Njall grinned, even as Eiríkur raised his arm.
"Good," the ancient monster rasped. "You'll see how sweet the silence is… once the soul is gone."
The wind stilled. The wyrd inside Eiríkur pulsed in time with his frost-kagune, which now shimmered with ancestral runes — glowing faintly, as if recognizing its next offering.
With a single breath, Eiríkur plunged the frost-blade through Njall's chest and into his RC core.
There was no scream.
No curse.
Only a slow, hollow exhale… and then silence.
A silence deeper than death.
The moment Njall's core was absorbed, Eiríkur's heart stopped.
His lungs froze. His mind went dark. The world vanished.
He stood not in Tokyo, but in a frozen field beneath a sky littered with stars — pale and distant. Snow drifted between rusted weapons and corpses long forgotten. Warriors of old lay around him, broken but not gone.
And in the center, a figure rose from the snow.
Njall.
Not whole. Not hostile. A ghost of fury.
"You carry my rage now," the specter whispered.
Then came the voices.
A thousand of them. Draugar from ages past. Slain kings. Forgotten berserkers. Revenants and cursed men whose souls had never passed on.
They spoke into him — branding his mind, claiming fragments of his soul. Each word was a chain. Each name, a weight.
When he returned to himself, the cold was inside him.
Steam bled from every pore.
His right arm cracked, expanding subtly — the runes etched into his skin now reached down to his palm. His frost-kagune twisted in form — no longer serpents, but mirrored limbs of ice that pulsed in time with his own movements.
A new voice whispered in his bones.
Not Njall's.
His own.
Fimbulbrand – "Winter's Judgment"Eiríkur can now release a field of spiritual frost, halting kagune regeneration, slowing enemy reflexes, and creating spectral limbs of ice that mirror his attacks.However… the ability drains massive RC energy and leaves him in a deathlike torpor if pushed too far.
Eiríkur stood alone over Njall's ruined body, the breath from his lips glowing like smoke. His eyes flickered with dull frostlight, exhausted and glazed.
He had done it.
He had become.
But something inside him had shifted. A thread had been cut. The warmth that once whispered beneath his thoughts — Touka's voice, Kaneki's gaze, Akira's fire — felt more distant now.
The silence… no longer strange.
It was familiar.
He collapsed just beyond the edge of the safehouse.
Akira was already outside.
The moment she saw him fall, she ran — snow crunching beneath her boots — and caught him before he hit the ground.
"You did it," she breathed, brushing frost from his hair. "You killed him."
Eiríkur could barely speak.
"I feel… hollow."
She said nothing. Just guided him inside.
She peeled away his frozen coat, tending to the frost-burned veins that now pulsed with faint blue light. His skin felt colder than it should. His heartbeat — shallow.
By the fire, she watched him sleep.
Watched the runes pulse faintly on his skin like dying stars.
"You're still you," she whispered.
But part of her wondered — as she saw how still he lay, how far his aura had shifted —
For how much longer?
Meanwhile…Anteiku
Touka returned before dawn, snow still clinging to her jacket. Her boots were soaked. Her eyes unreadable.
Kaneki sat quietly at a corner table.
She didn't look at him.
"I don't think he's coming back the same," she said softly.
Kaneki nodded, fingers wrapped tightly around his cup. "He's fighting something bigger than we are."
Touka's jaw tensed. "What if we lose him to it?"
Kaneki looked out the window. The sky beyond Tokyo was grey with ash and snow.
"Then maybe," he said, "we save what's left."
CCG HQ
In a sterile office lit by white light, the Director stood at the head of the table, hands clasped behind his back.
"Agent Mado has not reported in," he said.
The silence in the room was heavy.
A file was pushed across the table toward a tall man in black.
Koutarou Amon.
The Director's voice was flat. Cold.
"She may be compromised. Locate her. Confirm her status."
A pause.
"Do what must be done."