The consequences did not arrive all at once.
They seeped in.
Slowly. Quietly. Like frost creeping beneath a doorframe long after the fire has gone out.
For several breaths, none of them moved. The battlefield lay unnaturally calm, as though exhausted by its own survival. Ice groaned as it settled into new fractures. Snow drifted down in lazy spirals, no longer violent, no longer summoned—just snow, reclaiming its ancient, indifferent role.
West lay still.
Too still.
Sun was the first to break the silence. He crouched beside him, fingers hovering uncertainly over the frost-laced patterns crawling across West's skin. "He's breathing," Sun said, relief and fear tangling in his voice. "But… East, that core feels different."
