A sharp, aching cold was the first thing to register in the fog of Rin's consciousness. It was a deep, penetrating chill that had little to do with the temperature of the room and everything to do with the cheap, thin blanket that had slipped to the floor, and the worn-out mattress that offered no insulation from the relentless night air.
'Ugh… it's freezing…' he thought, the words a dull echo in his sleep-addled mind. Every muscle protested as he pushed himself up, a symphony of aches from a body forced into rest on a surface unforgiving as stone. 'This is unacceptable. The mattress is a plank, and this blanket is a child's shroud. It doesn't even cover my legs.'
His bare feet met the icy linoleum floor, and he hissed through his teeth. The window across the private room was open, the curtains shifting like pale ghosts in a faint breeze. He'd been certain he'd closed it before sleeping. With stiff, shivering steps, he crossed the room, his breath misting in the air. He grasped the cold handle and shoved the window down with a definitive thud, sealing out the damp night. The sudden silence felt heavy, oppressive.
'A private room,' he mused, his critical gaze sweeping the sparse, utilitarian space. The paint was chipped, the light fixture dusty, and a faint, antiseptic smell barely masked a underlying note of mildew. 'This is what passes for corporate care on an overseas assignment. A thorough debriefing and a formal complaint to HQ will be my first order of business upon my safe return to Japan. This is a dereliction of their duty of care.'
He crawled back into the meager bed, pulling the inadequate covers up to his chin, trying to generate some warmth. He lay on his side, facing the door, his body curled into a tight, defensive ball. He focused on regulating his breathing, on compartmentalizing the discomfort. It was a skill he'd honed over years of demanding work. Control was everything.
Just as a sliver of warmth began to seep back into his limbs, a sound shattered the fragile quiet.
WHOOOSHHH…
The curtains billowed inward, not with a gentle breeze, but with a violent gust. Rin's eyes snapped open. 'Impossible. I just closed it. The latch was firm.'
A primal dread, cold and sharp, lanced through him, instantly vaporizing any lingering drowsiness. He turned his head slowly, every movement an effort of will against a sudden, paralyzing fear.
There, silhouetted against the moonlit window, stood a figure. Tall, broad-shouldered, leaning casually against the frame as if he owned the very darkness he'd stepped out of. A familiar, predatory smirk was etched onto his face.
Kai.
Rin's heart didn't just pound; it seized, hammering against his ribs like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. His breath hitched in his throat.
"So this is where you've been hiding," Kai's voice was a smooth, dark velvet, laced with a mockery of affection. He pushed himself off the frame and stepped into the room, his boots making no sound on the floor. The air itself seemed to grow colder with his presence.
Rin's mind raced, scrambling for protocol, for reason, for any semblance of the control he prized. "W-what are you doing here?" he demanded, though the tremor in his voice betrayed his stern tone. "How did you find me?" This was a secure facility. His location was confidential. This breach was unthinkable.
Kai didn't answer. In a movement too fast to follow, he was at the bedside. His hand, cold and impossibly strong, shot out and clamped around Rin's throat, cutting off his air and any further questions.
'KEUGH!!' Rin's choked gasp was the only sound he could make. His hands flew up to claw at Kai's wrist, but it was like trying to bend iron.
"I got so terribly bored after discarding my little toy," Kai purred, his face inches from Rin's, his grin widening to reveal perfectly white, vaguely threatening teeth. His eyes held no warmth, only a glittering, amused malice. "I concluded that loose ends are so… untidy. To prevent any future… inconveniences… it's best to completely dismantle the source. And considering our recent… intimacy…" His free hand trailed a possessive, cruel line down Rin's arm. "…it only feels right to give you a proper, personal farewell. Don't you think? A final connection."
The vile words, the manipulative reframing of his violation as some twisted romance, sent a surge of pure adrenaline through Rin. This was not a negotiation. It was an execution.
Gathering every ounce of his strength, Rin drove his knee up, aiming not for the abdomen, but higher, with desperate, brutal force.
Kai grunted, a sound of more surprise than pain, and his grip loosened for a fraction of a second. It was all Rin needed. He twisted free, tumbling out of the opposite side of the bed, and scrambled for the door without a backward glance.
Bare feet slapping against the cold, polished floor, he burst into the corridor. It was deserted, plunged into the eerie, dim half-light of a hospital after midnight. The silence was deafening. 'Alarm. I need a panic button. A staff member. Anything!' His thoughts were a frantic mantra. He ran, his heart pounding in his ears, each breath a ragged sob he refused to voice.
A shadow detached itself from the wall ahead of him. It was impossible. He hadn't been passed. Yet there Kai was, not even out of breath, his expression one of indulgent amusement, as if watching a kitten try to fight.
A strong arm snaked around Rin's waist, yanking him off his feet and pulling him back against a solid, unyielding chest.
"Now, now," Kai's voice was a husky, mocking whisper directly in his ear. The intimacy of it was more violating than the grip. "Where are you running to? The night is still young."
"Let me go!" Rin snarled, thrashing in his hold, his professionalism utterly incinerated by raw, animal terror. "Haven't you assaulted me enough? What more do you want?"
Kai's laugh was a soft, sinister thing. "Oh, darling, don't rewrite history. You liked it. I felt it. I got you off so many times. You were so responsive for me." The words were weapons, designed to confuse, to shame, to manipulate his very memory of the event.
"NO! That's a lie! Stop! Somebody! HELP!!" Rin's cry echoed down the empty hall, unanswered, swallowed by the oppressive silence. He was pinned face-first against the cold wall, his hands splayed against the paint. He tried to push back, to buck him off, but it was useless. Kai was a force of nature.
"Shhh," Kai whispered, the sound viciously soft. "No one's coming. It's just us."
A sharp, tearing pain. A brutal, forced intrusion. Rin squeezed his eyes shut, a single, traitorous tear tracing a path down his cheek as the world dissolved into a nightmare of pain, pressure, and the sound of Kai's controlled breathing in his ear—
—He jolted awake.
A strangled gasp tore from his throat. Sunlight, pale and morning-weak, streamed through the firmly closed and latched window. The blankets were tangled around his legs, damp with cold sweat. His heart was still galloping, a frantic, painful rhythm against his sternum.
He was in bed. Alone.
The corridor outside was no longer silent; he could hear the distant, mundane sounds of a waking hospital: a cart rolling, a muffled voice over an intercom, the gentle hum of civilization.
It was a dream. A vicious, hyper-realistic phantom of his trauma.
The water hit his skin with a stinging hiss. Hot. Almost scalding. But Rin didn't flinch.
He stood under the stream, unmoving. A soldier carved in steam and silence. The mist clung to his skin, but nothing washed away what clung inside him — not the anger, not the shame, and especially not the fear that he refused to name.
His eyes dropped again.
"Goddamn it."
He stared at the swelling between his legs. It pulsed as though mocking him. Another involuntary reaction. Another betrayal by his own body.
"It's just morning wood," he told himself for the fourth time.
"It's not him. It's not real. That dream was... just my brain misfiring. Stress, trauma, residual alpha instincts trying to make sense of all this imprinting bullshit."
But he knew that was a lie.
"Whatever he injected into me—it wasn't just an anesthetic."
"No normal sedative would still be affecting me like this. The insomnia, the heat spikes, the intrusive dreams..."
"This isn't just chemistry. It's conditioning. Programming, maybe. Psychological warfare built into a syringe."
Rin's jaw tightened as his fist clenched under the water.
"I hate this. I hate how he still lingers."
"I hate how every time I close my eyes, I can hear his voice."
"Like he's still in the room with me, smirking, taunting, playing me like I'm some sick little toy."
He bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood.
"I should be glad I made it out alive, like Evgeny said. I should be lying low, licking my wounds, not obsessing over someone I should already have killed."
But he couldn't let it go.
He wouldn't.
That bastard had left something behind in his body—and maybe something even worse in his head.
And then... suddenly, a thread tugged loose in the tapestry.
"Koschei the Deathless."
That damn story Kai told him—so casually, too. Like a bedtime story laced with a cyanide pill.
"He couldn't be killed," Kai said, "Not because he was immortal... but because his death wasn't in his body."
"It was hidden. Nested. Buried inside layers of protection."
"It was a metaphor. Not just a story."
Rin blinked rapidly, water cascading down his face as the thoughts aligned, one by one. Like dominoes finally tipping over.
"Kai was trying to say something. He always is. He hides it under nonsense, under charm, under arrogance... but there's always something."
Then the second memory hit him like a bullet behind the eye.
Persephone.
Kai had mentioned it once. Off-handed. Called it a "failure."
But if that weapon had truly failed—then why did no one ever touch the Romanovs afterward?
"They should've been purged. The entire bloodline. Everyone involved in Persephone should've been scrubbed clean from the political map."
"But they weren't."
"Not only did they survive… they thrived."
"Why?"
"The weapon either didn't fail… or…"
He paused, narrowing his eyes.
"Or it changed."
"Evolved. Fragmented. Maybe it was never a weapon in the traditional sense."
"Maybe it became something harder to detect. A blueprint. A strain. A formula."
"Or worse—maybe it was never a 'weapon' at all. Maybe it was a system. An inheritance protocol. A control mechanism. Something so deeply encoded that it didn't need a trigger to activate."
And then... another memory, sharper now.
Morgan.
Back during the first mission briefing, Rin had asked Morgan about Persephone.
The man had stiffened. Didn't say a word. But he'd given Kai a look—just for a second.
It hadn't made sense at the time. But now…
"That look wasn't confusion. It was fear."
"He knew Kai was involved. That Persephone wasn't dead—and that the bastard in question isn't just using it. He is it."
His fists clenched at his side again.
The water had turned cold.
He stepped out and stared at himself in the foggy mirror, wiping the steam away with his palm.
A serious face stared back — sharp eyes, sharp mind, too tired for denial.
"Tsar Nochi Romanov. 'The Nucleus of Russia.' That's what they call him."
"Nucleus. Not king. Not heir. Nucleus."
"Central. Immutable. Hidden in the very core of the empire."
"Just like Koschei."
He stared at himself, water still dripping down his face.
"I've been thinking too linearly. Too tactically. But this is biological. Symbolic. Mythological."
"Kai left a trail, a mythology—because it's the only way he could be honest."
And suddenly, Rin was furious again. Not just because of what had been done to him, but because—
"He wanted me to find this."
"He dared me to."
"Like I'm some pawn in his twisted game of riddles and fables."
He spat into the sink and stood up straighter.
"Fine. I'll play. But on my own terms."
"You think I'm just another toy, Kai?"
"Watch what happens when a toy bites back."
The hospital library was quiet. Too quiet.
The kind of silence that made the hum of fluorescent lights sound deafening. A couple of patients sat slouched over newspapers, an elderly man slept in the corner, and a nurse at the far desk flipped through files with mechanical boredom.
Rin sat hunched at one of the public-use computers, the sterile blue light of the screen reflecting off his sharp features. His fingers moved with precision across the keyboard as he typed his query:
Romanov Manor.
The screen filled with results—grainy photos, news snippets, the occasional drone shot that hadn't been scrubbed from the web. Rin clicked through one by one, eyes narrowing, his soldier's mind immediately dissecting every image.
"Difficult to see clearly with this resolution…" he thought, zooming in until the pixels blurred together. "…but good enough for a basic layout."
A sprawling estate. Gothic spires. Heavy stone walls that seemed to breathe with history. An empty castle on the outside—but to him, it looked like a puzzle box.
He remembered Kai's mocking tone, the way he'd told that story like a joke with a poisoned edge.
"An empty castle. A tree as old as Koschei himself. To the south, a treasure chest. And inside it? Several smaller treasure chests."
At the time, Rin had brushed it off as mythological nonsense. But staring at the photos now, something twisted in his gut. He leaned forward, elbows braced on the table, eyes glued to the screen.
"Wait. Hold on—"
He pushed back abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor and drawing a brief glare from the nurse. He ignored her, standing and striding quickly to the shelves. His fingers skimmed over cracked spines and dust-coated bindings until he grabbed a stack of books—architecture references, Russian history, folktale compilations. He carried them back to his table with controlled urgency and began flipping through them like a man possessed.
Pages turned. Notes scribbled in margins. Photographs compared against sketches.
And then—
His pulse quickened.
"…Could it be?"
He clicked through another photo, then another, pulling them up side by side. No matter the season, no matter the weather, no matter the year—the same anomaly. That one room.
Always lit. Always alive.
The curtains never drawn. A constant glow bleeding through like a heartbeat.
Rin's jaw tightened.
"It doesn't matter the angle. Doesn't matter the time of day. That room… it never sleeps."
His hands curled into fists on the desk.
"So obvious. So blatant. Almost as if they want people to notice."
But who would? The casual eye would dismiss it. Tourists scrolling past pictures on the internet, historians talking about architecture—they'd miss the pattern. But Rin wasn't casual. Rin was trained to see what others overlooked.
He leaned closer to the screen, eyes cold, mind racing.
"If the legend of Koschei was meant to be a code… then the 'heart' isn't some literal chest buried in the ground. It's a chamber. A vault. A room hidden in plain sight."
The image of that glowing window branded itself into his mind.
"Could that be where it is? The heart of Koschei? No—not Koschei." His lips pressed into a thin line. "Persephone."
He remembered Morgan's look again—the sharp, fleeting exchange with Kai. That silent warning. The knowledge that whatever "failure" Persephone had been declared, it hadn't disappeared.
It had simply been contained.
"That room… it's too consistent. Too deliberately maintained. A controlled anomaly."
"Maybe that's where the Romanovs keep their secret. Maybe that's where the weapon is stored—or its blueprints. Or whatever Persephone evolved into."
His thoughts sharpened, spiraling toward a single truth.
"The Romanovs weren't spared because they were lucky. They were spared because they held the core. The nucleus. Their power isn't political—it's biological, systemic. They keep the world orbiting them because they hold the very thing that could annihilate it."
His breathing slowed, his pulse steadying despite the rush of revelation. He sat back in his chair, expression hard as carved stone.
"And if that's true… then Kai already knows. Hell, he's probably been inside that room himself. He dangled it in front of me on purpose. Koschei, Persephone, the heart in a box… it was a trail. A taunt."
Rin's nails dug into his palms.
"But you slipped, Kai. You should never have given me a map."
The nurse peeled away the gauze from Evgeny's hand with clinical precision, her voice gentle but commanding:
"You're not fully recovered yet, so please do not overexert yourself under any circumstances."
Evgeny gave a half-hearted nod, his sharp eyes distant, impatient. Rin stood quietly at the doorway, arms crossed, watching, his silhouette framed in the pale hospital light.
The nurse excused herself with a polite bow. The door clicked shut, leaving only the steady beeping of the monitor and the faint smell of antiseptic between them.
"Where were you? They said you were out since dawn," Evgeny asked, lifting his gaze at last. His voice carried more curiosity than accusation.
Rin didn't answer immediately. Instead, he stepped inside and closed the door, his movements calm, deliberate.
"Are you really going to end the mission here?" Rin asked, his tone flat, but his eyes sharp as steel.
Evgeny raised an eyebrow. "What am I supposed to do if I don't?"
Rin sat down on the chair beside the bed, crossing one leg over the other, posture controlled, military. He leaned forward slightly, resting his hands together.
"What would you have gained had you successfully completed the mission?"
Evgeny frowned, a trace of irritation surfacing. "Are you serious? What's the point of asking me that now?"
"I'm asking," Rin said calmly, eyes unwavering, "because it might not be so pointless after all. So tell me."
There was silence for a moment. Then, with a heavy exhale, Evgeny muttered, "I was promised funds. Enough to set out on my own."
Rin's eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you from Dagestan?"
Evgeny stiffened, then gave a curt nod. "Yes."
Rin leaned back slowly, mind clicking into motion like a machine.
"Dagestan. Of course. Now it all makes sense. That's how Kai and Evgeny knew each other. It wasn't chance—it was inevitability. The FSB has always kept a tight grip on Dagestan, watching every movement, infiltrating every faction. For Kai to know him, to use him, it must mean Evgeny was already on their radar. And yet, instead of eliminating him, both Japan and the U.S. chose to recruit him."
His gaze lingered on Evgeny, but his thoughts spiraled deeper.
"Which means one thing: Evgeny isn't just some disposable pawn. He's valuable enough that two rival nations made separate deals for his cooperation. Valuable enough that Kai himself might see him as useful. And what does that make him to me? Ally? Liability? Or a hidden trap?"
Rin's jaw tightened slightly, though his face remained unreadable.
"But here lies the real contradiction. Both he and I were given the same mission: procure the blueprints for Persephone. So if either of us actually succeeds—where does it go? To Japan, the nation that dispatched me? Or to the United States, the one that struck its bargain with him?"
The thought twisted like a knife in his mind.
"Neither country trusts the other enough to share such a weapon. That much is obvious. So what does that mean for us, the ones in the field? We're not partners. We're parallel tools. Interchangeable. Disposable. Each nation dangling bait, waiting to see which one of us comes back alive."
His hand clenched subtly against his knee.
"And even then, what's the guarantee? If I succeed, Japan gains control. If Evgeny succeeds, the U.S. gains control. But if Kai already holds the heart—if he's already mapped the chest within chests—then what are we, if not rats running in a maze he designed?"
Rin exhaled slowly, centering himself.
"No. There's something bigger here. The fact that both powers are willing to risk sending us separately means neither has full confidence in their intelligence. They're grasping at shadows, desperate for a sliver of leverage against the Romanovs. And Kai… Kai feeds on that desperation. He's turned Persephone into his game board. He gives pieces of the story to each side, watches us tear at each other like dogs, and laughs while he keeps the real answer close to his chest."
His gaze sharpened on Evgeny again.
"So what's your angle, Evgeny? Freedom? Independence? Or just revenge disguised as ambition? You want funds to 'set out on your own,' but in Dagestan, there's no such thing as freedom from power. The minute you rise, you're dragged back down. By Moscow. By the FSB. By men like Kai. Don't lie to yourself—you know this better than anyone."
Rin's expression didn't change, but his silence grew heavier, calculated, as if every word he didn't say weighed more than the ones he did.
"So what would happen if we get Persephone?" Rin asked, voice steady, unreadable, as though he were discussing weather rather than a weapon capable of rewriting global balance.
There was silence for a beat. Then, almost casually, Evgeny reached under the pillow and drew a gun, pointing it directly at Rin's chest.
The room seemed to shrink. The faint hum of the fluorescent light above became louder, the ticking of the wall clock sharper. But Rin's face didn't flicker—not surprise, not fear. His breathing was steady, eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as though he had expected this all along.
Evgeny smirked. "I had one mission."