The building stood exactly where Akira had marked it —Sector 4, CCG South Annex.
Codename: Ash Root.
A slab of concrete with no windows and too many secrets, buried in a maze of forgotten streets. It didn't look dangerous.
But Eiríkur knew better.
He stood across the road beneath a flickering neon sign, breath fogging slightly in the humid summer night. Beneath his plain grey coat, the tendrils of his frost-kagune slithered silently, coiled like vipers in the dark.
A stolen ID badge hung from his neck. It wouldn't pass a scan.But it would get him inside.
The wyrd stirred within him.
This time, though… it wasn't alone.
As he approached the fence line, the whispers began — low, ancient, overlapping, murmuring through blood rather than air.
"Too soon.""Strike at the third shift. The window is narrow.""You carry my blade. Use it.""You will not save her. You will die."
Eiríkur grit his teeth.
"Shut up," he hissed under his breath.
"We are you.""We are the cost."
The frost within him flared.
He activated Veil-Frost, his body temperature plummeting to corpse-levels.Breath slowed. RC signature dulled to a whisper.
He slipped between two perimeter sensors, then froze the hinge of a rooftop vent with a soundless crack. The metal parted.
He entered.
Ash Root was deeper than it looked.
Concrete arteries. Glass veins. The pulse of cameras, bio-sensors, retina-locks.And beneath it all, quiet evil.
Eiríkur moved like silence wrapped in shadow.
His presence left no heat.
No scent.
No sound.
But the whispers grew louder the deeper he went.
"This place fed on us.""Salted corpses. Shattered clans.""Burn it down."
He passed rooms filled with relics: surgical tables, tanks lined with residue, teeth catalogued in sealed bags. Memories flickered in his vision — but they weren't his.
"Edo prisons.""Tokugawa butchers.""Northern resistance harvested and sold."
He moved faster.
Until he found her.
Akira's Cell:
She sat cross-legged in the center of a containment chamber — walls lined in tempered ghoul glass, wrists chained to the floor.
Her eyes were closed.
When the lock clicked, she stirred — opened them fast.
"…Eiríkur?"
He stepped inside, ice trailing from his boots.
She looked pale. Tired. But her voice was steady.
"You weren't supposed to come."
Eiríkur knelt by the terminal, pressed a frozen palm to the lock.The circuits shorted. The chains cracked apart.
"I heard your message," he said quietly.
"And came anyway."
She didn't ask again.
He didn't explain.
They just moved.
Eiríkur guided her through the halls without pause — cutting through forgotten passages, avoiding patrols with impossible precision.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Draugr memory," he muttered."Old ghoul paths. Buried under this place like bones."
They reached a sealed corridor — marked condemned.
He shattered the lock with a burst of ice, and they slipped inside.
But the voices returned, urgent, layered with new fear.
"The Black Reaper approaches.""He sees through frost. You must go. Now.""Burn your trail. Seal it in blood."
Then—alarms.
Red lights bloomed in the distance.Steel gates began to fall.
Akira froze by the stairwell. "They'll box us in. You can't fight your way out."
Eiríkur turned to her, eyes glowing faint blue.
"I'm not fighting."
His voice dropped to something ancient.Something cold.
"I'm haunting."