I am not cold like winte.
Winter numbs. Winter dulls pain until you forget where it began.
I burn.
My cold is pressure, the kind that crushes lungs, slows blood, forces spines straight without asking permission. When I enter a room, reality tightens. People don't simply notice me; their bodies react before their minds can catch up.
Heartbeats skip.
Hands tremble.
Thoughts fracture mid-sentence.
They never understand why.
They only know this: standing near me feels like standing too close to something vast and merciless—like an ice fire that learned how to freeze.
ASTAR Group headquarters does not reach for the sky; it claims it.
Ninety-nine floors of steel and glass carve upward like a blade driven through the city's throat. This isn't architecture; it's a warning, a declaration of dominion.
This is where power breathes.
This is where it watches.
From the executive floor, the city spreads beneath me in obedient patterns. Streets turn into veins of light, cars pulse like blood, people dissolve into data—compressed into something manageable.
Predictable.
Ownable.
My phone rests lightly against my ear. My reflection ghosts across the glass—still, composed, untouchable. Anyone watching would mistake stillness for calm.
They would be wrong.
Beneath the surface, my thoughts move like knives.
Takahashi is weak; replace him.
Munich needs restructuring.
The board meeting requires casualties; they've grown forgetful.
Seventeen screens glow behind me—Tokyo, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, New York. Markets breathe and bleed. Economies inhale and collapse beneath my gaze.
"Fifteen percent isn't growth, Takahashi-san."
My voice is calm, surgical—a blade wrapped in silk.
"It's stagnation wearing optimism. I expect twenty. You have until Friday."
Silence stretches.
Somewhere in Tokyo, a man in an expensive suit realizes his life is unraveling mid-breath. I imagine the sweat soaking through fabric he can't afford to replace.
I haven't felt anything in years.
"If you fail," I add softly, almost kindly, "I will replace you."
The line dies.
No goodbye.
No softness.
Just absence—where a future used to exist.
I place the phone down with precision. My hand doesn't shake; it never does.
Good. Weakness eliminated. Profit secured. Empire intact.
This is the language I speak now: numbers, consequences, control.
Once, I knew other words.
Softer ones. Dangerous ones.
Once, I smiled without calculating the cost.
That girl is dead.
I killed her myself.
Three knocks.
Precise. Controlled.
"Enter."
Min-jun steps inside first, posture immaculate, tablet held like a shield. Rebecca follows, careful to remain near the door—avoiding the center of the room.
My gravity.
They are exceptional—Harvard-trained, brilliant.
Here, they are offerings.
"Miss Astar," Min-jun says. His voice is steady, but tension hums beneath it. "The media has assembled outside. Two hundred journalists, at least a thousand civilians."
He hesitates.
"They've learned about your brother. They're asking which university he'll be attending."
Soren.
The name lands inside me like a stone dropped into still water.
For one microscopic moment—too brief for cameras—something shifts. Not warmth; a fracture.
"How many?" I ask.
"Two hundred journalists," he repeats. "They know you depart at seven. They're calling him an… anomaly."
Anomaly.
That's what they call family when it doesn't fit the narrative, when it complicates the myth, when it suggests I might possess something beneath the ice.
Let them believe I'm a monster.
It's easier than the truth.
"Block them," I say. "Flag every outlet. Unauthorized photos receive six-month suspension."
Rebecca speaks carefully. "Should we activate the underground route?"
I turn.
The room stops breathing.
My gaze settles on them—not angry, not cold. Simply present. Gravity choosing to focus.
Their pulses slow; their skin prickles.
Predator.
"No," I say. "I'll take the main entrance."
Min-jun's mask fractures for a fraction. "Miss Astar, the exposure—"
"Did I ask for an analysis?"
"No, ma'am."
"Then execute."
They leave—quickly, quietly.
The door seals.
6:47 p.m.
Thirteen minutes until departure. Thirteen minutes until I drive Soren to his first day at Apex University—through cameras, crowds, and people desperate to prove I'm capable of something as pedestrian as caring.
My fingers pause on my coat.
For one forbidden heartbeat, a thought surfaces:
What if I'm destroying him?
Nineteen. Literature major. Kind eyes. A boy who still believes people can choose goodness.
He does not belong in my world.
But nothing survives near me without changing.
He'll adapt. Or he'll break.
And I will watch.
Because that's what I've become—something that watches suffering without flinching.
No, a quieter voice whispers. You haven't forgotten; you've just forced yourself to stop.
I crush the thought.
The ground floor erupts when I arrive.
Cameras scream, questions weaponize, phones rise like shields.
I walk.
Not fast. Not slow.
Forward.
My heels strike marble in perfect rhythm; each step silences a voice.
People feel it—tight chests, shaking hands, the instinct to retreat.
They don't know why.
They just know.
At the curb waits my convoy.
Seven vehicles. At the center: a Jesko Absolut, matte black, predatory.
I slide into the driver's seat.
The engine whispers.
The city bends.
Twenty minutes later, the penthouse doors opened.
And there he is.
Soren.
Smaller. Younger. Human.
He looks at me with concern.
For me.
Stupid boy.
Doesn't he know I'm the weight that crushes worlds?
"Soren," I say. "Seven-thirty. I'm driving you."
He nods. He doesn't understand yet.
Tomorrow, the world will test him.
And I will watch.
Because hoping is dangerous.
Hoping means you still have something left to burn.
Later, alone, I stand at the window.
Work continues; it always does.
But in the glass, I see what cameras never capture: a woman who cremated her heart and built an empire on the ashes.
Tomorrow, I will drive the last soft thing in my life into the machinery.
And I will not look away.
Because myths don't bleed…
Do they?