The Safehouse – Tokyo's Industrial Fringes
Once a tea import warehouse, now little more than broken crates and rusted girders, the structure had become a hideout for the discarded — a place where black-market surgeons stitched ghouls together in the dark, and nobody asked names.
Eiríkur lay on a low cot in the corner, his skin pale as ash, lips faintly blue. Frost curled lazily from his breath, drifting upward like incense. He hadn't moved in hours.
Akira sat beside him.
Not touching.
Not speaking.
But never leaving.
She had stabilized his RC levels using crude suppressant blends. But physical injury wasn't the problem — it was the stillness in his eyes. Not sleep. Not death.
A slow, slipping kind of vanishing.
A man drowning in ice.
When Touka Kirishima entered the warehouse, the temperature didn't change — but the tension did.
Akira stood slowly, composed. "You followed us."
Touka shrugged. "You didn't cover your trail well enough."
They faced each other across the frost-lined floor. Two women from opposite ends of the battlefield, pulled into orbit by the same cursed center.
"I should kill you," Touka said. "You work for them. You are them."
"I'm more than that," Akira replied quietly.
"No. You're not." Her voice cracked — not from weakness, but weariness. "Because people like you get people like us killed."
Her eyes drifted to Eiríkur.
"He was one of us. Before you."
Akira's gaze sharpened. "He's still Eiríkur."
"Is he?" Touka asked, stepping closer. "Because when I look at him now, I don't see the man who made dumb jokes while washing dishes at Anteiku. I see a frozen grave. Waiting to crack open."
Akira didn't blink.
"I see someone still fighting not to become that grave."
The silence that followed could've shattered glass.
And then — from the cot — a shift.
A breath.
Eiríkur stirred.
CCG HQ – Secure Briefing Chamber
High above the 1st Ward, in a sealed terminal chamber, Kishou Arima stood alone before a black screen. His report loaded without ceremony.
Subject: Frost-Walker (Unclassified Hybrid)RC Type: Unknown | Non-StandardObserved Capabilities:
Regenerative Suppression Field
Precognitive Combat Adaptation
RC Signature Masking / Nullification
Recommendation: Do not engage. Containment or observation preferred. Further data pending.
The screen flickered.
Elsewhere — far below, in a hidden CCG laboratory — the file appeared on the terminal of Dr. Akihiro Kanou.
He leaned forward with a grin.
"So... it survived."
Behind him, tanks glowed softly — each filled with embryonic hybrids floating in pale blue fluid. Failed creatures. Abandoned trials.
Until now.
He tapped a finger against one tank. The fluid rippled faintly.
"Let's adjust the genome sequence."
A new objective began to form:
Fuse the Draugr strain — that frost-bound anomaly — with stable hybrid bases.
Remove the conscience.
Keep the power.
"If the Norse corpse can't be controlled," Kanou murmured, "then I'll build one that can."
Back at the Warehouse
Eiríkur opened his eyes.
The world came in pieces: cold steel. Two shadows. One familiar. One painful.
Akira to his right — calm, observant.
Touka to his left — rigid, furious.
"What… happened?" he rasped.
"You survived," Akira said softly.
Touka folded her arms.
"And maybe lost more of yourself doing it."
He sat up, slow and heavy, frost blooming across the mattress. He placed his head in his hands.
"I'm still me."
Neither woman moved.
Then Akira spoke — not to him, but to Touka.
"Then let him prove it."
And between them, Eiríkur said nothing.
But the frost… stopped spreading.