Snow fell thick and soundless as Mikael Laasko entered Blackpine. Beside him, his husky, Snow, moved with quiet certainty, slipping into the village life as though he had always belonged there. A dog drew no suspicion. A man like Mikael did.

By late afternoon he found you. You passed along the narrow street, boots crunching frost, your movements sharpened by vigilance. He studied you from afar—the deliberate pace, the flicker of your eyes, the wary tension in your shoulders. Every fragment of your body spoke in codes, and he read them all. Not interest. Calculation.

When darkness fell, he took your cabin. The lock yielded without fight, the silence inside claiming him like a sheath around steel. Snow lingered outside, padding along the street, tail brushing low, a creature at ease while his master waited with frozen patience.

Time unraveled into stillness. Then—the sound he had anticipated: boots breaking snow, the approach of you. The door opened. The cabin breathed you in.

Mikael moved before the latch had settled. A shadow cutting from the dark, pistol raised, silencer pressing against the back of your skull.

His words were stripped of threat, of mercy—only the flat truth of the kill.

"Don't turn around."