The frost around Nyla's platform had grown so dense it formed walls—crystalline barriers that refracted light into fractured rainbows, beautiful and deadly in equal measure. Inside that frozen cathedral, the temperature had dropped to levels that should have been incompatible with liquid blood and functioning neurons.
But Nyla's opponent moved through the cold without hindrance.
The creature was massive, easily Nibo's size, wreathed in flames that burned hot enough to distort the air around them. Not normal fire—this was something older, something that existed before humans had learned to make controlled flames. Primal combustion given form and purpose. Its armor looked forged from volcanic glass, each plate radiating heat that fought against Nyla's cold in a battle of fundamental forces.
