The warehouse walls seemed to dissolve, the sound of the rain on the metal roof transforming into the howling wind of a blizzard ten years past.
Ten-year-old Yuki sat in the dark. His "room" was a stone box in the bowels of the Kinatarou estate, a prison where the sun never reached. He was a skeleton wrapped in bruised skin, his clothes hanging off his frame like a shroud. His eyes, once vibrant, had become dull, vacant pools of grey.
The only light in his world came when the heavy iron locks clicked open.
It was Yukari. Giyu's adopted daughter was a vision of impossible blue—hair like a summer sky and eyes that mirrored Yuki's own. She was the only person who treated him like a human being back then.
"Eat quickly, Yuki," she whispered, sliding a tray of food toward him. Her hand trembled as she stroked his matted hair. "Don't worry. I'll always take care of you."
But the sanctuary never lasted. The door was kicked open, the light of the hallway spilling in like an intrusion. Giyu stood there, flanked by guards.
"Step away from the animal, Yukari," Giyu said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You need to learn the price of pity."
Yuki remembered the air leaving his lungs as Giyu's knee shattered his ribs. He remembered the metallic taste of blood as he collapsed, and the sound of Yukari's screams as the guards forced her to watch. Giyu didn't hit him like a child; he beat him like a rival, over and over, until Yuki was perpetually on the brink of death.
Then came the hope. Nora and Lily, two maids who still had souls, risked everything to help him escape that hell hole.
Nora and Lily weren't just maids; they were the only warmth in a house made of stone and cruelty. When they decided to steal Yuki away, they knew they were signing their death warrants.
The escape was a nightmare of muffled footsteps and racing hearts. They had almost cleared the estate grounds when the light of a guard's torch caught the silver of Nora's hair.
"Run, Yuki! Don't look back!" Nora had screamed. She wasn't a Kizo user, but she fought like a demon. Yuki watched through the trees as she plunged a kitchen knife into a guard's throat, her face sprayed with hot blood. She took down four men with nothing but desperate courage before the three gunshots rang out. Thud. Thud. Thud. She didn't fall immediately. She pushed Yuki forward, her back a map of tattered fabric and spreading red, until they vanished into the white expanse of the forest.
Nora knew it was over, her breath coming in ragged gasps. But the cold was a silent killer. Thirty minutes into the trek, Nora's legs buckled. She didn't even have the strength to scream; she just slumped into a snowbank.
"Nora? Nora, get up," Yuki whispered, his small hands tugging at her shawl.
She was already gone, her eyes staring blankly at the falling flakes. But ten-year-old Yuki refused to accept it. He hoisted her onto his back—a child carrying a woman twice his size. For four hours, he moved through the waist-deep snow. Every step was a prayer. He ignored the way her body grew stiff, the way the frost began to settle on her eyelashes.
"We're almost to the cabin," he told her corpse. "Lily is waiting. We'll have tea. We'll be warm." Lily had went ahead of them to the cabin to make sure the path was clear.
He arrived at the clearing, and the prayer died.
Lily hadn't made it. Giyu had caught her. Her head was pinned to a wooden stake in the center of the clearing, her eyes frozen open in a final expression of terror. Her limbs had been scattered across the snow like broken dolls.
Yuki didn't cry. Something inside his chest—the part that felt love, the part that felt fear—simply shattered.
He dropped Nora's body and pushed open the cabin door. The heat of the fireplace hit him, but it couldn't warm the void in his soul. Inside, twenty-three of Giyu's elite Kizo users were laughing, drinking, and waiting for orders. They saw a small, blood-stained boy in the doorway and paused.
"Hey, kid? How did you—"
They never finished the sentence.
The Black Ice didn't just manifest; it erupted. It wasn't a tool; it was an infection. Jagged, obsidian shards of ice tore through the floorboards, impaling three men before they could stand.
Yuki didn't fight like a martial artist. He fought like an animal. He moved through the room in a blur of silver and black. When a fire-user tried to blast him, Yuki caught the man's face in his hand. The Black Ice didn't just freeze him; it traveled through his veins, turning his very blood into jagged crystals. The man didn't even have time to scream before he shattered into a thousand red fragments.
He tore through them with a strength that defied physics. He ripped throats out with hands coated in ice as hard as diamond. He used the men's own Kizo against them, freezing their lungs from the inside out.
By the time the last man fell, the cabin was no longer a room. It was a grotto of frozen gore. The walls were painted in a layer of frost and entrails. Yuki stood in the center, his hands dripping with the "innocent" blood of soldiers who hadn't even known why he was there. The men in that cabin had no idea about what happened to Nora or Lily but it was Giyu who killed them. Those men were just guards Giyu had stationed there in case of any intruders.
Giyu stepped into the cabin minutes later, stepping over a severed arm. He looked at the carnage, then at the hollow-eyed boy, and let out a delighted laugh.
"Beautiful," Giyu had whispered. "You've finally found your place, Yuki."
Giyu's laughter was a serrated blade, cutting through the heavy silence of the warehouse. He threw his head back, his muscular chest heaving with dark amusement. His laugh was so loud it made snap Yuki out of his recall.
"A murderer!" Giyu roared, pointing a finger at the trembling boy. "A born killer. You can wear the Academy uniform and play with your little friends, but the blood on that cabin floor never washes off, does it?"
Yuki's head sank lower, his chin nearly touching his chest. The weight of twenty-three lives and the memory of Nora's cold body seemed to be crushing the very air out of his lungs.
"Yuki!"
The scream didn't come from Giyu. It came from Seri. She was still on her knees, her hair disheveled, but her green eyes were burning with a regal, stubborn light.