Six months before Nick Burkhardt ever laid eyes on a clockmaker named Monroe, another Grimm was already hunting in Portland.
Belfast Black had been dead for three days when he opened his eyes again.
The first thing he noticed was the smell—wet asphalt, pine sap, distant river water. The second was the headache, like someone had shoved a library of memories into a skull that wasn't built to hold them.
He lay on his back in Forest Park, staring at the bruised Oregon sky. He was eighteen years old. He knew that with certainty. He also knew he had died at eighteen in another world, in another body, with a laptop open and an episode of Grimm paused halfway through.
And he knew—knew in the marrow of his bones—that this was real.
He sat up slowly.
"Okay," he muttered, running a hand through dark hair that wasn't quite the shade he remembered. "Either I finally snapped… or I got isekai'd into my favorite show."
The word felt ridiculous. But the ache behind his eyes didn't.
Memories aligned themselves with disturbing clarity. This world's Belfast Black had grown up off-grid, homeschooled, trained. His mother had died when he was twelve—killed by a Blutbad who never knew she was hunting it. His father had disappeared two years later, leaving behind a trailer full of weapons, journals written in looping German script, and one instruction carved into the inside of a cedar chest:
Trust no one who can woge.
Belfast swallowed.
Woge.
The ability to see the true, monstrous faces of Wesen. The inheritance of the Grimms. The curse.
He pushed himself to his feet, boots sinking slightly into damp earth. The forest felt alive around him—breathing, watching.
Then he saw it.
A flicker.
A jogger on the trail ahead stumbled, catching himself on a tree. For half a heartbeat, his reflection in a puddle wasn't human. The face elongated, eyes burning amber, teeth too long.
Hundjäger.
The word surfaced unbidden. A Wesen that specialized in hunting other Wesen. And sometimes humans.
Belfast's pulse steadied instead of spiking.
Right. So this is happening.
He stepped onto the trail.
The jogger straightened, stretching his shoulders. He looked normal again—mid-thirties, athletic build, earbuds in. But when his gaze swept over Belfast, something sharpened in his expression.
Recognition.
Not of Belfast himself.
Of what he was.
The jogger's lip twitched.
He woged fully this time—bones cracking beneath skin, jaw pushing forward, eyes flaring gold. Other hikers screamed and scattered.
Belfast didn't.
He felt it rise in him instead—a cold, ancient awareness. His vision sharpened. The world snapped into harsh detail. Every movement slowed to a calculable equation.
Grimm.
The Hundjäger lunged.
Belfast stepped sideways, almost lazily, and the creature's claws tore through empty air. He pivoted, striking the Wesen's elbow with brutal precision. Bone snapped.
The Hundjäger roared, half-human voice shredding into something feral.
"You should've stayed hidden," it snarled.
Belfast tilted his head.
"Funny," he said softly. "I was about to tell you the same thing."
The creature charged again.
And Belfast reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
His fingers brushed smooth cardstock.
The power thrummed beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.
This wasn't standard Grimm inheritance. He knew that instinctively. It wasn't in his father's journals. It wasn't in any of the show's lore burned into his past-life memory.
This was his.
His bloodline ability.
He drew the card.
Blank. Matte black. Edges silvered like a blade.
The Hundjäger hesitated.
"What is that—"
Belfast flicked his wrist.
The card elongated midair, snapping into a rectangle the size of a door. Symbols bled across its surface in crimson ink, forming a circular sigil.
The forest went silent.
The Hundjäger tried to leap away.
Too late.
The sigil flared.
For a split second, the Wesen flattened—literally—its body stretching into a screaming silhouette as if pressed between panes of invisible glass. Then it was pulled forward, sucked into the surface of the card.
The rectangle shrank back to its original size and dropped neatly into Belfast's waiting hand.
Silence reclaimed the trees.
The card was no longer blank.
An image stared up at him: the Hundjäger, frozen mid-snarl, rendered in stark, inked detail like an illustration from a dark fairy tale. Beneath it, lettering etched itself across the bottom:
Hundjäger – Captured
Belfast exhaled slowly.
"No way," he whispered.
He could feel it—feel the Wesen suspended inside a two-dimensional prison. Alive. Conscious. Unable to move beyond the boundary of ink and edge.
A containment. Not a kill.
He turned the card over. On the back, a single word shimmered faintly.
Release.
He felt instinct whisper instructions. A flick of intent could free it. Another, stronger push could compress the card—collapse the space within.
Destroy it.
His stomach twisted.
This wasn't just a weapon.
It was a system.
Like a collector's deck.
A Grimm deck.
Footsteps crashed through the underbrush. The scattered hikers were returning with phones raised, panic rising.
Belfast slid the card into his jacket.
By the time the first park ranger burst into view, the only sign of violence was a broken patch of dirt and one cracked tree trunk.
"Sir! Did you see what happened?"
Belfast blinked, letting confusion soften his features.
"Big dog," he said, injecting a tremor into his voice. "It just… ran off."
The ranger swore under his breath, radio crackling to life.
As they turned away, Belfast stepped back into the trees.
His mind raced.
Six months.
If the timeline held, Nick Burkhardt wouldn't discover he was a Grimm for half a year. Which meant Monroe was somewhere in the city, living his cautious, clock-repairing life. Captain Sean Renard was already building his quiet empire. Adalind Schade was still a practicing Hexenbiest with no idea how messy her future would become.
Belfast rubbed his temples.
He could change things.
He could stop deaths before they happened. Prevent tragedies. Save people.
Or he could break the fragile web of cause and effect and make something worse.
A twig snapped behind him.
He spun.
A girl stood at the edge of the trail. Early twenties. Dark hair pulled into a tight braid. Her eyes were wide—but not with normal fear.
With recognition.
She woged.
Fuchsbau.
Her foxlike features flickered into place, delicate and sharp.
"You're a Grimm," she breathed.
Belfast didn't reach for a weapon this time.
"Yes."
Her throat bobbed. "You didn't kill it."
"No."
"You captured it."
His pulse skipped.
"How do you know that?"
She gave a faint, humorless smile. "Because I felt it vanish."
Interesting.
He studied her carefully. She didn't radiate hostility. Just wariness.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"Lena."
Not a name he remembered from the show.
Then again, the show had never followed every Wesen in Portland.
"I'm Belfast," he said.
Her eyes flicked to his jacket pocket.
"That power," she said quietly. "It's not like other Grimms."
"I gathered."
She took a slow step back.
"Others will feel it," she warned. "You didn't just remove a predator. You created a vacuum."
Belfast looked toward the city skyline visible through the trees.
Predators noticed vacuums.
Power filled them.
"Good," he murmured.
Lena studied him as if trying to decide whether he was insane.
"Are you hunting us?" she asked.
He met her gaze steadily.
"I'm hunting monsters."
A beat.
"Including the ones that look human."
Her ears flattened briefly before she forced them back.
"That's what they all say."
Before he could respond, she bolted—fox-swift and silent between the trees.
Belfast didn't chase her.
Instead, he drew the card again, staring at the inked Hundjäger trapped inside.
In his past life, he had watched this world through a screen. He had memorized plotlines, mourned fictional deaths, argued online about character arcs.
Now the air was cold in his lungs.
Now the monsters bled.
Now he held one between his fingers.
"Six months," he said softly to the forest.
Six months before destiny tapped Nick Burkhardt on the shoulder.
Six months to build a deck.
Six months to decide what kind of Grimm he was going to be.
Belfast slipped the card back into his jacket and walked toward Portland.
Behind him, something unseen shifted in the woods—an echo of power rippling outward.
Somewhere across the city, a man with royal blood paused mid-sentence in his high-rise office, sensing the faintest disturbance in the balance.
And in a quiet clock shop, a reformed Blutbad felt a chill crawl down his spine without knowing why.
The game had started.
And this time, the Grimm knew the rules.