The wind did not stop following him.
At first, he thought it was just the breath of the glacier, but soon he realized it moved with him, not against. Each step he took shaped the air; the snow behind him lay untouched, perfectly smooth, as if the world itself refused to remember his passing.
Two days after the battle, Kairo reached a valley half-buried under frost, ruined pillars jutted from the ice, broken like teeth. The symbols carved into them were Norveil's crest; old, worn, but still there. This had once been a fortress, maybe even the research site where the Wolves were made.
He climbed down into what remained of a courtyard. The air felt different here, denser, like water pressing from all sides. He could almost hear faint voices trapped in it, a distant echo of drills, commands, screams. He followed them through collapsed archways until he found a chamber sealed in ice. Inside, faint silhouettes flickered: rows of shapes suspended mid-motion, as if frozen mid-breath.
He scraped away the frost from a viewing pane. Bodies. Dozens of them. Men and women encased upright, eyes open. Not statues, soldiers.
A plaque on the wall read:
PROJECT WOLF // SUBJECTS 1-38 – TERMINATED.
His chest tightened. The insignia of Unit 13 felt heavy in his pocket.
He stood there for a long time, trying to breathe in air that no longer felt like air at all. Each heartbeat echoed against the walls like a hammer.
Then the frost beneath his boots pulsed, once, twice, responding. He stepped back. The ice glowed faintly blue, then brighter, until light spilled from the seams. A low hum filled the chamber.
He pressed a palm against the ice. The glow followed his touch. And suddenly he saw.
Flashes. Not memories of his own, but of them. Men laughing over shared rations. A woman ties a child's ribbon around her wrist before deployment, the smell of gunpowder. Then screaming. Chains. Needles. Blue light filled their veins as they were changed, piece by piece, until their faces warped into things unrecognizable.
Kairo ripped his hand back, gasping. The light inside the wall faded, leaving only darkness. He stared at the faint outline of one figure, taller than the rest, arm raised as if to shield another. The tag on its chest plate read
#01 – COMMANDER ARLEN VALE.
The name hit something deep inside him. He remembered that name from childhood. Arlen Vale, the man who'd once trained his father. The man who had vanished years ago, said to have died on the northern front.
Now he understood what had become of him. Norveil hadn't lost its soldiers. It had buried them alive inside the ice.
Kairo's hands trembled. The frost along his skin began to spread again, threads of blue tracing his veins. He clenched his fists to stop the shaking, but the power didn't obey.It wanted out.
The air thickened; frost climbed the walls, crawling toward the ceiling. He tried to step away, but the memories wouldn't release him. They poured through the touch that still burned in his palm, thousands of fragments colliding, crying out to be remembered.
Don't forget us.
He fell to his knees. The floor cracked under the surge of cold. Every breath came out as mist, and every mist curled into shapes, faces, names, ghosts. They gathered around him, wordless, their eyes full of the same plea.
"Stop," he whispered. "Please… stop."
But they couldn't. They were the frozen will of the fallen, bound to the same heart that had kept him alive.
Then, as quickly as it began, silence. The frost receded; the ghosts melted into air. Only one figure remained, a faint outline made of snowlight.
Arlen Vale.
The apparition raised its head."Son of Norveil," the echo said. "The heart you carry is ours."
Kairo couldn't speak.
"It remembers what you cannot," the ghost continued. "It remembers the pain, the names, the orders we obeyed. You were chosen because you still had mercy enough to bear it."
"Chosen… by who?"
"The ice chooses its vessel. The rest." The voice crackled, breaking apart. " You must learn."
The figure dissolved, scattering like mist. When it vanished, something small clinked to the ground where it stood: a shard of crystal, faintly pulsing.
Kairo picked it up. The moment his fingers closed around it, a pulse rippled through the air, and the snow around him stirred as if taking a breath. The shard melted into his skin, leaving behind a faint mark shaped like a spiral.
The weight in his chest steadied. The voices fell silent. Only the quiet hum of his own heartbeat remained, and it no longer sounded human. It sounded older. Colder. Like the deep crack of a glacier shifting in its sleep.
He stood, weak but clear-minded. Whatever the Specter Heart was, it had changed again. Not just power now, it was memory. A burden shared.
He left the chamber and climbed back into the white daylight. The storm had broken, leaving a calm so still it felt sacred. He looked up at the endless sheet of grey sky and whispered, "I'll remember for you."
For the first time, the wind didn't answer with cold. It carried warmth, faint, fragile, but there.
He spent that night in a half-buried watchtower, tending a small fire that hissed and struggled against the cold. For the first time, he slept without dreams of chains. When he woke, the mark on his wrist had spread slightly, glowing whenever he breathed deeply. It wasn't threatening; it pulsed with his heart like a quiet rhythm.
Outside, the snowfield stretched forever. Beyond the horizon lay the southern passes and the capital where the Divine Force was gathering. He had heard rumors already: a call from the King of Manjinwa, searching for champions.
Kairo rose, tightened the straps on his sword, and faced the wind.
The valley behind him was silent again, and ghosts followed. But every step he took left a faint trail of frost that shimmered for a heartbeat before vanishing, like a signature written in cold light.
The world ahead was wide and waiting.