Maghrib time along the eastern ridge of Mount Aruna crept downward at an impossible velocity. The sky, previously swallowed by the purple storm, mutated into pitch-black darkness within minutes, devouring the last embers of twilight and leaving behind a freezing, suffocating gloom.

The ambient temperature plummeted straight past freezing point. The mist clinging to their nylon windbreakers instantly crystallized into sharp, white beads of frost.

Amidst the howling gale of the night wind, the five friends stumbled blindly through the sucking mud. Their lips turned blue, their teeth chattered uncontrollably, and their entire frames shook violently. The early stages of hypothermia were systematically stripping away their physical consciousness, one by one.

"I... I can't do this anymore, Gan..." Dika whimpered in a raspy, barely audible voice. The guy’s steps pitched wildly to the left and right, before his knees finally buckled, sending him crashing hard onto the muddy earth. "My legs... they feel completely gone, I can't feel anything anymore..."

Gani, positioned right in front of Dika, spun around instantly and hurried over to his friend. He clamped his hands onto Dika's arms, trying to haul him to his feet.

"Get up, Dik! Don't sleep out here! If you sleep now, you're never waking up! Stand up!"

"Just let me be, Gan... huh-ha... my body is freezing cold, it feels so nice to just close my eyes for a second..." Dika mumbled weakly, his eyes glazed and half-closed, his breathing shallow and rattling at the edge of unconsciousness.

On the other side, Sita collapsed, slumping back against the trunk of a dead tree. The girl stared blankly ahead with a hollow gaze, her body wracked by violent tremors far exceeding normal shivering.

"Maya... warm water... I'm thirsty..." Sita whispered faintly, pressing a hand against her tightly bound chest.

Maya, pushed to the absolute brink of exhaustion herself, dropped to her knees beside Sita, weeping openly. She wrapped her arms around her friend's trembling frame, trying desperately to bleed her own dwindling body heat into Sita. "Sit, stay with me... please hold on. We're going to find a way down in just a minute..."

Rian stood a few paces ahead of them, wiping his face slick with cold sweat and ice crystals. His head throbbed with a heavy, rhythmic pulse, while his vision began to blur, ringed by creeping black spots.

Their physical states had truly reached the absolute terminal limit of collapse. Trapped in a blizzard, battered by extreme exhaustion, they hovered right at death's door from hypothermia.

"Gan... what do we do? Dika and Sita are barely conscious," Rian called out with a trembling voice, staring at Gani with bottomless panic. "If we don't find shelter right now, we're all going to freeze to death out here tonight!"

Gani didn't answer immediately. The guy's own chest heaved in ragged gasps, fighting the crushing weight bearing down on his body. He swept his gaze across the perimeter, cutting through the swirling veil of the night fog.

Yet right in the teeth of their despair, a false miracle materialized before them.

"Hey... look! What is that?!" Dika suddenly screamed, his glazed eyes flying wide open as he stared toward the back of the ridge line flanking the eastern trail.

Rian, Maya, Gani, and Sita snapped their heads in the direction Dika pointed.

Behind the curtain of thick fog sitting roughly twenty meters away, warm yellowish lights flickered invitingly. Dozens of oil lamps lined up neatly, casting a dim, cozy glow that stood in stark contrast to the surrounding dark woods.

Worse yet, faintly carried over on a gust of night wind, came the rich aroma of brewed black coffee and savory food, instantly making their starving, freezing stomachs twist in hunger.

"Lights... those are shop lights! There's a local rest stop over there!" Dika cheered with desperate elation, his voice pitching high with false hope. His life force seemingly snapped back to life in an instant. "We're safe! There's a coffee shop right behind this ridge! Let's go!"

Without waiting for approval, Dika scrambled back to his feet using his last remaining reserves of strength, then staggered blindly through the brush toward the source of light.

"Dika, wait! Don't run off alone!" Maya panicked, moving to chase after him, though her steps lagged because she had to support the dead weight of a limp Sita.

"Let's go after him! That's our only shot at warmth," Rian urged, helping Gani prop Sita up so they could follow the trail of the oil lamp glow.

They crept slowly through the wet underbrush, tracking the silhouette of Dika as he drew closer to the cluster of warm, yellowish lights behind the ridge line. The sound of lively chatter and the distant strum of gamelan music drifted closer on the wind, offering the seductive, fake comfort their freezing bodies craved above all else.

Yet the moment Gani slowed his pace and swept the last dying beam of his headlamp across the cluster of oil lamps... his steps came to a total, dead halt. His heart felt like it ripped clean out of his chest.

Rian, supporting Sita right behind Gani, furrowed his brow in confusion at Gani's sudden petrification. "Gan? Why'd you stop? Dika's getting closer!"

Gani gave no reply. The hand gripping his flashlight shook violently, his eyes blown wide as he stared straight into the source of light behind the fog.

Amidst the dim glow of the oil lamps Dika mistook for a local shop, Gani saw something entirely impossible.

Those yellowish lights... weren't coming from camp stoves, lightbulbs, or standard oil lamp wicks at all. Dozens of bluish-green flame points floated freely suspended in empty air, anchored by no poles, hovering above no storefronts, held by no human hands.

Those tiny spectral fires spun in slow circles through the air, dancing above an expansive patch of old graveyard soil choked with nameless stone tombstones.

"Dika... stop! Don't go there!" Gani shrieked hysterically with a raspy voice that tore through the quiet night, realizing with horror that what they were chasing wasn't human shelter at all, but the gates of hell itself.