The whole continent sits pinned beneath a cold screen. Three million square meters of petrified soil, hardened into a slab of absolute zero. No wind breathes across the spruce tops. No cloud travels through the rigid sky.
The sun is a square wafer of gold foil, glued to the midday vault, burning nothing, shedding no heat. The atmosphere is pure paraffin: dense, unmoving, clear, stifling the ridges in a transparent vise. I watch this burial from the outer dark.
Below the canopy, the creatures are seized mid-tick. A spider clings to a block of dark oak, its eight jointed legs locked in resin, red ocular beads fixed on empty air, poison unspilled, venom dried inside the jaw.
