It was a very cold day in the city of Evbuc, in Syntaxia, with a daily temperature of -23 °C [-9 °F]. The coldest day in the last 50 years. Meru was a 22 year old girl, blonde and with light blue eyes. She decided to not go outdoors, because the weather was way too cold, and she didn't want to freeze to death. She decided to play Tekken with her 16 year old brother, Vubur. Meru almost always won every match, but Vubur was not really interested in playing videogames: he wanted to find a girlfriend with whom he could had lived a happy life, forever. Meru had a girlfriend already: a 20 year old girl.
Meru and Vubur kept playing, and Vubur almost managed to win a match, but Meru was really good at playing Tekken, and so she won. "Hah! I like winning! Only my girlfriend manages to win against me sometimes", Meru said, satisfied. "One day, I will become better than you, you'll see!", said Vubur, who asked her to play with him again. Meru did as he requested, and they kept playing for several hours, until Meru started feeling sleepy. "I'm going to sleep", said Meru, kissing her brother on the cheeck and hugging him. He really liked hugs.
The night was very cold, with a minimum temperature of -32 °C [-26 °F], so cold that the house heating pipes broke, making the heating system effectively useless. The temperature inside their house started falling, at this point it's 23 °C [73 °F] but if nobody does anything, the temperature will keep falling. Meru and Vubur weren't noticing anything unusual: the temperature was falling slowly, and it was impossible to notice anything, especially considering they were still sleeping. Not even their parents were noticing anything, but soon, the entire house will freeze, and the parents of Meru and Vubur will have to do something to fix the problem.
22 °C [72 °F] inside the house. Everything looked calm and normal, but inside the heating pipes, the apocalypse was happening. The boiling liquid that was meant to heat the house was freezing, and if the parents of Meru and Vubur aren't quick enough to do something about it, they'll die a slow and icy death. Meru and Vubur were sleeping calmly under their blankets, unaware of the horrible situation that they were about to find themselves in. Everyone in that house was sleeping calmly, but if they don't wake up soon enough, they'll all freeze to death. It was a battle against sleep and time, and the prize was life.
21 °C [70 °F] inside the house. The temperature was not low enough yet for them to notice anything, and so they kept sleeping calmly and blissfully, with the heating pipes completely frozen and incapable of transmitting warmth. Eventually the temperature will drop so low that everyone in the house will freeze to death, but there is still hope: if they'll wake up soon enough, they'll manage to survive. The temperature was dropping quite quickly, but nobody in the house noticed it, because the thermometer was in the kitchen.
20 °C [68 °F] inside the house. No way, they haven't noticed it yet. The temperature inside the house was still comfortable enough to feel comfortable, so, according to them, there was no need to worry, and by the way, they haven't noticed at all that it's dropping and is still dropping, but it's still too early to give a rational judgement: they could wake up and notice it at any moment, but at the moment, nothing relevant is happening: their lives depend exclusively on their own firmness and on their own abilities. Not that they have a lot of them, anyway.
19 °C [66 °F] inside the house. Meru was starting to feel quite a bit cold, so she made herself cozy under the blankets. She was half asleep, so it was not in her mind that there was something that was not working with the heating system, so she kept sleeping. Vubur, on the other hand, kept sleeping like before, without even noticing that the temperature had dropped, and not even their parents notice it. Everything was going wrong, but they still have some possibility of surviving, they had a lot of time left before the temperature would had dropped below 5 °C [41 °F], which was a dangerous temperature.
18 °C [64 °F] inside the house. Things were like they were earlier: Meru was cozy under the blankets, and everyone else did not even notice that the temperature had dropped. Meru was sometimes snoring and she turned around on the bed, but other than that, she was asleep. The thermometer in the kitchen displayed a temperature of 18 °C [64 °F], but nobody could see it, because nobody went to the kitchen that night. Their end was near, it was just a matter of time before everyone in that house would had frozen to death! Unless they notice it soon enough, obviously.
17 °C [63 °F] inside the house. Still, no one has noticed about anything unusual: they were probably insensitive towards temperature swings. In any case, soon the temperature will be dangerously low: too low to be able to survive. Shall we say goodbye to Meru and Vubur? They have lived a good life, anyway, short but intense. If they die, they will be buried properly. Meru could sense a negative energy inside the house but she decided to ignore it. This negative energy was talking to her: it was talking about an imminent death, her own.
16 °C [61 °F] inside the house. Meru woke up with her heart beating faster than usual: she had a horrible nightmare and she was feeling cold, she thought it was because of the nightmare, and she kept sleeping after turning on the light, to avoid having another nightmare. Vubur was also noticing that the temperature was becoming colder, but he decided to ignore that, as long as the temperature will rise again, he thought it was due to a temporary malfunctioning of the heating system. Their parents have not noticed it yet, they just had some mild shivers here and there.