Frostpunk Divine Throne-Chapter 3: Snow Country

"Ober, Ober Nielsen," the knight said coldly. "Current captain of the Spessay Diocese Guard."
"I see, pleasure to meet you." Cyren enthusiastically grasped his hand. "So we're colleagues. Please take care of me in the future."
The knight was not quite accustomed to this bishop's enthusiastic expression, and even less accustomed to that equal attitude. Colleagues? What high-ranking clergy would call a guard captain a colleague? He could only keep a straight face, letting Cyren shake his hand back and forth like a puppet.
After exchanging pleasantries for a while, Cyren asked with a smile, "Where is my compartment? Is there anything else I need to do?"
Only then did Ober remember his main task. He said, "These three carriages are exclusively yours. This is the reception room, the bedroom is forward, and the dining car is behind. Additionally, there's a document that requires your signature."
He pointed to the document on the table beside them. Cyren glanced at it a few times. It was roughly a confirmation letter or something similar, so he signed his name in beautiful cursive script, then melted a spoonful of sealing wax and stamped it with the seal of his ring of authority.
The knight collected it, then said, "This train is a special express to Spessay. Behind us are also the new abbot of Spessay Abbey, three parish priests, as well as runic masters, engineers, and others. The guard is in carriage number two. If you encounter danger, you can directly ring the bell to summon us."
Cyren saw the copper pull cord nearby and nodded.
"If there's nothing else, I'll take my leave first." Ober bowed slightly.
"Tell me about Spessay," Cyren said.
"My apologies, my lord. I've also just taken up this post. I'm from the south," Ober said expressionlessly.
Cyren saw that he didn't really want to engage with him, so he waved his hand, "I understand. You may go."
Ober's figure disappeared at the end of the carriage, but Cyren began to ponder.
The bishop was new, the guard was new, the abbey abbot was also new, and he brought three new priests... Why conduct such a massive personnel change? What exactly had happened in Spessay? What did the doomsday prophecy that his senior mentioned mean?
He stood up and rummaged around, then accidentally found the freight manifest for this train.
As Ober had said, the front carriages were passenger cars, but behind them were a full twelve freight cars, including three carriages containing a full two hundred tons of red mercury. The other eight were also various rare materials, along with one carriage of winter clothing.
But it was currently summer, still a month away from autumn.
"Blood and frozen terror..." Cyren murmured. "Does it mean winter? This year's winter, or next year's? And what is the blood?"
He thought for a long time but couldn't figure it out, yet drowsiness slowly crept over him.
Shortly after transmigrating, he had suffered mental shock, and then had been busy for most of the day. As night fell, his eyelids were already starting to droop, so he fumbled his way to the bedroom carriage, washed up briefly, and lay down on the bed.
At night, dreams repeatedly invaded his mind. He died over and over in his own home. The killer bore Cyren's own face. A comet fell on Libra, but it was some mistress's bosom.
The next morning he woke up with dark circles under his eyes, constantly sighing.
As a psychoanalyst, he naturally understood dreams. From Freud's perspective, they were repressed desires. From Lacan's perspective, they were symbolic expressions of unconscious language.
Those chaotic dreams very likely meant that "Cyren's" old personality had become his unconscious, affecting him with desires, memories, and thoughts that once belonged to Cyren. Only when the rational censorship mechanism relaxed in the unconscious state would it emerge to show itself.
Before he could continue thinking, the doorbell rang. It was the three newly appointed parish priests coming from the rear carriage to see him.
The Spessay episcopal diocese included forty-three churches, each managed by a parish priest. In other words, these three were his new subordinates.
He had just taken office as Bishop of Spessay and had no power base whatsoever, so these three people had to be won over. Therefore, Cyren gave himself a dose of [Holy Healing], lifted his spirits somewhat, and opened the door with a smile, inviting them to have breakfast together.
Half an hour later, Ober came from the front of the carriage, informing them that they would arrive in Spessay in another half hour.
Cyren nodded, wiped his mouth with a white napkin, and smiled gently at the three old priests before him, "Alright, then we—"
He was just about to say some parting words, then do some more preparation before arrival, when he suddenly glimpsed at the corner of the train's glass window where white ice crystals began to spread rapidly.
His pupils suddenly contracted as he raised his head.
Today's sky was exceptionally gloomy, as if summer had already ended and autumn's melancholic atmosphere enveloped the world. And between those gray, hazy clouds, an ice-blue "moon" had somehow appeared there.
"Lord Bishop?" Several priests looked at Cyren in confusion. That young bishop's eyes showed shock and bewilderment as he gazed out the window.
But they no longer needed to look out the window, because ice crystals had crawled over half the glass in just over ten seconds. The temperature suddenly dropped to winter-like cold, and dressed only in thin robes, they all shivered.
Then the world fell into silence. The roaring boiler, the grinding rotating gears, the swaying connecting rods, the vibration of the rails all disappeared, as if that cold had clutched the heart of steel, making it suffocate.
The next moment, steel let out a tearing wail. The entire train violently shook. This white steel python howled its death cry like Jörmungandr struck on the head by Thor. Brass was twisted by tremendous force, the boiler burst under pressure, and rails snapped one by one.
The world outside the window had somehow darkened in that instant, becoming a white hell. Snowflakes and ice crystals like a frozen tsunami composed of billions of crystals surged overwhelmingly toward this world.
Cyren instinctively crouched down and held his head, but the entire train flew off the rails amid the sound of twisting. He floated up like an astronaut in weightlessness, and everything indoors floated up as well.
In that very instant, a resolute expression flashed across Ober's face. His entire body's muscles burst forth with brilliant gold, and then with a flying leap, in the brief moment of floating, he embraced Cyren.
He said nothing, keeping a straight face, taking one step that spanned the distance of three and a half wooden floorboard gaps, very imprecise, but his embrace was very precise.
The next moment, the Northern Holy Seat plowed out a tragic black trench in the newly snow-covered wilderness like a dying beast falling from the sky. The carriage glass exploded with a roar. Countless fragments accompanied by sharp snowflakes flooding the sky surged into the twisted steel carriages, devouring life.
Steel bones pierced through the just-wound wristwatch, freezing time forever at this instant. The guard captain held Cyren tightly, falling silent in the belly of the python. The cold current rapidly froze his fresh blood. White snow like the Grim Reaper's cloak embraced the remnants of human bodies.