Akira hadn't told anyone.
Not even Eiríkur.
That she now heard Hjalgrím while awake.
Not as hallucination. Not as madness.
But as something older. Something… aware.
"You knew your father's voice well."
"And yet you never feared him like you fear me."
Sometimes she heard him in wind through the trees.
Sometimes in Eiríkur's laugh.
Sometimes behind her eyelids as she blinked.
The worst part?
She was starting to answer back.
Three days after destroying the Husk, Eiríkur stood at the top of the shrine steps, facing Akira, Kaneki, Touka, and Hinami.
His frost-kagune no longer flared when idle. It hung like a shadow — quiet, heavy, waiting.
"I'm done hiding," he said. "And I'm done running from Kanou's monsters."
Kaneki crossed his arms. "And what do you want to do?"
Eiríkur looked at Akira. She nodded once — subtly. Even as her hands shook.
"I want to become the thing they fear," Eiríkur said. "And burn down the lie that made me."
Kaneki stepped forward. "You do that, and there's no coming back."
"I'm not sure there's anything left to come back to," Eiríkur replied.
Touka's voice cut in — cool but unsure. "So you're what now? A warlord? A weapon?"
Eiríkur looked up, his eyes burning frost-blue.
"No. I'm a curse walking upright. And I'm choosing where it falls."
That night, Akira dreamed again — only this time, she wasn't asleep.
She stood at the edge of the shrine pond, alone.
Water froze beneath her boots without her touching it.
She whispered aloud: "You're not him."
"But I'm in him," Hjalgrím said. "And now in you."
"I'm not yours."
"Then why do you feel stronger every time I speak?"
She squeezed her eyes shut.
When she opened them — her own reflection wasn't there.
Only a woman with her face, hair bleached white, eyes glowing with runes.
She stumbled back.
Eiríkur caught her mid-fall.
Akira sat by the fire later, wrapped in her coat, sipping weak tea. Her hands didn't stop shaking.
"I'm losing myself," she whispered.
Eiríkur sat beside her, elbows on knees, gaze distant.
"I know."
She turned her head slowly. "You're not going to try to stop it?"
He shook his head.
"You already chose this. Same as I did."
She looked at him — pale skin, glowing scars, death in his breath.
And she kissed him.
Not like the last time.
This was slower. Calmer. An admission. A goodbye. A promise.
He didn't pull away.
When they broke apart, she whispered:
"Then we end this. Together."
They had a lead.
Kaneki had once been taken to Kanou's 13th Ward laboratory — thought destroyed, but rumors claimed it had been reactivated since Eiríkur's emergence.
It was deep beneath a gutted hospital, accessible only through the abandoned morgue elevator shaft.
Eiríkur, Akira, Kaneki, and Touka would go.
Hinami would remain behind — to protect the shrine… or what was left of it.
Before they left, Eiríkur sat beneath the shrine torii and carved something into the wood with his frost-kagune like a blade.
Four words, written in Norse runes.
"I will not bow."