The cold had not left.

Frost still clung to the window corners, and the damp floor near the sill caught the pale light from outside. The room was quiet—too quiet after everything that had just happened. The Will of the World. The voice. The pain. The awakening.

Ninety-two soul power.

Freeze. Frost Phantom Substitute. Ice Manipulation. Ice Seal.

The words circled in my head, heavy and unreal. I'd read about awakenings—about powers like these, the hidden rules running beneath this world's surface—but reading was one thing. Standing in your own apartment with frost still on your fingertips was another.

I looked down at my palm.

The mark had settled. It no longer crawled up my wrist; it sat there differently now—sharper, more defined, like a snowflake carved into skin by an invisible blade. Faint silver lines spread from its centre like frozen veins.

I flexed my fingers slowly.

No pain. No stiffness. Just power, quiet and cold and mine.

Then my phone rang.

The noise snapped through the room, and I flinched before I'd processed what it was. I stared at the table, at the lit-up screen, as though I'd briefly forgotten what a phone was. Another notification. Another ring.

I picked it up.

Thirteen missed calls.

Most from the same name.

Emily.

I opened the latest message.

"Even if you possess the power of ice, you should not have your window open in this heavy snow."

I stared at it longer than I should have.

It had her tone exactly—that particular blend of irritation that barely concealed how much she'd been worrying. Thirteen missed calls, and when she finally reached me, it was a scolding. Not an accusation. A scolding—the kind reserved for people you haven't given up on yet.

She was the heroine of the original story, and she'd always cared for Luke more than he deserved. As a Bureau agent, she'd known that corporations sometimes dealt in the darker side of superpowers—she'd known, and he'd chosen that path anyway, for less risk, better money, a cleaner title. And she'd kept watching for some sign that he'd come back to himself.

That made standing here uncomfortable.

Because the person she was watching for wasn't here anymore.

"How does she know the window's open?" I murmured.

I crossed to the window.

Below, half-buried in snow and parked close to the building, sat a Bureau car. Leaning against its side—one gloved hand raised, phone in her grip—was a woman in black winter clothing.

Emily.

She wasn't the kind of striking that announced itself. No dramatic first impression, just the slow accumulation of detail: dark coat, pale skin catching the moonlight, the sort of face that became harder to look away from the longer you looked. Snowflakes settled in her hair and dissolved. What stayed with me were her eyes—even at this distance, they seemed to catch the moonlight rather than simply reflect it, bright and still and precise, the kind that rarely let anything pass unnoticed.

She was typing.

Then she looked up.

Our gazes met.

Neither of us moved.

One of those seconds that stretches—the window, the snowy street, the thin line of attention between them, and nothing else.

Guilt arrived before I could brace for it. Not entirely mine: some of it belonged to the body I was wearing, to Luke's memories, to every piece of disappointment he'd handed her and every time she'd absorbed it without leaving. But part of it was mine, and I knew exactly why. I was standing in his face, watching her real concern directed at someone who no longer existed, knowing things about her future she couldn't begin to imagine.

So I did nothing.

She held my gaze a few seconds longer, expression unreadable at this distance. Then she looked down and tapped something into her phone.

My screen lit up.

"See you in court tomorrow."

By the time I checked the street again, she was already moving—unhurried, practised, around the front of the car and into the driver's seat. The engine turned over. Headlights swept through the falling snow.

Then the car was gone.

I exhaled slowly.

A helpless smile pulled at the corner of my mouth before I'd thought to let it. The kind you wear when nothing better comes to mind.

I read the message again.

Tomorrow.

The word landed with more weight than it should have.

That was when the story actually started—not the scattered background events, not what I'd just lived through in this room. The real beginning. The day the original plot drew its first breath. The first domino falling into every domino after it.

The day Emily awakened her system.

That system would become the fulcrum of her life, pulling her toward every conflict the world had waiting: power struggles, old bloodlines, Bureau secrets buried beneath the city, the long cascade of disasters that trailed the story's opening like a comet's fire. From that single moment, everything escalated—and kept escalating.

I was supposed to be nothing in it. A disposable side character with a rare hidden ability, passed between stronger hands until I'd been used up.

But too much had already changed.

A second awakening. Time and Space fragments sealed inside my soul. Knowledge the original Luke had never possessed.

Tomorrow, I'd have to stand in front of her and pretend otherwise.

Snow fell beyond the glass in a steady white curtain.

I was still looking at her message—picturing her in the street below, coat dusted white, those moon-bright eyes fixed on this window with the last measure of patience she hadn't yet spent—when a sound came from the ledge.

"Kuch kuch."

A squirrel, perched just outside the glass, working at something between its forepaws. Unbothered. Entirely unaware.

Something shifted in my thinking.

Alive. Moving. A perfect test.

I focused on it, locked on, and said the word.

"Freeze."

The squirrel stopped—not startled, not mid-flinch, just stopped, the way a video freezes when someone hits pause. It didn't fall. It didn't react. It held its position suspended between one instant and the next, locked in a posture it would never remember holding.

I released the skill.

The squirrel continued exactly where it had left off—same motion, same rhythm, as if no gap had ever existed. No hesitation, no distress. Its thoughts and senses had been locked along with its body. It had no idea any of it had occurred.

I turned back into the room.

The frost. The silence. The power still settling, cold and quiet, beneath my skin.