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The dark red arrow, woven from countless fine, veinlike patterns, pulsed in the center of the notebook's pitch-black cover, viscous and alive, like a freshly inked living tattoo that reeked of blood.
It pointed north. Toward those frozen coordinates. Toward Greenland's endless ice sheet.
The notebook had not merely awakened. It was actively guiding me.
In the corner, Ryuk let out a short gasp, as though someone had seized him by the throat. His enormous body shuddered violently, his crimson eyes fixed on the pulsing arrow. The last trace of numbness in them gave way to a deeper, almost despairing horror.
"Navigation... it... it's even showing the way now..." he whispered hoarsely, his voice broken. "It's over... completely over... this thing isn't just finding its own food anymore... it even fucking knows where to find the good stuff..."
He whipped his head toward me, his eyes filled with one last, frantic warning.
"Kid! Stop now! Throw it away! While you still can! This isn't a notebook anymore! It's a... it's a curse come to life! You can't control it! You're the one it'll devour until there's nothing left!"
I ignored his hysterical howling. My gaze remained locked on the pulsing arrow.
Control? From the moment I wrote the first name, I had never truly "controlled" it. Our relationship had been a dangerous dance from the start, a game of mutual exploitation. Now my dance partner was taking the lead. The danger had risen sharply, but that also meant... the dance had entered a more thrilling chapter.
Greenland. L. Lena V. Lawton.
An "observer" marked "inactive" by GIPA, hidden beneath the ice sheet at the end of the world. The notebook pointed toward her with such urgency that she had to possess some "nutrient" it desperately craved.
What was it? Her knowledge? Her bloodline? Or some secret she guarded as an "observer"?
Approach. Conflict. Truth.
The script the notebook had written was slowly unfolding.
I needed to prepare. Greenland was no city. It was a place hostile to life. Extreme cold, desolation, scarce supplies. And those coordinates certainly did not mark an ordinary research station. There had to be stringent defenses or concealment measures.
But the arrow on the notebook kept pulsing, urging me on.
I stood and got to work. I quickly cleared the room of all unnecessary personal belongings and digital traces. I physically destroyed the computer's hard drive, snapped the SIM card, and flushed it down the drain. I took only the bare essentials for survival: extreme-cold clothing, compressed rations, a water purifier, a multitool, and... of course, the Death Note, whose cover was still pulsing.
As I slipped it into a specially made compartment in my waterproof backpack, lined with soft insulating material, I could clearly feel that ominous warmth and throbbing through the fabric.
Ryuk watched me work without trying to stop me again. He merely made a low, continuous rumbling sound, like a broken engine. When I shouldered the backpack and headed for the door, he finally spoke from the shadows. His voice was unusually calm, yet carried a chilling sense of finality.
"Go on, then... go find your 'nutrients'..." His crimson eyes looked like two ghostly flames about to go out. "I'll be here... watching... to see, in the end... which of you eats the other..."
Without looking back, I opened the door.
Outside lay the noisy, bustling world of ordinary life. It formed an absurd, jarring contrast with the living notebook in my backpack, which was guiding me toward a deadly wilderness of ice.
Following the arrow meant first reaching Kangerlussuaq Airport in Greenland, the main gateway to the ice sheet.
Several days later, after multiple connecting flights and deft changes of identity, I stood inside Kangerlussuaq Airport's modest terminal. Beyond the windows stretched a dazzling, endless expanse of white. The air was bone-chilling, every breath edged with ice.
The notebook in my backpack was unusually quiet. The arrow on its cover had vanished too, as though it had entered some form of "dormancy," waiting until its final destination drew near.
I needed a snow vehicle, or better yet, a guide who could take me deep into the ice sheet. But a guide meant a potential risk of exposure.
As I stood at the rental counter assessing the capabilities of several snow vehicles, an elderly Inuit man approached me. He wore a heavy down coat, his face bore traces of frostbite, and his eyes were exceptionally sharp.
"You're heading deep into the ice sheet?" His English was heavily accented, and his gaze swept over my bulging backpack with seeming casualness. "Things in that direction... haven't been peaceful lately."
Something stirred in me. "Not peaceful?"
"Strange lights. Tremors in the ground. And... a bad feeling." The old man lowered his voice, awe and wariness in his eyes. "The elders say something sleeping is about to wake."
Something sleeping?
Could the notebook's arrow be pointing toward more than just Lena V. Lawton?
"I happen to be heading that way for some... geological surveys," I answered without betraying anything.
The old man looked me over, seeming to weigh my overly youthful face against my steady tone. At last, he sighed. "I can take you part of the way. But only as far as the edge of Devil's Tongue Glacier. Beyond that, even my dogs refuse to go."
Devil's Tongue Glacier. The coordinates were nearby.
"Deal."
A few hours later, I sat on the old man's dogsled, bundled tightly in my cold-weather gear, racing across the boundless white wilderness. The bitter wind cut across my cheeks like knives. All that remained between earth and sky was the panting of the sled dogs, the scrape of runners against snow, and a vast, oppressive silence.
The old man said nothing, only occasionally giving a clipped command to steer the dogs.
The farther we went, the stronger that "bad feeling" became. It was not the cold, but a kind of... psychological oppression. As though something immense, ancient, and ominous lay buried beneath this pristine ice and snow.
The notebook in my backpack began giving off a faint warmth again.
At last, a massive, jagged glacier appeared on the horizon, cleaving into the ice sheet like a black blade-Devil's Tongue.
The old man reined in the sled dogs and pointed ahead, his expression grave. "This is as far as I can go. Beyond here... is 'its' territory." He paused, then added, "Good luck, young man. I hope your 'geological surveys'... are worth the risk."
He turned the sled around and left without looking back, as though another second in this place would see him swallowed by the land.
I stood alone on the ice sheet, facing a glacier that resembled the fangs of an ancient beast.
The bitter wind howled.
The notebook in my backpack grew scorching hot.
On its cover, the dark red arrow appeared again, pulsing, pointing straight into the depths of the glacier.
Toward that profound... darkness, which seemed capable of swallowing every trace of light.
The stage for the script's next act,
the setting,
was right before me.
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