COLD

Chapter 9

Whalsburger,

19:34 PM.

Xander sat alone in the heavy darkness of his house, the lights turned completely out. He was locked within the cage of his own constraints, forcing his breathing into a slow, controlled rhythm. His eyes were clamped shut. Taking a sharp, jagged breath, he held the warm air in his lungs for a few agonizing seconds before letting it slip past his lips.

He felt bound, almost suffocated, by Polaris’s recent words. Her fiercely protective stance over Stephan weighed heavily on him. He understood her anxiety. He knew exactly why she had come to him, desperate and demanding Stephan’s location.

Yet, his deepest worries weren't about Polaris.

They were about Stephan.

Though Xander’s outward resolve remained as rigid and unyielding as a mountain, his heart shook with a rare, insidious fear. A blossoming uncertainty warned him that something incredibly dangerous was lurking just beyond his vision. He knew the boy’s nature. It was only a matter of time before Stephan began questioning the fabric of his reality, demanding answers about a world he was never meant to understand.

Xander’s instincts suddenly sharpened. A threat was materialize, but it wasn't a shadow at the door. It was the sudden, piercing ring of his phone.

He reached out through the dark and grabbed the device. The blinding brightness of the screen cut through the room, illuminating a single name: Stephan.

He swiped the screen and brought the phone to his ear. “Hello,” he said. His voice was low, instantly projecting an aura of absolute authority, even as his senses screamed that something volatile was lurking on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Xander,” Stephan’s voice echoed through the speaker.

Xander quietly let out a long-withheld breath of relief. But before he could even formulate a standard question of concern, he was blindsided by an unexpected, blunt demand.

“I have a question about someone.”

Confusion flared in Xander’s chest, but his decades of psychological training and discipline instantly took over, smoothing out his tone. “About who?” he requested calmly, waiting for the trap to spring.

“Hildegard’s mother,” Stephan replied. His voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the weight of a stone. “Do you have any idea who she was?”

Xander’s eyes narrowed in the dark, his brow furrowing deeply. He chose to play dense, probing to find the exact boundaries of what Stephan knew. “Which Hildegard? There are dozens of them in the registries.”

“Hildegard Linchsteyn,” Stephan clarified, his voice slightly muffled, sounding distant yet intensely focused over the static of the line. “Do you know anything about her mother?”

Surprisingly, Xander didn’t feel a surge of fury or irritation. Instead, a profound perplexity washed over him. What business did Stephan have digging into a client’s family tree? The question reverberated through his mind, sparking a cold dread that the young man was actively breaking into a forbidden world.

But a sudden realization halted his rising frustration. Stephan wasn't reckless. He wouldn't get involved in something like this unless he had been forcibly dragged into it.

The pieces began to collide in Xander's mind. What had Stephan actually seen during his visit to the Linchsteyn residence? Had Rheinhard dropped a careless hint, or was the old man intentionally manipulating Stephan into solving a puzzle without explicitly telling him to? A barrage of questions struck Xander all at once, shattering the mental discipline he had fought so hard to maintain, his mind flaring with chaotic theories.

Breaking the awkward, heavy silence, Xander demanded answers in a low, commanding tone. “Why are you asking about her?”

“Rheinhard handed me a dossier to keep. He told me if I ever needed anything, the answers were in there,” Stephan answered, his voice dropping into a dangerously low register. “I've been browsing through these documents for three days straight, Xander. And I’ve come to suspect something. Hildegard’s mother... her ageless look, the twin-like resemblance to her daughter. It’s impossible. Something is fundamentally wrong here, and I don’t like it.”

Xander closed his eyes and exhaled a slow, heavy sigh. The truth was fracturing the vase, threatening to spill out into the open. But he couldn't play his hand. Not when Rheinhard held all the cards.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Xander forced the lie past his lips. “I don’t know much about Hildegard’s mother.”

The line fell deathly silent. For a long, agonizing moment, only the faint hum of cellular static stretched between them.

Finally, Stephan spoke. “For your sake, I hope that's true. I hope there really is nothing to know about that woman... because if I find out otherwise...” He left the threat hanging, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, cold as ice.

The line went dead.

Xander dropped the phone onto his lap and let out a ragged breath. He pressed a hand firmly against his chest, trying to force his heart to stop hammering against his ribs. His conscience burned with a furious, accusing heat. He had just lied to the young man who had reached out to him for guidance, for clarity.

But Xander forced the guilt down. He told himself he didn't care. He couldn't afford to care.

His pact with Rheinhard Linchsteyn was a knotted, tangled mess, locked tight with a mutually assured suicide option. “Expose mine, and yours will be known to the world,” Rheinhard’s mocking voice seemed to echo from the dark corners of the room.

Yet, Xander knew the precise physics of the danger he was playing with. He knew exactly how ruthless and unstoppable Stephan could be. To deny Stephan the truth after he had explicitly demanded it was a far greater gamble than crossing Rheinhard. He knew this. He knew it better than anyone.

But his hands were tied. To preserve the fragile safety of everyone involved, Xander made his choice. He would take the truth, wrap it in lead, and bury it deep within a bottomless grave.

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Meanwhile, at the facility.

20:23 PM.

His search grew desperate. His mind wrestled tirelessly with the hidden code of the photos in his grip, but his eyes narrowed with exhaustion. He needed rest. Yet, he refused to stop—not when he was this close to understanding the what and the why.

Who was the man in the first picture standing beside Hildegard’s mother? He stared at the image, demanding answers that refused to come.

Frustrated, he sank his head back against the cushion, his breath heavy. Just for a second, he told himself, he could close his eyes and rest his mind. The mysteries would wait.

Suddenly, a jolt of instinct snapped him awake.

His eyes flew open, darting instantly to the security monitor. On the screen, Hildegard sat hopelessly buried in her books. For a fleeting second, pity touched him, followed quickly by the nagging question: why? She did not deserve this confinement. But years of hardened training quickly silenced his empathy. To his professional psychology, she was just an average client. Nothing more.

Pushing his conscience aside, he took a slow, jagged breath and finally let his eyes close.

Instantly, the world shifted.

The night vanished like a thief, replaced by a morning sky buried beneath heavy, grey winter clouds. Stephan found himself outside, navigating a snow-littered forest alongside Hildegard. Her face seemed more radiant than ever, lit by a warm, genuine smile.

Watching her, Stephan couldn't help but wonder what drove Rheinhard to lock his own daughter away while paying a handler to watch her. The unanswered questions blinded him to the pristine winter beauty around them.

Suddenly, Hildegard paused.

She had spotted something. Driven by instinct, she moved stealthily toward the tree line. Stephan’s brows furrowed with suspicion as he trailed closely behind her.

When he caught up, Hildegard stood frozen. Stephan glanced at her face and stood stunned for the first time since his assignment began. The warm smile was entirely gone, replaced by a look of profound, looming distress. It wasn't just confusion; it was the physical awakening of a tragic memory.

Her crystalline light blue eyes brimmed with despair, and he could see her chest rising with her pounding pulse. She was staring at a ghost from her past: an old, abandoned log cabin.

She stepped forward as if pulled by an invisible thread. In her mind, echoes of cheerful laughter clashed with fragmented flashes of a past she couldn't fully grasp. Stephan stepped up beside her, hands tucked into his pockets, keeping his voice low, even, and sharp.

"Do you know this place?" he demanded.

Hildegard shook her head—not in denial, but in sheer uncertainty. "I'm not sure," she whispered. Yet, she felt a deeper connection to this rotting structure than to the grand Linchsteyn residence.

The unexplainable familiarity pulled her through the threshold. Stephan followed at a cautious distance, scanning the interior for any clue that might explain Rheinhard’s motives. The cabin was spacious but hollow, containing only a single partitioned area reserved for a bath. Dust and snow blanketed the decaying furniture.

Hildegard’s heart hammered against her ribs. Her soul grew restless, sensing an unsettling energy in the room. This place was abandoned now, but who had lived here?

Searching for answers, her eyes fell upon a half-broken wooden cabinet. Inside lay a small, brown teddy bear.

She gently pulled the comfort toy from the debris, staring at it with intense concentration. Suddenly, a memory unlocked: the sound of a child’s laughter, a little girl running through vibrant green grass with her mother under a warm, radiant summer sun.

The vision faded, leaving her in the freezing cabin. Her instincts whispered for her to keep it, but fear held her back. Someone else might own it. She turned around to find Stephan standing directly behind her. His piercing grey eyes locked onto hers with a predatory, analytical intensity.

"I think... this reminds me of something," she murmured, her voice barely audible.

Stephan did not judge or dismiss her. Instead, his brow furrowed as he recognized a vital clue—a physical link to the past Hildegard had been forced to forget. He held her gaze for a beat.

"Take it," he commanded bluntly. He turned his back to her, looking over his shoulder as he moved toward the exit. "You might need it."

He stepped out, leaving her alone in the quiet. Hildegard stared down at the toy bear, her eyes welling not with tears, but with a deep, haunting despair as an unexplainable dread began to take root inside her.