Kaito & Anzuyi POV
The wind should have been howling.
Frostholm sat atop a high northern ridge, a city known for its glassy snows and winter festivals. There were always stories about its songlike winds—how they whistled through chimneys and temple bells and made the city feel alive no matter how deep the winter became.
But now, the air was dead.
The snow lay flat, untouched, like fine powder sifted from the sky and left suspended on the ground. No drifting. No breeze. Nothing.
Kaito adjusted the fur-lined cloak over his shoulder and felt his breath frost heavily in front of him, frost that hung too long in the open air, like the cold itself was clinging instead of passing. Beside him, Anzuyi tightened her scarf, her steps crisp and nearly soundless.
"Temperature drop is unnatural," she murmured. Her voice misted into the stillness. "This is colder than the region's baseline climate."
"Magic-induced weather lock," Kaito replied. "Someone wanted silence."
There were no guards atop Frostholm's wall. No scouts posted at the ridgeline. No smoke from hearths. No barking dogs. No crying children. No laughter.
Just the city, waiting.
A smooth, blue-tinted crystalline sheet sealed the front gate—translucent and humming softly, like ice that remembered the moment it froze.
Anzuyi knelt, her eyes narrowing. "Not mana-made. Not entirely. This is alchemical crystallization fused with arcane freeze binding."
Kaito unsheathed his blade.
"Can you open it without breaking the structure?"
"No," she answered simply. "But you can."
Kaito exhaled once, slow and measured, before bringing the sword downward. His strike was precise—no wasted strength, no dramatic force—just a perfect angle of impact. The crystal cracked like glass under silk pressure, fracturing in spiderweb patterns until a body-sized gap formed.
The city beyond was silent.
They stepped inside.
---
The first thing they saw was a blacksmith.
Not a corpse in the usual sense—no decay, no slump, no collapse. He stood frozen mid-swing, hammer lifted over an unfinished blade. His face was twisted—not from pain, but from sheer, instant terror. The metal beneath the hammer had frozen mid-glow, the heat trapped in unmoving radiance within the ice.
Children were locked in place near him, mid-run, snowballs suspended in their hands.
A woman near a market stall was frozen mid-call, lips parted in a silent plea.
Everywhere they looked:
Mouths open. Eyes wide. Bodies contorted into a scream that had never finished.
The ice around them glowed faintly. It had clarity—so clear it felt obscene.
Anzuyi's voice lowered.
"This wasn't slow freezing. This was a wave."
Kaito didn't respond. His jaw was set.
---
They moved deeper.
Even the cathedral bells were frozen mid-swing.
The largest plaza of Frostholm lay still beneath the pale winter sky. At its center stood the epicenter: a crystalline pillar stabbed into the earth like a shard of sky, its inner surface pulsing faintly with trapped mana signatures.
Anzuyi walked ahead, her steps reverent and tense.
"Someone deployed something powerful here. Something designed not to destroy structures… but life."
Kaito scanned the ground—and noticed something the same way a hunter notices the shift of grass.
A half-buried metal box near a fountain.
Smooth surface. Reinforced frame. Alchemical containment design.
He crouched.
A Vapor-Case.
And stamped on the corner—barely visible under frost—
A crest. Thin, sharp-edged. A stylized snowflake entwined with a serpent.
"The Valerian Frost-Weaver Division," Kaito said quietly.
Anzuyi's breath hitched.
They moved together, searching the surrounding area. A collapsed figure lay near the base of a rooftop, half-covered in snow. Not Ostorian. The armor bore the same crest as the case.
A Valerian soldier.
Frozen like the others.
But his hands were not empty. In one fist, locked in fingers that would never open again, was a small personal logbook—its pages sealed by ice, but still readable beneath the surface.
Anzuyi placed her palm gently on the frozen hand. Her mana seeped in, warming only the book—not the flesh—until the ice cracked and released it.
They read it together.
---
Day 3 post-deployment.
'Winter's Kiss' is more volatile than Command anticipated.
The dispersion crystal overloaded.
The freeze-wave… it came back.
It took Kael.
It took everyone.
The silence is screaming.
I can feel my own heart slowing.
Tell my family… it was a field test.
For the Ostoria campaign.
---
Anzuyi closed the journal.
Kaito's fingers tightened against the hilt of his blade—the knuckles whitening.
"This wasn't an attack," Anzuyi whispered. "This was experimentation."
The crystalline pillar in the square pulsed once.
A faint ghost-image flickered into the air, a magical after-image replaying the final seconds:
—A Valerian mage's scream. —A flash of blue so bright it swallowed shadow. —A wave expanding outward in total silence. —Life stopping.
Not killed. Not frozen normally. Held.
Locked in the instant of terror.
The vision faded. The silence returned.
Kaito stepped forward and placed one gloved hand against the ice of a frozen child's shoulder. The surface was smooth. No flakes. No cold burn. Just stillness.
"We report immediately," he said.
Anzuyi nodded.
She opened a specialized containment satchel. Kaito lifted his blade and, with surgical stillness, carved away the smallest possible fragment of ice—no more than the size of a fingernail—from the statue-like figure.
A sample.
Proof.
They stepped out of Frostholm the same way they entered—quiet, careful, heavy.
No words were spoken on the long road back.
Because the silence wasn't empty.
The silence was waiting.
Frostholm was not just dead.
It was preserved.
Prepared.
Prepared for use.
And the enemy was not just planning war.
They were planning a world where life itself could be erased without leaving heat, blood, or flame.
A world where victory meant you never heard the scream.