Eiríkur had grown used to being watched.
At first, he told himself it was paranoia — a lingering side effect of his transformation. An elevated sense of alertness, nothing more. But lately, it wasn't just a feeling. It was certainty. Someone was following him.
Not hostile. Just… present. Always just out of sight. A rustle on the rooftop. A shadow at the edge of his vision. A presence brushing the wyrd inside him like a finger across a harp string.
He never turned fast enough to catch them.
Until tonight.
It was late when he left Anteiku, the café bathed in the soft amber glow of closing time. The warm smell of roasted beans clung to him, but it did little to cover the cold that seeped from his own skin. He had helped Yoshimura wipe the tables, sweep the floor, and lock the front door — but the moment he stepped outside into the alleys of the 20th Ward, that presence returned.
It hovered.
He didn't walk toward the station. Instead, he slipped into the backstreets — narrow, quiet veins that pulsed with the breath of an older Tokyo. Moss-covered stone, rusted pipes, forgotten gods.
As he moved, the wyrd surged up his spine. A pulse of instinct — not danger exactly, but something watching. Judging.
He stopped, crouched to tie his boot, and suddenly turned.
"You can come down now," he said evenly.
A soft thump answered him.
Above, on the edge of a low rooftop, stood a girl with short indigo hair and eyes like sharpened storm clouds. Arms crossed. Calm, but coiled. Touka Kirishima.
"Not bad," she said, hopping down lightly. "You noticed."
Her voice carried neither warmth nor contempt. Just curiosity. And suspicion.
Eiríkur didn't move. Frost curled at the edge of his breath in the humid summer air.
"I've seen what you can do," Touka said. "That wasn't a kagune. Not like ours. And you don't fight like a ghoul."
She stepped closer, narrowing her eyes. "You don't smell like one either."
Eiríkur stepped into the open, pale eyes glinting in the dark.
"I don't know what I am," he said honestly. "But you've felt it too, haven't you? That there's something in me… something old."
Touka didn't respond. But she didn't walk away either.
Before either of them could speak again, the wyrd twisted inside Eiríkur like a sudden windshift. He turned his head — something heavier had entered the space. A new presence. Older. Denser. Drenched in hunger.
From the mouth of a narrow side alley, a figure emerged.
Tall. Cloaked in tattered black. His coat dragged like wet cloth across pavement. Pale skin pulled tight over lean muscle, stretched over bones that looked too long for a man. His eyes gleamed obsidian — unnatural and wet like onyx in moonlight.
He looked… decayed. Not weak. But rotted, like he had clawed his way from a crypt and never fully left.
Touka stepped in front of Eiríkur instinctively, her Ukaku kagune flaring to life — jagged wings of brilliant azure light slicing the darkness behind her.
The figure smiled. His teeth were broken, jagged.
"I've been watching you," the man said. His voice rasped like gravel dragged across a grave marker. "You carry the blood of the draugr. And now, you've awakened it."
Eiríkur's blood chilled. He shifted slightly, ready to move, but did not attack.
Touka didn't lower her kagune. "Who the hell are you?"
The man tilted his head, the smile still etched on his lips. "They called me Skorvald, once. Long ago. I was buried in the ice of Norway — one of the first cursed to rise with hunger after death."
His voice dropped, as if confessing something only meant for them. "The CCG never caught me. Never knew I existed. But when you changed, I felt it. Something ancient in you called to something ancient in me."
Eiríkur's mind reeled, but his body stilled.
This wasn't like the ghouls he'd fought.
This man's RC levels were immense — compressed, like permafrost under centuries of weight. Power fossilized into silence.
"You're… saying you're a draugr too?" Eiríkur asked.
Skorvald chuckled, a low growl of a sound. "Not like you. I was born a ghoul — a predator of man. But you… you were made. The virus didn't just turn you. It triggered what lay dormant in your blood. Blood not from Tokyo, but from the North. From deathless lineages and cursed graves."
Touka cast a sharp glance at Eiríkur. He felt her doubt pressing against him — not just fear, but confusion. Wariness. Curiosity. Skorvald's eyes moved between them.
"You cling to this café, this quiet life. You sip coffee, pretend at humanity. But it won't last."
His tone grew colder. Harder.
"Others will come. Ghouls who fear what you are. Investigators who want to dissect you. The White Reaper won't overlook you for long."
Eiríkur's jaw tightened at the name. He'd heard it whispered already. A ghoul killer in white. A prodigy with red eyes and no mercy.
Skorvald stepped backward into shadow, his voice low.
"When the time comes — when this city turns on you — find me. I will teach you how to be what you are. Or…"
He raised a broken finger, pointing directly at Eiríkur.
"…you will be crushed pretending to be something you're not."
And then he vanished.
No flare of kagune. No burst of movement.
Just gone — as though the night had reclaimed its child.
Touka exhaled, lowering her wings. "Do you believe him?"
Eiríkur didn't answer.
The breath that left his lips came out white with frost.