Arc 2 — Old Frost
CHAPTER 16 (All Three)
Morning came grey and quiet.
Not cold enough to bite.
Just cold enough to remind you it could.
Snow fell in loose, lazy drifts — thin enough that the sun still pushed through. The sky wasn't dark. It wasn't bright either. Somewhere in between. The kind of light that made everything look like it was waiting for something to happen.
Eren stood at the broken mouth of the structure, hands in his pockets.
Behind him, the RV idled.
Mark appeared at the side door, coat buttoned to the collar, breath a slow white cloud.
"You sure you two will be fine?"
Eren glanced back.
"Yes."
Mark held his gaze for a second. Like he was waiting for more.
Nothing came.
He nodded once.
"Then stay with Wade," Eren added. "Get to Kova."
"Yeah." Mark pulled his collar up. "We will."
He looked at Avelin briefly — she gave him nothing, just a short nod — then turned back toward the RV.
Wade was already behind the wheel.
Bob was loading the last of the supplies.
Silas stood by the passenger door, looking back at Eren with something that wasn't quite hesitation and wasn't quite worry. Something in between.
He didn't say anything.
Neither did Eren.
Silas got in.
The door shut.
The engine shifted.
And the RV pulled away slowly across the cracked snow, its tracks cutting two dark lines through the white until it disappeared around a broken wall and was gone.
Silence.
Just the wind moving between the towers.
Eren turned back toward the structure.
Avelin was leaning against the frame, arms crossed, watching him.
"So," she said. "What's the plan?"
Eren looked at the horizon.
"Bob talked to me last night."
Avelin waited.
"The Iron Hammer Brigade runs a large train. Circles the entire north pole — passes through this point twice. Once in the morning. Once at night."
He glanced at her.
"During the day it refuels. Right here. That's our window."
Avelin's eyes moved to the empty rail line cutting through the ruins in the distance. She'd noticed it earlier. Hadn't asked.
Now she didn't have to.
"We go in from the back," Eren continued. "When it's docked and the crew is focused on the refuel. We get inside. Wait for the right moment. Find Saffron."
"And then?"
"Then we disable the guns. Silas brings the spacecraft in close and we get out."
A pause.
"How does Bob know all of this?" Avelin asked.
Eren's expression didn't change.
"Turns out he worked for them."
She stared at him.
"He what?"
"Once. A while ago. He didn't say how long."
Avelin turned that over. Didn't say what she was thinking. Filed it somewhere.
"And the guns?" she asked. "How do we disable them?"
Eren looked at her.
"No idea."
"…That's the plan."
"That's the plan."
The snow drifted down between them, soft and indifferent.
Avelin exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Alright."
She pushed off the wall and stepped up beside him, both of them facing the same direction now. The same frozen skyline. The same rail line cutting through dead stone.
"Then we wait for the train."
They found cover easily enough.
The ruins gave them that much — collapsed walls, rusted plates, sheets of old hull metal half-buried in snow. Eren picked a spot close to the rail lines and they settled in behind a stack of heavy scrap, low and still.
Three sets of tracks ran parallel through the dead ground.
Avelin studied them.
"There are tracks on all three."
"Yes."
She looked at him.
"All three?"
"Yes."
She turned back toward the tracks.
Then — from the right —
A sound.
Low at first. A deep, rhythmic thunder worked through the frozen ground before it reached the air. Metal under enormous pressure. Something vast in motion.
Then it appeared.
Black.
Massive in a way that took a second to process — not tall, not wide, but both, and long beyond what made sense. It didn't fit one track. It didn't fit two. It swallowed all three simultaneously, its frame so wide it consumed the full spread of rails like they'd been laid specifically for it. Iron plates bolted over iron plates. Gun mounts running the length of each car. Exhaust ports across every surface bleeding black smoke and thick white steam that billowed upward and sideways in the cold air.
It was moving fast.
Then the brakes hit.
Not a sound — an event.
A metallic scream tore through the ruins, grinding and enormous, the kind of friction that comes from stopping something that was never meant to stop quickly. It had started braking far back — had to, at that size, at that weight — the sound building and building as the train fought its own momentum across hundreds of metres of track, wheels locking and shrieking, steam erupting from the brake housings in violent white jets.
The ground shook.
Avelin pressed herself flat against the scrap.
Then —
Stillness.
The train sat there, filling the entire rail corridor, exhaling slowly from a hundred vents. The sound of it settling — metal groaning, pressure releasing — was almost like breathing.
Enormous.
Right in front of them.
"Hurry."
Eren was already moving.
Low and fast across the open ground, snow crunching under his boots. Avelin was right behind him, the two of them closing the distance to the rear of the last car before anyone on the platform side had time to look back.
The back of the train was a sheer iron wall.
No ladder.
Eren crouched and laced his fingers together.
Avelin didn't hesitate. One foot into his hands and he drove upward — she grabbed the top edge, fingers finding a seam in the plating, and hauled herself up onto the lowest platform in one motion.
She turned immediately and reached down.
Eren jumped.
She grabbed his wrist.
He found the edge with his other hand.
Between them they got him up.
Both of them flat on the roof of the car, breathing hard, the cold pressing down.
Below — voices. The sound of the refuelling crew moving into position along the platform side.
Neither of them moved.
The train exhaled around them, steady and indifferent, like it hadn't noticed two extra people.