The thought hadn't even finished settling when Jin-Woo moved.
He crossed the remaining distance in a blur, one hand closing around her collar and lifting her clean off the ground. Her back hit the wall with a dull thud, loose snow shaking free from the bricks. He didn't give her time to reform properly; heat flared in his free hand, a tight, contained sphere, bright but controlled.
Her body finished stabilizing beneath his grip. Ink pulled itself together, edges sharpening, breath hitching once before evening out. Her eyes focused slowly, then flicked to the fire hovering inches from her face.
"…You can put that away," she said, voice rough but amused. "If you were going to use it, I'd already be screaming."
Jin-Woo didn't lower his hand.
She tilted her head instead, studying him upside down, a crooked smile pulling at her lips. "You always get this handsy when you're stressed, or am I special?"
"Why are you here?" he asked.
Straight to it. No patience left.
She blinked, then laughed softly. "Wow. No small talk. No, "Are you hurt?" You really know how to make a girl feel wanted."
"Answer the question."
Her smile thinned, but the humor didn't vanish entirely. "Same reason as always. Hunting." Her gaze slid past him, toward the mouth of the alley. "You did tell me to stay out of your territory, remember?"
"I told you to stop leaving bodies."
She hummed. "You told me a lot of things."
He leaned in just enough that she could feel the heat. "There have been killings recently..."
That got her attention.
"The method," he continued, voice steady, colder than the air around them. "The way the scenes are staged. They match yours fully."
Her eyes searched his face, waiting for the joke.
It didn't come.
The teasing drained out of her expression, replaced by something sharper. "No," she said. "They don't."
"I've seen the bodies myself."
"And I'm telling you they're not mine." She shifted against the restraints, not trying to break free, just uncomfortable now. "I haven't killed anyone in weeks."
He watched her closely. He knew her tells. The way her shoulders tightened when she lied. The way her eyes darted when she was improvising.
She wasn't doing any of it.
"Then why does it look like you?" he asked.
"Because someone wants it to," she shot back, irritation creeping in.
"I was hoping that was the case," he said.
Her mouth twitched despite herself. "Careful. You almost sound like you care."
He ignored it. "Who do you think would set you up like this?"
She hesitated.
That worried him more than any joke ever had.
"People are talking," she said finally, quieter now. "Down below. The ones who survive by knowing things. Someone's been rising fast."
"Name."
She shook her head. "No real one. Just rumors. Places falling apart overnight. Whole groups wiped out because they lsaid the wrong thing. Not robbed. Not recruited. Just… erased."
"Based on what I've heard, they're an Ice user," she went on. "But not like the others, apparently, the winter listens to them. Like it wants to help."
That didn't make sense. Ice users were dangerous, yes, but limited. They shaped what was already there.
Not this.
"They're calling them something," she said, reluctant. "The Winter Soldier."
The words sat heavy in the air.
Jin-Woo's mind raced through every file, every report, every known criminal profile he had access to.
Nothing fit.
"And you've been following their trail?" he asked.
"Trying to," she said. "Hard to track someone who doesn't leave witnesses."
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he loosened his grip.
"This definitely isn't you," he muttered. More to himself than to her.
Her eyes softened just a fraction. "Told you."
He was about to release the restraints when the world screamed.
Not audibly, it was something far deeper.
A pressure, sudden and immense, like the air itself recoiling.
Jin-Woo didn't think.
He jumped.
The rooftop came up fast beneath his boots as he landed hard, still holding her, heat flaring instinctively to cushion the impact. He spun just in time to see the alley below erupt.
Ice speared upward from the ground, violent and uncontrolled, tearing through brick and concrete as if they were paper. The spikes didn't stop at the alley, they grew, crawling up the building, snapping toward the roof where he stood.
"F*ck!," he snapped.
He ran.
Roof to roof, snow exploding beneath his feet as he pushed himself harder than he had in months. He could feel the cold chasing them, the environment itself turning hostile. Ice surged along walls, leapt gaps it shouldn't have been able to cross.
This wasn't random destruction.
Something or someone was pursuing them.
"Hey," she said sharply, clutching his shoulder. "This wasn't part of the plan."
"Someone lured us," Jin-Woo said. "Both of us."
He released a blast of heat behind them. The nearest ice formation shattered, steam roaring skyward. For a heartbeat, the advance stalled.
Then it adapted.
The street ahead buckled. Ice rose in grasping shapes, fingers curling closed, trying to drag them down. Jin-Woo gritted his teeth and pushed his output higher. The air warped, snow evaporating mid-fall. Ice melted, cracked, retreated.
But it didn't stop.
It reformed. Again and Again.
His power was working, but it wasn't winning.
The realization hit him like a punch.
"This isn't a fight I can win," he said under his breath.
Ink tightened around his arm as she felt it too. "Jin-Woo-"
The ground split beneath her.
Ice wrapped around her legs, yanking her down hard. She cried out as the restraints bit into her, ink flaring wildly as she tried to pull free.
He reacted instantly, dropping to one knee and slamming both hands into the ice. Heat surged, furious now, ripping through the structure and freeing her in an explosion of steam.
"Run," he shouted.
She stared at him. "What?"
"Now."
She hesitated, just for a second.
Then she nodded, ink liquefying beneath her feet as she vanished into the storm.
Jin-Woo turned back.
The ice parted.
A figure walked through the snowfall, untouched. Each step calm. Deliberate. The cold bent around her like it knew better than to interfere.
She stopped a short distance away.
"Jin-Woo."
Her voice cut through everything.
He froze.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
And recognized her.
For a moment, his mind tried to rejected it. Tried to force the shape in front of him into something else, another enemy wearing a familiar face. But the longer he looked, the more details lined up in ways that hurt.
The curve of her jaw.
The way she held herself, chin lifted, eyes sharp and unyielding.
The expression she wore when she was angry and trying not to show it.
Seo Hye-Rin walked toward him through the storm.
Her clothes were wrong, too thin for the cold, too elegant for the ruins she was leaving in her wake but the ice bent around her steps, refusing to touch her skin. Snow fell and never landed. Frost crawled up broken walls and stopped short of her shadow.
Her face was familiar.
And wrong.
"You're still alive," she said.
Jin-Woo straightened slowly, heat flaring around him on instinct. "Hye-Rin…"
The sound of his voice seemed to break something in her.
She laughed, sharp and hysterical, the sound cracking through the frozen street. "You don't get to say my name like that," she snapped, "ever again."
"I thought you were gone," he said. The words felt weak the moment they left him. "You disappeared."
Her eyes burned. "I didn't disappear. You left."
"That's not true..."
"You chose the world," she shouted, ice exploding outward in jagged waves that tore through the street behind him. "You chose strangers. Chose duty. Chose to be a hero while I froze and starved and hid!"
"I kept people alive," he said, stunned, trying to keep his voice steady. "Including you. At the beginning. I used my power for-"
"For everyone but me," she screamed. "You let them use you. You let them chain you up and parade you around, and you didn't even look back!"
"That's not fair," he said, anger finally bleeding through. "You killed people."
Her smile snapped back into place, wide and unhinged. "Oh, now you care about that?"
"Innocents," he said. "Families. People who had nothing to do with what happened to you."
"They deserved it," she said without hesitation. "All of them. They watched me suffer. They blamed me. They whispered about me like I was scum of the earth. They pointed at me like I was the reason this ice age happened."
"That doesn't make what you did right."
"The world isn't right," she shot back. "It never was. And you of all people should know that."
Ice surged.
He reacted instantly, throwing up a wall of heat that shattered the incoming spikes into steam. The force still drove him back, boots skidding across frozen concrete.
"You don't get to judge me," she continued, pacing now, words spilling faster, more jagged. "After everything they did to me. After everything you let happen."
"I didn't know," he said. "If I had-"
"You would've done the same thing," she cut in. "You would've told yourself it was necessary sacrifice. Just like you always do."
That stung because it was true.
"You became this," he said quietly, looking at her, really looking now. "This isn't power. It's cruelty."
She laughed again, louder this time, head thrown back. "Listen to you. Still pretending you're better than me. Still pretending you didn't enjoy the fame and power you got."
"I never enjoyed it," he said.
She stopped.
Her gaze snapped back to him, sharp and cold. "Liar."
Ice burst from the ground without warning.
Jin-Woo felt the impact before the pain. A spear tore through his side, pinning him to the wall behind him. Another punched through his thigh. His breath left him in a broken gasp as heat flared wildly, too late, too unfocused.
Blood steamed as it hit the snow.
"You don't get to walk away from me again," Hye-Rin said, her voice trembling now, fury and something worse bleeding through. "Not this time."
He struggled, forcing heat into his limbs, melting the ice just enough to keep himself conscious. "This… isn't you," he said through clenched teeth. "You're letting it control you."
"No," she whispered. "For the first time, I'm in control."
She stepped closer.
"And when I'm done with you," she added casually, "I'll find that little ink bitch you were protecting. She seemed… fun."
Something inside him snapped.
Jin-Woo screamed, not in pain, but in rage, and unleashed everything.
Heat roared outward in a massive wave, the air warping violently as snow vanished, ice liquefied, buildings groaning under the sudden thermal shock. For a heartbeat, the world burned.
Hye-Rin didn't move.
The heat slammed into an invisible wall and died.
She raised one hand.
Ice answered.
Spikes erupted from every direction, impaling him again and again, driving him to his knees. The heat guttered, smothered beneath an overwhelming cold that seeped into his bones.
He collapsed.
The world tilted. Sound dulled. The storm felt far away now.
Hye-Rin loomed above him, still talking, still cursing, her words blurring together as the cold crawled up his chest, extinguishing what little warmth he had left.
Jin-Woo stared up at the sky.
At the snow.
At the world his power had failed to save.
Regret settled heavy in his chest. Regret for believing sacrifice would be enough. For trusting power to make people better. For not seeing this coming.
Anger followed, hot and bitter, at what she'd become. At what the world had done to her. At what it had done to all of them.
If only he could do it differently.
The thought was quiet.
Simple.
Then the cold took everything.
Darkness followed.
And Kang Jin-Woo died.