4000 kilometers away.
United Republic of Methina.

The wind howled like a dying beast, flinging snow in wild spirals across the battlefield. It tangled through her short, blood-matted white hair, streaked with icy blue and crusted crimson. Cuts traced her arms and legs like broken constellations, her grey-and-white camo clinging wetly to her frame, stained by dirt, blood, and the cold sweat of exhaustion.

She slid her sword into the scabbard strapped across her back. The blade, elegant and as cold as the sky, shimmered with a crystal-blue glow, its edge painted red. Her grip trembled—her blistered, bloodied hands barely able to tighten the leather straps that secured her weapon. Every motion was agony.

A groan rose from the whiteness. She staggered forward, her boots crunching through ice crust, until she found the demihuman—half-man, half-wolf—slumped in the snow. His burgundy shirt, once pristine, was torn open by a brutal slash across his chest. His black hair soaked in the snow and blood as his golden eyes flicked toward her, wary even in defeat.

“Still kicking?” she rasped, forcing a smirk. But the strength didn’t hold—she doubled over, coughing blood into the snow.

The demihuman chuckled, a gurgling sound thick with pain. “Congratulations… Miss Frea. You’ve changed the course of the world…”

His voice faded into a hoarse whisper. “It was always going to be someone like you.”

She stumbled closer, her silhouette staggering like some dying revenant. “What do you mean?”

He looked at her through one blood-filled eye and smiled faintly. “The child who dared to challenge fate…”

Frea scoffed and knelt beside him. “I didn’t like my fate,” she whispered.

He gazed skyward, his final breath shallow and wet. “I’ll be watching…”

His body went still.

Frea exhaled and reached down, peeling the long black coat from his corpse. It was heavy, warm—soaked with blood and defiance. She pulled it over her shoulders like a crown and tilted her head to the dark sky above.

A laugh burst from her chest—sharp, raw, victorious, broken. It echoed through the frozen air, a sound that didn’t belong to any hero, but to someone who had clawed their way back from the jaws of fate and won—if only for a moment.

Her sharp, hollow laughter was cut short by a glint in the snow—just a flicker, caught in the corner of her eye. She squinted through the sleet, breath shallow, and stumbled toward it. Each step was a struggle, her boots dragging slush and ice as she fought against the wind’s relentless push.

The shape emerged slowly, half-buried under a layer of frozen white. She tried to kneel but her legs gave out, collapsing her into the snow with a muted thud. Pain lanced up her spine, but she gritted her teeth, propped herself up on shaking elbows, and clawed at the icy crust.

Her fingers uncovered a blade.

A katana. No handguard. Its hilt wrapped in fraying white bandages, now stiff with frost and time. It gleamed faintly even in the dull light, as if waiting.

Her lips curled into a slow, pained smile.

“…Found you,” she whispered.

Carefully, reverently, she wrapped the sword in the black coat she had stolen from the corpse, pressing it to her chest like a relic. Snow lashed against her face. Hail pelted her shoulders. The wind shrieked. But she stood, inch by inch, forcing her trembling body upright.

Her knees buckled. Her ribs throbbed. Something in her leg cracked with every step.

Still—she walked.

Into the distance, swallowed by a horizon of grey and ash, toward a future yet unwritten.

The snowstorm screamed around her, but she didn’t look back.

The NLO is not yet dead.