Her lips parted slightly.
No rage.
No joy.
No grief.
Just... hunger.
The kind that transcended desire. The kind that devoured what it could not have.
Riel hovered, suspended above the battlefield like a new moon—glacial, uncaring, inevitable. The battlefield obeyed her now. Each breath she took caused more of the world to crystallise.
Her fingers shifted gently over the halberd's new shaft—no longer ice, but something older. Something pure. It pulsed like a living bone of the world, wrapped in lightless mana, sharpened to a soul-cutting edge.
Below her, Asmodeus stood motionless.
His axe rested across one shoulder, angled behind his head, the tip drawing a slow red line in the frost behind him. The black flames still hissed around his form, but they pulsed less now—drawn inward. Tight. Controlled.
His gaze never left her.
Not once.
Not even as the frozen palace rose around them.
