The snow in Anádyr never fell clean. It came down gray, stained by the soot from the small thermal station that powered the port. Before the skies opened in 2016, Svetlana was simply the doctor’s daughter. She was sixteen, rode a bicycle with a rusted chain that always slipped when she crossed the wooden bridge, and had the strange habit of collecting glass jars to keep the polished stones she found along the Bering Sea. To her, the outside world was a distant abstraction that only existed in the radio programs her father listened to at night. Anádyr was freezing, small, and isolated, but it had a warm routine. And at the center of that routine was Matt. They had met three years earlier, when Matt moved in with his aunt and uncle after his parents died. Svetlana saw him for the first time sitting at the edge of the pier, staring at the frozen water without saying a word, wearing a coat two sizes too big that hung loose on his shoulders. That first day she didn’t say anything grand

The silence inside the medical tent weighed heavier than the rain hammering against the canvas. Matt stared at the patch of gray frost his finger had left on the map of Sector One. He studied the supply lines from the mines, the patrol routes, and the stronghold where Count Valentin ruled without a care in the world. His memories twisted, dragging him back two months, to the exact moment when his battered feet first reached the outskirts of the Guild in France. It hadn’t been an accident that he ended up there. When Matt left Anadyr in 2016, he hadn’t simply walked to escape the cold. He had walked with a single purpose burned into his mind. Svetlana used to tell him about her uncle Boris, the only relative who still sent letters from Central Europe. The man who promised her that one day they would see golden summers together. Matt had crossed an entire continent, begging, fighting, and eating dirt, all for the sake of finding the last connection he had left to the girl

Matt’s dreams never brought peace. They always smelled of burning rubber, ozone, and wet earth mixed with blood. That night, while the rain fell softly over the tent canvas in France, Matt’s mind slipped back through time. He dreamed of the stories he used to hear as a child on Svetlana’s father’s radio, before Anadyr was wiped off the map. He dreamed of the year that forever changed the fate of humanity: 2015. In Matt’s dream, the Empire as it was known today did not yet exist. There were no troops dressed in white, no Counts, no Barons, no imposing Floating Island dominating the skies. Back then, only a single being descended. Bastian. That man appeared from the heavens and, completely alone, unleashed an unprecedented hell. He did not negotiate. He sent no ambassadors and issued no ultimatums. He directed his devastating power straight at the greatest military power on Earth: the United States. What humanity believed would be a war of attrition lasted exactly seven days. Seve

Two days had passed since Matskim arrived. By this point, Matt no longer saw him as a stranger. Surprisingly enough, the man had offered to “guide him” in the use of the Will. In reality, it consisted of rigorous training through direct combat to teach him how to control his superhuman abilities. Perhaps it wasn’t that strange, considering Matskim was a free spirit. After all, he had gone out into the frozen wilderness just to look for him. He said he would stay with him for three months to teach him everything he needed to know, since Matt was a complete novice. If he left him alone, he would most likely die from a fever or from eating something spoiled. Although that was just an excuse. The real reason was that Matt reminded him of his late son… Matt was stretching about two hundred meters from the cave entrance while Matskim watched him, drinking from his flask since early in the morning. It was only 10:30 a.m. Matt had been greatly surprised when he checked the old man’s backpa

(POV: Matt, 2021) Matt stepped out of the tent. Today was his last day in the Federation. He walked through the camp, watching the Awakened training at the military grounds. Matt sighed. He didn’t know why he felt melancholic. Today he would finally begin his journey to get his revenge. And yet, memories of the past kept coming back to him. Matt seemed cold to everyone around him, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It was simply that his heart had suffered too much, so he had closed it off to prevent himself from suffering again… However, these two months with Boris had been rewarding. He reminded Matt of a certain old drunk, although Boris was a serious man who hardly ever drank. He kept walking, passing by the entrance to the armory. The young Latent guards bowed respectfully as he passed. Although Matt wasn’t part of their Guild, he occasionally helped them and taught them a thing or two, so the people in the Guild already treated him like one of their