Snow fell in soft curtains over the tree-covered slopes outside Bjørnevika, muffling the crunch of footsteps and muting the birdsong. But Vegar Magnus heard everything.
He was trained to.
His coat shimmered subtly with black patches—anchors for his Blackstorage quirk. Within them: gadgets, emergency tools, and a hidden sidearm calibrated for quirk suppression.
He paused at the edge of a clearing. There, just as Laurick had described, was a man sitting on a snow-dusted boulder—binoculars lowered, face ruddy with cold, wrapped in layers like any local hiker.
Too perfect.
Simon. Or whoever he was pretending to be.
Vegar approached with deliberate calm, hands visible, posture open but alert.
"Bit cold for sightseeing," he said evenly, his eyes scanning for subtle tells—breathing rhythms, twitch reflexes.
Simon looked up with a perfectly rehearsed smile. "Some views are worth the frostbite."
Behind the trees, hidden by a small bluff of rock and snow, Hilde Akselsen crouched. Her hand hovered over the frozen soil, feeling the vibration of their words as they reached her.
She didn't move. Didn't blink.
Her fists burned faintly with embers—not active yet, but itching.
Say the wrong thing, she thought, and you'll have ten seconds to run.
Back in the clearing, Vegar took a slow step forward. "What brings you out here?"
Simon's eyes sparkled with amusement. "Heard there's a potential hero in training. Figured I'd catch a glimpse of Norway's next wildcard."
There was no fear in his tone—only testing.
Vegar's voice dropped slightly. "And how long have you been 'hiking' around these parts?"
Simon tilted his head. "Long enough to know the boy's changing."
A quiet tension bloomed between them. The kind that came before either a truth—or a strike.
The wind tugged gently at Vegar's coat as he stepped closer, pulling a sleek, black-gloved hand from his side pocket.
A casual motion—but one that allowed him to tap his thumb against the edge of a small, flat device hidden within the Blackstorage node on his forearm.
There was no flash. No sound.
But the air shifted subtly as a fine mist dispersed into the clearing—barely visible, like powdered glass caught in fading light.
Simon's eyes flicked to it—just once.
That was enough.
Vegar didn't break eye contact. "You're a curious man," he said. "Just out here. Watching. From a place where a boy with a trauma-triggered Class-S quirk happens to live."
Simon raised his brows, expression neutral. "Coincidences happen."
The mist moved slowly, laced with a microscopic, quirk-reactive compound. If someone was using a quirk-enhanced disguise—illusion, shapeshift, quirk masking—the compound would agitate their energy signature just enough to flicker.
Even Simon's skin might shiver slightly under the wrong light.
But nothing happened.
No shimmer.
No pulse.
Nothing… out of the ordinary.
And that's what put Vegar even more on edge.
Too perfect, he thought.
Most fakes had flaws.
This man didn't.
Simon, for his part, was keenly aware of the mist brushing over him.
But the Shapeshifter Gloves weren't just clever—they were forged using a rare transferred quirk. The disguise wasn't surface-deep. It was physiological. Molecular. Alive.
The mist wouldn't catch him.
And that meant the game was still his to play.
"You seem tense," Simon said casually, brushing snow off his shoulder. "You're not used to people looking in, are you?"
Vegar's jaw tightened slightly. "We have protocols for that."
Simon smiled. "And I have eyes. The boy—Laurick—he's shifting. He's getting quieter. Watching more. Standing straighter."
Vegar's gaze sharpened. "You know his name."
Simon tilted his head. "So does the rest of the country. He's a walking headline."
"Most people don't call him the boy. They call him a threat."
Simon didn't flinch.
Instead, he stood and stepped down from the rock, his boots crunching gently in the snow.
"There's no threat yet," Simon said, voice low. "But there will be."
He looked past Vegar now, toward the vague direction of the house.
"When it comes, you'll wish it had been me watching him."
With that, Simon adjusted his scarf, nodded like a polite stranger, and began to walk away—slow, unhurried, as if the conversation had been no more important than the weather.
Hilde narrowed her eyes from her hidden vantage point.
She hadn't heard Simon's name. No confession. No flicker.
But something about the exchange felt wrong. Like a performance played too well.
She stood slowly, lips pressed together.
We need to keep an eye on that man.
Back in the cabin, Laurick stared at the window again.
He didn't know what the hiker had said.
But he knew who was out there.
And the cold feeling in his stomach told him: this isn't over.
The corridor shook with another detonation.
Bengt Allamann sprinted down the metallic hallway, one arm pressed against his side where a bullet had torn through muscle. His breath came in ragged gasps, and the hall behind him glowed with pulsing red alarms and the twisted debris of neutralized security drones.
00:01:13
The quest timer flashed in his vision, projected from the glowing sigil on his wrist.
Each second ticked like a hammer in his skull.
Ahead, the massive vault door to the J-09 Command Beacon was now pried open, its lock overridden by the quirk enhancement granted to him temporarily—Destructive Darkness had eaten through five inches of reinforced alloy like paper.
Inside the room, the beacon sat atop a small pedestal. Sleek. Black. Silent.
No guards remained.
No more obstacles.
Just the finish line.
Bengt didn't hesitate.
He limped toward the pedestal, each step dragging. Blood dripped from his fingertips, his coat shredded across the back from an earlier concussive blast.
"Come on... come on..."
He grabbed the beacon.
Nothing happened.
00:00:27
The mark on his wrist pulsed—then glowed green.
QUEST COMPLETE.
Bengt collapsed onto his knees, the beacon cradled in his arms like a lifeline.
The darkness that had swirled around him began to evaporate—breaking apart into harmless shadows, like ink bleeding away from a page.
His body shook—not with adrenaline anymore, but with something deeper.
Something broken.
He had done it.
He had avoided another punishment. No fractured mind. No broken identity. Not this week.
But as he stared at the beacon, sweat rolling down his pale face, a question cut into his brain like a whisper:
Was this better?
He had just stolen Norway's deadliest control key.
He was now a walking declaration of war.
Far above, an orbiting satellite blinked—registering the breach.
Across the country, in bunkers buried beneath stone and ice, lights turned red.
The failsafes were watching.
Bengt stood slowly, legs trembling.
His voice was a whisper, cracked and dry.
"Next week… better be kinder."
He disappeared into the shadows of the vault, beacon in hand.
The wind howled over the frozen ridges of Skuggefjellet.
Sharp, jagged peaks stretched like fangs into the gray sky, dusted in fresh snow. At the foot of the mountain, a narrow valley snaked downward into icy wilderness. Up here, the world was quiet—untouched by war, government, or memory.
Two figures sliced through the snow, skiing side by side, their movements practiced, efficient.
Elias Jahnder led the descent, carving his way through the steeper edge of the trail like a ghost in black. Behind him, Pringelina, slower due to her injuries but steady, pushed herself to keep up, her breath visible in sharp bursts.
For several minutes, neither of them spoke.
The wind was their only company.
Then Pringelina broke the silence.
"I had a dream. Before I escaped."
Elias didn't respond. His attention was locked on the terrain ahead.
But Pringelina continued, her voice low but tight.
"It wasn't a normal nightmare. It was him. Laurick. But… not him. Dressed like some noble from another world. Confident. Cruel. Said he had a task for me."
A pause.
"Told me to destroy the Dreamcatcher."
That caught Elias's attention. He slowed slightly, turning his head just enough to look at her without stopping.
His eyes narrowed.
"...He spoke to you?"
"Yeah. Like he knew me. Like he knew what I was thinking."
They skied in silence for a few moments longer.
Then Elias spoke—his voice carrying something it hadn't before. Regret.
"I knew Laurick. Before Skandevik."
Pringelina blinked. "You did?"
"Not well. We weren't friends. But we were both in a quirk support group for kids of pro heroes. Small gatherings. Just five or six of us."
He exhaled slowly, carving another turn around a sloping tree line.
"The last meeting we had was a week before the Incident. He was quiet. But there was something... wrong. Like his skin didn't quite fit."
"What happened?"
Elias shrugged faintly. "I don't know. The group got cancelled after Skandevik. Half the kids never came back."
Another beat of silence.
Then he added, "I've always wondered if that day… if I had said something to him—anything—maybe…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
They continued downward, letting silence swallow the space between them again.
Around them, the world opened up into a hauntingly beautiful sprawl—massive cliffs of white stone and snow, distant trees poking through the frost like shadows. The light from the cloud-covered sun painted everything in shades of silver and blue. Below, a narrow frozen river coiled through the valley, partially hidden beneath wind-smoothed snowdrifts.
It was a place untouched by men.
A place for ghosts.
And those trying to outrun them.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside the polished steel-and-glass Hero Association of Norway headquarters, nestled in the outskirts of Bergen, a large conference room buzzed with quiet tension.
The digital screen at the head of the room flickered between maps of Rogaland and Vestland, marked with growing red indicators—incident reports, breach alerts, quirk-tracking anomalies.
A thick red line traced a streak of chaos:
The Dausa Prison Break.
The battle in Rølstøl.
The Fort Jernveggen breach.
Possible fugitive sightings along Skuggefjellet.
It was too much, too fast.
And all of it pointed west.
At the long oval table sat several high-ranking officials and elite strategists—but the attention of the room centered around two members of Norway's Top 10 Pro Heroes, flown in to assess the growing crisis.
Hero Rank 5: Tormod "Runesetter" Iskesson
Quirk: Rune Mark – Can inscribe magical runes on items or surfaces, granting them unique enhancements: heat, force, defense, even anti-quirk properties.
Tall and broad-shouldered, Tormod wore a deep-blue longcoat etched with faint glowing runic symbols. His hands were stained with ink and scorched lines—scars from years of carving quirk-infused glyphs.
He stared at the map with a cold eye, already sketching rune formations on a tablet beside him.
"The beacon incident escalates this," he said bluntly. "If someone is tampering with the J-09, we're not just managing rogue fugitives anymore. We're talking quirk containment warfare."
Hero Rank 7: Maja "Våpenhånd" Gjertsen
Quirk: Armament – Can morph her arms into any ranged weapon, including complex ones like railguns, energy cannons, and launchers—limited only by her stamina and imagination.
Leaning forward with a heavy sigh, Maja spun a stylus through her fingers like a trigger.
"We've got too many variables. Too many damn villains fanning out at once. And not enough force positioned in the inner valleys."
She tapped on one red blip flashing along the Bjørnevika periphery.
"This one's the worst of them. A problem waiting to become a disaster."
The screen zoomed in.
Escaped Fugitive: Mikal Thorne
Quirk: Vibration Manipulation – A destructive ability allowing him to release shockwaves through any material he touches, violently vibrating or disintegrating matter at will. His strength scales the longer he's in physical contact with a structure or terrain.
Status: Suppressed with a collar—for now.
Location: Last known heading: Northeast of Sand, possibly moving toward Bjørnevika.
Tormod rubbed his chin.
"If he gets that collar off…"
Maja finished the sentence for him.
"...he could bring a mountain down on the kid's head. And the whole town with it."
A moment of heavy silence passed over the room.
Meanwhile – Near the Upper Ridges
Mikal Thorne crouched behind a line of snow-covered rocks, breathing through grit teeth.
His coat was torn. His collar blinked red—still active, still locking away his power.
But not for much longer.
He stared across the frozen horizon, and far beyond, just past the distant hills…
He could see the faint lights of Bjørnevika.
His eyes narrowed.
They think that kid's dangerous?
Let's see how they like it when the earth starts screaming back.
Back in the Meeting Room
Tormod stood and tapped the screen with his stylus.
"We deploy a rune-anchored shield perimeter along the mountainside—south of the valley. I'll personally inscribe it. We trap Thorne in a quake-absorption zone."
Maja stood beside him, flexing her arms as her right hand shifted into a heavy, long-barreled plasma cannon.
"I'll pin him down if he crosses the outer field. No explosives—just high-force kinetic shots. We don't want to bury the entire valley."
One strategist raised a concern.
"And the boy? Laurick? If his quirk reacts to a siege—"
Maja interrupted.
"Then we better be ready with more than just suppression."
Tormod nodded grimly. "If the Nightmare Monsters wake up again… there won't be enough runes in the world to seal them."
The countdown had begun.
Too many cracks were forming across Norway.
And Bjørnevika sat at the center of them all.