things worse.

     Eventually, Steve just had to give it up there. He would have to return to the letter in the morning, hopefully when he wasn't feeling so...alone..

     He decided that was the best idea. Just go to sleep and wait for morning. After that agreement he made with himself, Steve stoked the fire a couple more times, threw a log in, and rolled into his heap of blankets again. This time, as the human hugged himself, laying on his side with his back to the fire, Steve, the last human, finally allowed himself to cry.

Section 3:

     Steve woke again to the sound of little noise outside. Just the occasional whistles of wind gliding between the walls of his home. He could say he was feeling a little better than he had last night. Of course, it did take him a moment to remember what had happened in the first place. Sometimes, the best time of the day is right before you've fully woken up and yesterday's tragedy hasn't hit you yet. Still, he felt well enough to get up, stir the fire a little bit, add a couple new logs, and pick up that letter again. With a refreshed mind, Steve began to read.

     "For you are not just a survivor -- the last of your kind" pushing through to see what the bright side here is,"but hope." Huh? "Dear reader of this letter, you are tomorrow's sunrise; our very will to live on." Tomorrow's sunrise? What is he even talking about?

     "Keep fighting." ...

     "Show us what a bright future looks like." . . .

      "Sincerely, Steven Chriss" .  .  .

     Fighting....what? And how could one person possibly bring about a bright future?.. Steve guessed what he was doing -- sitting in a hole, waiting for starvation to set in again -- wasn't exactly living out a "bright future," but then...what is?

     For the answer to that question, Steve picked up Steven's last book again and flipped through the pages at random. What he was really looking for was a page that said in all bold: "LIFE GOALS HERE," but at the same time he knew that was unrealistic. He just had to figure out exactly what had been the goal of the humans before him.

     "Relation Between Cats and Phantoms. No. Hunting Strategies of the Canine Kind. No. Ancient Symbols and Their Meanings.. No. Newly Discovered Soup Recipes. No. End Portal and- wait that sounds interesting." Steve already knew to listen carefully if the word "portal" ever came up, and here that word was, with a completely new name attached to it. Reading further, Steve was immediately intrigued by the name: End Portal, and End Dimension, as if this "End" really was its own place, and not just the marking for the finishing of a task and or goal. There was almost this (alure) to IT being the end goal. The place of all places. The destination to top all destinations. And on that page, Steven wrote that it was his goal to reach this other realm for reasons not known completely, other than he knew it was fate and his kind was counting on him...so it read.

     The human had no idea what to expect to be in this dimension. Not even Steven seemed to know! But one thing was for sure. It was a goal, and he was needed to accomplish it.

     Steve rose his head and looked out the small window of his stone mound, a new set of determined blue eyes studying the bright sky beyond. His world may not have been fixed, but at least now he knew what to do with it; and that was all he needed.

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F I N A L L Y