The river was frozen into a jagged sheet of glass, moonlight glimmering faintly across its surface. Beneath it, the hidden arteries of the old Skjoldur castle still lingered, relics of an age when water had flowed freely into royal fountains and kitchens. Elin crouched low in the snowdrift, her breath fogging the air as her eyes traced the outlines of a half-buried grate.
"There," she whispered, gloved fingers brushing frost away from corroded iron. The grate was fused with centuries of rust, nearly invisible beneath the ice. "The aqueduct. They never sealed it fully."
Brynhild leaned over her shoulder, squinting with mock seriousness. "So… you're telling me our grand heist begins with crawling through a frozen sewer?"
Elin didn't look up. "Do you want to walk through the front gate?"
Brynhild grinned, flexing her gauntleted hand. "Fair enough. But for the record, if this turns into a romantic sewer date, you're buying the wine."
Before Elin could respond, Brynhild planted her feet and swung her metal gauntlet against the grate. The impact rang like a muffled gong beneath the ice, flakes of rust and old iron cracking free. She struck again, harder, until the ancient hinges screeched and gave way. The grate collapsed inward with a groan, the sound swallowed by the tunnel beyond. A dark mouth yawned open before them, exhaling the damp breath of old stone.
Elin slid inside first, boots crunching against the frozen channel. The aqueduct was narrow, carved of stone and brick now rimed with frost, and every movement echoed into the blackness. Brynhild followed close behind, her shoulders scraping the ceiling.
The tunnel forced them to crawl, knees grinding against ice, palms damp from frost-slick stone. Water dripped steadily from cracks above, pattering in a rhythm that seemed too loud in the silence. Somewhere ahead, the faint hum of Draugr machinery pulsed through the stone, a reminder that this place had been claimed by something far beyond human hands.
Elin moved with focus, every step measured, breath held whenever the tunnel seemed to shift with echoes. Brynhild, on the other hand, treated the crawl as if it were some absurd game.
"Tell me again," Brynhild whispered, her voice bouncing off the stone. "What does this say about us? Two fine warriors, sneaking through muck and ice like rats. It's practically a love story."
Elin didn't answer, eyes fixed on the dark ahead.
"I mean, when people ask how we met," Brynhild continued, "I'd prefer to tell them it was over drinks and blades, not frozen sewage."
"Be quiet," Elin hissed, pausing to listen.
Above them, faint lights swept across the ice—searchlights from the Citadel walls. The shadows of patrol drones flitted across the frozen surface, their red eyes glowing like embers. Both women froze, pressed against the slick stone, not daring to move.
The lights passed. The hum of engines receded.
Only then did Elin exhale.
Brynhild leaned closer, whispering with a smirk. "Romantic tension. Near-death experience. I swear, if this doesn't count as a date, nothing will."
Elin ignored her, though Brynhild caught the faintest tightening at the corner of her mouth—almost a smile. They pressed on, deeper into the Citadel's veins.
The aqueduct ended in a broken archway, choked by rubble where the channel had collapsed. Elin squeezed through a jagged gap, emerging into a cavernous chamber. Brynhild followed, shaking frost from her cloak, eyes adjusting to the dim red glow ahead.
They were in the **basement storage halls** of the Citadel. Once, these rooms had bustled with servants carrying trays and barrels, the air rich with smoke and spice. Now the place was gutted, stripped of warmth and life.
Black Draugr plating crawled across the old stone, veins of alloy threading into walls that once bore Skjolduric banners. Conduits pulsed with pale light, connecting humming pylons that rose like skeletal trees from the ground. The scent was metallic, sharp, layered with oil and ozone.
Elin's gaze lingered on the stone arches still visible beneath the machinery. Faded murals depicted hunts, feasts, the triumphs of Skjoldur kings. Their painted faces stared through the Draugr corruption as though witnesses to their own undoing.
Elin unfolded a crumpled scrap of notes from her satchel, checking the sketched paths she had memorized. "From here, the lower halls connect to the service stairs. We'll need to pass two checkpoints before we reach the inner corridors."
Brynhild's boots echoed softly as she prowled the chamber. She moved with restless energy, eyes flicking toward every shadow. Her hand twitched against her gauntlet, eager for violence. She tilted her head toward Elin.
"You sure you don't want to let me clear a path? Just a few skulls cracked, maybe?"
Elin's eyes narrowed. "This is stealth, Brynhild. No fights. No noise."
Brynhild smirked, pacing like a caged predator. "Fine. But if we get caught, I'm making sure the first thing they hear is me laughing."
Elin didn't answer. She adjusted her cloak, tugged her scarf tighter, and nodded toward the far archway. "Come on. Quietly."
Together, they slipped deeper into the Citadel's belly, the cold air thick with the hum of unseen machines.
The Citadel's belly was alive with quiet menace. The storage halls opened into a warren of narrow passages, each lined with stacked supply crates and Draugr pylons that pulsed faintly like veins. The air smelled of rust and static.
Elin raised a hand, fingers splayed — a signal to stop. Brynhild froze, crouched behind a crate, her gauntlet humming faintly with contained energy. The sound of heavy footsteps echoed ahead, deliberate and mechanical.
Two **Draugr patrols** emerged, humanoid drones with skeletal frames plated in black alloy. Their red eyes swept the hall in perfect unison, scanning shadows as if they could smell trespassers. The patrols passed within arm's reach, their lenses flickering over the crates.
Elin didn't breathe. Brynhild didn't either — though her smirk said she wanted to.
When the patrols vanished down the far corridor, Elin gave a sharp signal. They crept on, weaving between pylons that flickered like dying stars. Every step felt amplified, the silence pressing on their ears.
At the second patrol, the path forward sealed off. Four drones lingered at an intersection, unmoving, scanning the walls with precise sweeps. Brynhild's jaw flexed. She bent low, fingers curling around a shard of broken alloy torn from a crate. With a snap of her wrist, she hurled it down a side corridor.
The clang reverberated like a gunshot.
All four drones turned in perfect unison, red eyes burning brighter, and strode toward the noise. Elin's glare at Brynhild could have killed.
Brynhild only winked. "What? Works every time."
Elin shook her head but motioned forward, and they slid through the opening just before the drones returned.
For all their differences — Elin's sharp calculation, Brynhild's reckless chaos — they moved like parts of a whole. Survival demanded nothing less.
The passages widened into what had once been the **servants' halls** of the Winter Castle. High-arched ceilings still carried faint traces of painted vines, and on the walls lingered murals of Skjoldur kings and queens — feasts, hunts, coronations. Their faces were cracked by time, obscured now by Draugr plating that spread like black rot across the stone.
Elin stopped. Her fingers brushed a mural half-buried under alloy. A proud king stared back at her through fissures of metal, his crown nearly swallowed by circuitry.
Her breath hitched. "This was… my home's heart. Generations lived here, worked here…" Her voice trailed, fragile in a way Brynhild rarely saw.
For once, Brynhild didn't joke. She stood close, her voice softer than the cold halls. "We'll take it back. One piece at a time."
Elin's jaw clenched, but she nodded, forcing her focus back. The mission was larger than grief. Still, the image of her homeland's desecration burned into her mind.
They pressed on through a side corridor, narrower and choked with conduits. Brynhild led, brushing past the walls, when her gauntlet accidentally grazed a faintly glowing **resonance lens** embedded in the alloy.
The lens cracked, and the corridor lit with a dull crimson glow.
Elin's eyes widened. "No—"
The wall pulsed with glyphs, ancient Skjoldur runes now twisted by Draugr coding. Dull alarms thrummed in the distance, not blaring but pulsing like a heartbeat.
In alcoves along the wall, **security drones** stirred. Their eyes flickered awake, bodies rattling as they detached from their cradles.
From deeper in the halls came the thunder of something heavier — massive footsteps shaking dust from the ceiling.
Brynhild grimaced. "Well… that's new."
Elin scanned frantically, her eyes catching a faint blue glow ahead: an **archival terminal**, a grotesque hybrid of stone, crystal, and Draugr plating. It thrummed faintly, veins of light running across its surface.
"That," she hissed, pointing. "Our only chance."
She sprinted to it, already pulling her crystal drive free. "I wanted this clean. No hacks. But look at this now."
Brynhild planted herself at the door, gauntlet igniting with blue fire. Her grin was feral. "Go on, princess. I'll hold the dance floor."
Elin pressed her drive into the terminal. Lines of alien code flooded her mind's eye through her visor. She typed furiously, overriding layers of Draugr security, each second dragging as drones creaked fully awake in the hall behind them.
Brynhild cracked her knuckles. "Don't take too long. They're not much for conversation."
Then — silence.
The drones froze mid-step. The pulsing alarms cut off. Even the thunder of the massive footsteps receded into nothing.
Elin pulled the drive free, sweat glistening despite the cold. "We're not far from the Power Complex. I've suppressed the system for ten minutes. That's all we've got. We run, copy as much as we can, and run again."
Brynhild blinked. "Ten minutes? No way we can make it in ten."
Elin's jaw was hard as steel. "We're doing it anyway."
For a heartbeat, the two women stared at each other — soldier and storm, both mad enough to keep going.
Then Elin turned and sprinted down the hall, Brynhild at her heels.