The rumbling behind us intensified far too quickly. It felt like the mountain itself was seconds away from swallowing us whole. If we did not act in the next ten seconds, we would be buried under tons of ice and stone. Even if I could create some kind of ice chamber to shield us, the air inside would run out long before help arrived. Suffocating slowly in a frozen tomb sounded worse than getting crushed in one swift blow. But not today. I had no intention of dying here.
"If there is no way out, then we make our own," I muttered under my breath, refusing to accept this dead end as fate.
The halo behind me flared awake in an instant, spinning with a sharp glow that painted the collapsing passage in shades of emerald. The green flower bloomed fully in my right palm, its crystalline petals pulsing once like a heartbeat. Frost surged through my veins, rushing outward in a cold burst that made my skin tingle and my breath sharpen.
