Chapter 13: The Frozen Company

The blizzard had finally exhausted its fury, leaving behind a world entombed in pristine, silent white. The wind had died, and an unnatural hush had fallen over the landscape, broken only by the crunch of boots on frozen snow. General Guths, accompanied by the ever-silent Kate and a small detachment of his most desensitized veterans, moved through the outer perimeter of the Rose encampment. This was not a tactical inspection; it was a gallery tour.

The reports had been tantalizingly vague: an entire Rose company, caught in the open during the storm’s sudden, violent onset, had been flash-frozen in situ. Guths had to see it for himself.

And then, he beheld them.

It was a tableau of such sublime, horrific beauty that it stole the breath from his lungs. They stood, knelt, or lay in a shallow depression, locked in a moment of time as perfect as amber. A company of nearly a thousand Rose soldiers, preserved by the deep cold with photographic clarity. Their ridiculous sailor uniforms were now sculpted by wind-driven ice, their short skirts stiff as porcelain. A fine layer of rime coated every surface, glittering like diamond dust under the pale, reluctant sun that broke through the clouds.

“Magnificent,” Guths breathed, the word misting in the air before him.

He walked among them, his eyes wide with the reverence of a pilgrim. He saw a young girl, no more than sixteen, forever in the act of loading her rifle, her face a mask of determined concentration. Another was crouched, trying to light a frozen solid fuel tablet, her lighter still poised in her blue-tipped fingers.

His gaze was drawn to the center of the formation. There stood the company commander. She was tall, statuesque, her figure impressive even under the layers of frozen cloth. Her face was a masterpiece of martial beauty—sharp, elegant features, a strong jawline, and skin so pale it seemed carved from marble. Her eyes, the color of a winter sky, were wide open, staring into an eternity of storm, their expression one of fierce, unyielding coldness. She was a goddess of ice, a Valkyrie frozen at the moment of her command.

Guths approached her, his steps slow, deliberate. He reached out with the tsuka, the hilt of his katana, and gently, almost lovingly, tapped the frozen arm that was raised as if to signal an advance.

There was a sharp, crystalline crack.

The entire arm, from the shoulder down, sheared clean off. It fell to the snow-packed ground and shattered into two large, jagged pieces. Guths’s eyes dropped to the exposed shoulder. The flesh within was not rotten or bloody, but frozen solid, revealing a cross-section of her body. The muscle tissue was a strange, dull pink, like frozen salmon, webbed with delicate ice crystals. In the center, the jagged, ivory-white stump of her humerus bone was clearly visible, a stark, anatomical sculpture.

“A perfect specimen,” he murmured, his voice thick with awe.

He moved on, his attention caught by another soldier. A raven-haired girl, her long, glossy hair cascading over her shoulders like a frozen waterfall even in death. She was a rifleman, caught in a half-turn, her exquisite, doll-like face etched with an expression of profound, heart-wrenching sorrow and unresolved defiance. It was the face of someone who knew the end had come, carrying the weight of a thousand lost futures.

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“So much beauty… locked in a moment of despair,” Guths whispered, his own reflection distorted in the smooth ice that coated her cheek.

Overcome by a sudden, irresistible impulse, he placed a hand on her shoulder. He did not shove, but applied a steady, gentle pressure.

The figure, perfectly balanced on its frozen base, teetered for a heart-stopping second. Then, with a sound like a chandelier falling, it toppled backwards.

It did not fall like a body. It shattered like glass.

The impact was catastrophic. Her torso exploded into several large, frozen segments. A leg broke off at the knee. From the ruptured cavity of her abdomen, her internal organs, frozen into bizarre, colorful shapes—the dark purple of her liver, the pale coils of her intestines—spilled out onto the pure white snow, clattering and skittering like macabre toys. The air filled with the faint, clean scent of frost and a hint of something metallic.

But her head, by some cruel miracle of physics and ice, remained intact. It rolled a short distance, coming to rest upright, those sorrowful, beautiful eyes staring blankly at the grey sky, her black hair fanned out around it like a dark halo.

Guths stared at the scene, his chest tight with an emotion so complex it bordered on pain. It was the ultimate ephemerality. Life, so vibrant and full of potential, reduced to this fragile, crystalline state, destroyed by the slightest touch. It was the purest expression of his philosophy: beauty was not meant to last; it was meant to be appreciated at the peak of its destruction.

A wave of profound, melancholic ecstasy washed over him. He looked from the shattered body of the raven-haired girl to the perfectly preserved, sorrowful face, and then to the tall, commanding officer, now missing an arm. This was his art. This was his truth.

He began to hum, a low, haunting melody that seemed to resonate with the frozen silence. The tune was somber, beautiful, and deeply familiar to him. As he hummed, the words of Nightwish’s “Sleeping Sun” formed silently on his lips, a perfect soundtrack to his devastation.

For my dreams I hold my life… He looked at the severed head. A life, held and then released.

For wishes I behold my night… His wish, his dark desire, made manifest in this field of ice.

The truth at the end of time… Losing faith makes a crime… This was the truth he had found. To look away from this, to deny its terrible beauty, felt like the true sin.

I wish for this night-time to last for a lifetime…

Shores of a solar sea...

Oh how I wish to go down with the sun,with the winter...

Sleeping

Weeping

With you....

The darkness around me

He stood there, amidst the shattered, frozen forms of a thousand young women, and wished for this feeling, this perfect, agonizing moment of aesthetic rapture, to never end.

“Kate,” he said, his voice soft, almost dreamy. “The heads. The commander, and this one.” He pointed to the raven-haired girl’s intact head. “Ensure they are recovered with the utmost care. Use the thermal saws. I want no… further damage.”

He took one last, long look at his frozen gallery, committing every detail to memory. Then, he turned and walked away, the haunting melody still playing in his mind, the image of the shattering girl burned forever onto his soul. It was, he decided, one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.