The safehouse felt like a mausoleum.
The air hung heavy with frost and silence. The only movement came from the slow curl of steam rising from the kettle over the fire.
Eiríkur hadn't woken in thirty-six hours.
He lay motionless on a bedroll, wrapped in layered blankets, but no warmth touched his skin. His breath was shallow. His pulse stuttered, paused, resumed. It was as if even his heart beat on ancient time now.
Akira hadn't left his side.
By day, she pored over tissue samples, hand-scrawled notes, and incomplete RC readings. By night, she sat beside the fire, listening to the crackle of wood and the soft sound of his breathing.
But none of it mattered more than the moment his fingers twitched.
It happened at dusk.
Eiríkur's eyes flared open, glowing with a fierce, icy blue-white light. His runed arm burned with ancestral heat, the markings flaring like newly branded sigils. His breath came fast. Wrong.
He wasn't awake.
He was reacting.
He thrashed, eyes wild — speaking in a dialect older than memory, words torn from Norse myth. His kagune burst forth like serpents of rage, locking onto the nearest heat in the room.
Her.
"Eiríkur—stop!" Akira shouted, backing up, pistol drawn but not raised.
His tendrils twisted, hovered inches from her chest — trembling.
Her voice softened. "You're safe. You're not him."
A pause. Then a sound escaped him — not a roar, not a sob, but something between them. And then—
He collapsed.
She caught him again.
That night, she wrapped a thick blanket around his shoulders, pouring tea with fingers that still shook.
Eiríkur sat by the fire, staring into the cup as if unsure what it was.
"I didn't know where I was," he said quietly. "I wasn't… me."
Akira didn't interrupt.
"It's the cost, isn't it?" she asked.
He nodded, slowly.
"I felt him inside me. Njall. I felt his joy. He loved killing. And part of me… liked it."
His eyes met hers. Haunted. Honest.
"I'm afraid of what I'll become."
Akira reached out. Her hand rested over his — not soft, not romantic. Steadying.
"Then don't face it alone."
They sat like that for a moment, the silence between them not awkward but thick with tension unspoken. Like a bridge neither wanted to cross first.
She leaned in.
So did he.
Their lips met — brief, hesitant, but real.
It wasn't passion.
It was survival. Two people drowning in winter, sharing heat before they vanished.
When they parted, her breath lingered near his.
"You're still cold," she whispered.
"I don't know if I can be anything else."
Akira smiled faintly.
"Then stay close to the fire."
The next morning, the trees cracked — not from wind, but from power.
Skorvald arrived.
He emerged from the trees bare-chested, cloak gone, revealing skin like ancient stone — grey, gnarled, carved with runes and scars from a hundred winters.
"You killed Njall," he said. "You bear the mark."
Eiríkur stepped out to meet him. The snow crunched under his boots.
"Are you here to challenge me?"
"I must," Skorvald said. "The rites demand it. Power must be tested — or rot."
Akira moved beside Eiríkur. "He's still recovering."
"This is mercy," Skorvald replied. "Wait too long, and he'll lose to himself."
Eiríkur placed a hand on her arm. Calm. Resolute.
"It's all right."
Then, to Skorvald: "But not to the death."
Skorvald's lips curled into a savage grin.
"No. Only until one of us kneels."
They fought in a wide ring carved into the snow — no words, no audience. Only cold, breath, and the sound of history repeating.
Skorvald moved like a glacier given will — slow, but with crushing force. His kagune was a glacial plate, a shield of jagged frost that deflected even spectral blades.
Eiríkur moved faster now. Sharper. He danced between his blood-techniques, ice-tendrils flickering like broken mirror shards. Fimbulbrand surged around him, slowing time, making each of Skorvald's lunges feel like falling trees.
But it wasn't just a fight of bodies.
It was philosophy made flesh.
"You hesitate!" Skorvald roared, driving him back.
Eiríkur slammed a pulse of frost into his chest. "Because I feel!"
"You love!"
"I choose not to be a beast!"
The words collided with their fists — a shockwave of wind and snow blasting from the impact.
Finally, Skorvald dropped to one knee, chest heaving.
He looked up — grinning.
"You still have your soul," he said. "You win."
Eiríkur collapsed to one side, frost curling around his boots.
He didn't smile.
But he didn't break either.
That night, Skorvald sat near the fire with a cracked rib and a bottle of old mead stolen from some forgotten cellar.
He drank like it was his last cup.
"You are no longer just Draugr," he said to Eiríkur, voice quieter now. "You are something new. Something between."
Akira tilted her head. "What do you call him then?"
Skorvald looked at Eiríkur, eyes sharp.
"He must choose that for himself."
Eiríkur stared into the flames, his runed hand resting loosely on his knee.
He said nothing.
But something behind his gaze had shifted — not colder, not warmer.
Just… older.