Kouki Nozomi didn't walk into Reflynne Guild Headquarters—he arrived like a ripple of pressure, the kind that makes people straighten before they consciously realize why. Conversations died mid-sentence. Quills froze above parchment. Even the mana lanterns along the rafters seemed to flare in recognition.
Nishi Sayuri stood near the main table, half-buried in blueprints and unfolded maps, ink staining the side of her thumb in the way it always did when she forgot her own hands existed. She blinked when she saw him. Kouki rarely came down from the upper floors unless something mattered.
And today, something definitely mattered.
"Kouki-sama," she greeted, adjusting her spectacles with the motion of someone who had not slept. "We heard the Frostholm scouts failed to report in. Rumors are spreading."
Kouki didn't waste time on rumors.
He placed a sealed folder on the table. It hit the wood with a weight that felt heavier than its physical mass. "Frostholm has frozen solid. A full settlement. No warning."
Gasps broke across the room. Even the veterans looked unsettled.
Kouki continued. "Effective immediately, I'm activating a new division under Research and Development. Nishi Sayuri, you'll lead it."
Nishi's fingers curled, as if steadying herself for impact. "Designation?"
"The Frostholm Analysis Cell."
That name alone sent a chill through the room.
Kouki pointed to the giant wall-map—an entire vertical board of Frostholm rearranged piece by piece. Layers of parchment showed trade routes, temperature gradients, abandoned tunnels beneath the mountain, and ice-spread readings taken from the last known messenger bird relay.
"You will cross-reference everything. Yami Kurikage's field notes. Tracking logs. Scouting patterns from the past month. Environmental shifts. Mana-density anomalies. And once the Valerian captives are thawed, their testimonies."
A murmur ran across the researchers. Nishi, however, locked onto the assignment with a thin, razor-edged focus.
Kouki pressed on. "Forty-eight hours. I want a preliminary theory on what did this… and how we break it."
Someone exhaled too loudly. Forty-eight hours was cruelty by any normal measure. But Sayuri wasn't normal.
Nishi drew a slow breath and bowed—not the elegant kind, but the practical, clipped one she used when her mind was already sprinting. "Understood."
When she straightened, her eyes held the same gleam the artificers called the "researcher's fever." Dangerous. Driven. Brilliant.
Kouki stepped aside. "Then begin."
The room erupted into controlled chaos.
Researchers dragged out crystal readers and mana-lens projectors. Scribes rolled open scrolls, forming an improvised library across the floor. Two geomancers pressed palms against the map to raise tactile relief lines where the mountain's strata had shifted over the past week, the stone humming as it reshaped.
Yami Kurikage entered through the side door as silently as a dagger sliding from a sleeve. She carried three notebooks—thin, black, and terrifyingly organized. She laid them in front of Sayuri without a word.
Sayuri flipped open the first. "You kept track of mana pressure changes per hour?"
"I was bored," Yami replied, though her tone implied nothing about her life had ever been boring.
Sayuri's eyes widened at the neat columns of numbers. "This will save us twenty hours."
"Then use them."
Nishi returned to the wall map, brushing her fingers over the cold zones marked in faint blue ink. Each mark represented a life swallowed whole. Her voice dropped into the calm monotone she used when thinking.
"The spread is wrong."
Kouki turned. "Explain."
She tapped a ring of ice markers. "If a single artifact caused the freeze, the spread should have expanded uniformly. But this…" Her hand swept the map. "It's directional. It radiates from Frostholm's eastern ridge and then accelerates downhill. Something pushed it. Amplified it."
One of the geomancers frowned. "A natural channeling effect…? Leyline curvature?"
Sayuri shook her head. "If it followed leylines alone, it would've curved northwest. Instead, it forced its way through solid stone and climbed in altitude. That's not natural behavior."
"So it wasn't just an artifact," Kouki said.
Sayuri's tone softened—not out of comfort, but out of thought sharpening. "Something else aided it. A power source? A creature? Or a device designed to boost the Frost Engine beyond its limitations."
Yami leaned in, shadows gathering behind her like loyal pets. "You're saying it was deliberate."
"More than deliberate," Sayuri answered. "Engineered."
Kouki nodded once. "I want names of possible mechanisms before midnight. By dawn, give me a shortlist of weaknesses. And by the end of day two…"
"The Frostholm Analysis Cell will have your report," she finished.
He held her gaze for a moment—measuring her, trusting her, burdening her.
Then he left, boots echoing down the hall.
Sayuri stared at the great map of Frostholm, its inked ridges and frozen pathways like a puzzle meant to resist being solved. Her pulse quickened.
She whispered to herself, "Something in that mountain wanted more than to freeze a town. It wanted to send a message."
And in Reflynne's war-lit headquarters, the Frostholm Analysis Cell began its relentless hunt for the truth, the air thick with quills, mana, and the quiet terror of what they might uncover next.