It started with screams.
And then… silence.
The 11th Ward shook with rumors. Ghoul cells found gutted, their bodies frozen mid-motion — statues of agony with frost blooming from their mouths. Entire CCG squads paralyzed in terror, not by force, but by the sheer wrongness left behind.
Who did it?
Not the CCG. Not Aogiri.
No one saw the killer.
Only the aftermath.
Beneath the surface, in whispering tunnels and blood-marked sanctuaries, ghouls gave the phantom a name: The Hollow-Eye.
Eiríkur felt it before the rumors reached him.
A storm surged beneath his ribs — the wyrd flaring along his spine like ancestral lightning. It whispered:
Another walks.One like you.But he wears no chains.
He went to Skorvald.
The old revenant only nodded grimly. "His name was Njall the Hollow-Eye. A berserker in life. A beast in death. He was buried centuries before me."
"And now?"
"Now he hunts. Woken by the same currents that stirred your blood." Skorvald's eyes narrowed. "You're not ready."
Eiríkur's fists clenched.
He didn't care.
He left the shrine at midnight, frost trailing behind his boots like ghostly silk.
Akira met him halfway down the mountain path, her breath catching in the cold.
"You're going after it," she said. Not a question.
"I have to."
"You're not ready," she said. "You don't even want to kill."
Eiríkur paused.
"I might not have a choice."
Akira's hand brushed his wrist. Cold skin. Warmer intention.
"You always have a choice," she whispered.
Their eyes met.
Something flickered.
And then he was gone.
The 11th Ward was quiet when he arrived.
Too quiet.
He followed the scent — rot, steel, frost — until it led him to the ruins of an old freight yard, long abandoned to rust and weeds. Now, it was a graveyard.
Train cars split like butchered meat. Metal frozen into impossible shapes. Aogiri operatives — seasoned killers — lay scattered across the snow in pieces, many still encased in ice.
And in the center stood a giant.
Eight feet tall. Skin pale as ash. Bare from the waist up, marked with frostburn scars like cursed tattoos carved across his body.
Chains dragged behind him, coated in glacial ice, groaning against the steel rails.
One eye glowed like a dead moon.
The other was sealed shut with frost-scarring.
"You came," the behemoth said, his voice like tectonic plates grinding. "The half-winter. The cursed one. I've smelled you in my dreams."
Eiríkur summoned his frost-kagune — four rune-etched tendrils snapping into the air, pulsing with restrained power.
"You're killing without reason," Eiríkur said.
"I am restraint," Njall growled. "The world forgot us. I am the reminder."
"I don't want to fight you."
"But you will," Njall said, stepping forward. "Because you're still pretending to be human."
And with that, he charged.
The clash shook the yard like thunder.
Njall moved like a force of nature — each swing of his glacial chains shattered steel and froze air solid on contact. His laughter echoed as he crushed train cars underfoot, relentless.
Eiríkur fought with precision. He bled. On purpose. Blood-Frost Pulse turned each wound into flying shards. Runesteel Armor deflected Njall's strikes, though cracks spread with each hit.
He was fast. Calculating.
Njall was pure wrath.
"You will never be strong enough to save them!" Njall roared, slamming him into a derailed car. "Because you still mourn your soul!"
Eiríkur coughed blood. His shoulder shattered under impact. Frost steamed from the wounds.
The wyrd screamed inside him.
Unleash.Finish it.Take his heart. Earn your name.
But—
He saw Touka's furious tears.
Akira's steady presence beside the fire.
Kaneki's quiet hope.
Their faces pulled him back from the abyss.
Eiríkur rose slowly.
Frost curled from his skin, glowing runes along his shoulder igniting with pale light.
He opened his eye.
Hel's Glare.
The full force of it — a beam of otherworldly cold burst forth like the breath of the void itself. Njall's chains froze mid-swing. His skin cracked. The runes on Eiríkur's body pulsed as the giant staggered.
He was slowed. Vulnerable.
Eiríkur moved like judgment — silent and inevitable.
He surged forward—
And with a roar, drove his frost-blade through Njall's chest, dropping him to his knees.
Njall coughed blood — thick, black, ancient.
He grinned up at Eiríkur, kneeling in the snow, one eye already glazed in death.
"Do it," he rasped. "Take my core. Drink. Become one of us. Finish the rite."
Eiríkur trembled.
His blade hovered over Njall's throat.
One more strike and he would rise complete — no longer torn between halves. Fully Draugr. Fully revenant.
His wyrd begged.
His body burned.
But his mind—
His soul—
Remembered choice.
And he stepped back.
Njall blinked.
"You… fool," he croaked, falling forward into the snow. "You'll die like them. Forgotten. Chained by love."
Eiríkur didn't speak.
He watched as Njall's frost-black blood melted into the earth.