The world vanished in a white-out of agony. The fragment of the Ice Fox's heart was not simply merging; it was claiming. It was a glacier waking inside his veins, a blizzard howling through his soul. Ryn felt his own consciousness being shoved into a tiny, frozen corner of his mind.
"Mine," a voice that was both his and not his snarled in the echoing cavern of his thoughts. It was the Ice Fox, but her voice was no longer a separate entity. It was a tsunami of primordial will, cold and absolute. "This vessel is MINE."
A crackling sound, like a frozen lake splitting under pressure, filled the air. Ryn looked down, his vision blurring. A sheath of solid, diamond-bright ice was crawling up his fingers, sealing his gloves into immobile claws. The cold wasn't just on his skin; it was burning out from within, crystallizing his flesh, his bones. He tried to scream, but his jaw was locking, the cold creeping up his neck, sealing his mask to his skin. A terrifying, translucent blue ice began to spread across his chest, spider-webbing over his tunic with a sound like shattering glass.
"Fox? Ice Fox!" Sylphie's voice was distant, muffled by the roaring in his ears.
The pulse of power didn't stop with him. The wave of absolute cold erupted from his body, washing over the entire chamber. The obsidian dais frosted over instantly. And the inert ice knight, still standing where Ryn had felled it, shuddered.
The frozen blue energy in its chest flickered, then reignited with a violent, crimson-tinged light. Its head jerked up, no longer a serene guardian, but a marionette of furious, corrupted ice. Its featureless face turned, not toward Ryn, but toward the source of the disturbance—the living, breathing warmth in the room. Toward Sylphie.
With a groan of shifting millennia-old ice, it took a step, its movements now jerky and aggressive.
"Hey! Ugly! Look at me!" Sylphie yelled, darting to the side, trying to draw its attention away from the frozen, shuddering form of Ryn.
It ignored her. It raised its massive sword, aiming for Ryn's head.
"No!" Sylphie shrieked. She didn't think. She flung her hands forward, and the air in front of her compressed, solidified, and shot forward like an invisible blade. Fwhoom! It struck the knight's sword arm with a sound like a bell being struck, shearing through the enchanted ice at the wrist. The giant sword and the hand holding it clattered to the floor.
But the knight was undeterred. It simply turned, its remaining hand lashing out faster than she could react. It caught her around the waist, its grip like a mountain's vise. The air left her lungs in a pained gasp.
"Let... go..." she choked out, beating at the arm with her fists, her wings fluttering uselessly against the immense strength.
The knight lifted her high into the air, and with a simple, contemptuous motion, it threw her across the chamber like a discarded doll.
Instinct took over. Tumbling through the air, Sylphie twisted, her wings flaring to catch the chaotic currents. She righted herself, anger burning through the fear. She raised both hands, the air around them shimmering. "You shouldn't have done that!"
She brought her hands down in a cross-slash, and then her wings beat forward, unleashing a combined blast of concentrated wind that screamed towards the knight. It was a move that would have sliced a stone fortress in half.
The knight didn't try to block. Its remaining arm shot forward, not at her, but at the giant ice sword lying on the ground. With a telekinetic pull of pure frost magic, the sword flew up from the floor—and straight into the path of her air slash.
The result was cataclysmic. The enchanted sword shattered into a thousand deadly shards. But instead of falling, the shards, guided by the knight's malevolent will, reversed direction and shot towards Sylphie like a blizzard of crystalline daggers.
She tried to evade, but there were too many. She cried out as shards sliced through her delicate wings, tearing the magical membranes. Others peppered her arms and legs, slicing through her clothes and drawing sharp lines of crimson. The wind left her wings, and with it, her flight. She fell.
The impact on the hard ice was brutal, knocking the last of the breath from her. Pain, sharp and hot, flared from a dozen wounds. She tried to push herself up, but her arms buckled. The temperature in the cavern was still plummeting, a deep, soul-crushing cold that was emanating from Ryn. The ice knight, now missing a hand and its sword, took a step toward her, but its movements were slowing, becoming labored. The very air was growing so thick with cold that even it, a creature of ice, was beginning to freeze solid, its limbs locking up.
Sylphie ignored it. Her eyes were fixed on Ryn. He was completely encased now, a statue of a man in mid-agony, a faint, terrifying blue light glowing from within the ice. He was becoming a core of absolute zero.
"No," she whispered, her breath a frozen cloud. Using the last of her strength, she crawled. Each movement was fire and ice, her wounded wings dragging behind her, leaving smears of red on the pure white frost. She reached him, her fingers numb. She tried to shake him, but he was solid, unyielding.
"Fox... wake up..." she pleaded, her voice weak. "Please..."
Her strength gave out. Her legs collapsed, and she fell forward against his frozen form. It was like hugging a glacier. The cold seared through her clothes, but it was the only solid thing to hold onto. It was an accident, a desperate act of a falling body, but she ended up with her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed against the frozen plate of his chest, her body trembling violently from cold, pain, and despair.
"I... can't..." she sobbed quietly, her vision darkening at the edges. The world was fading, the cold claiming her. The last of her warmth seeped into the unfeeling ice.
And then, a new sound pierced the deadly silence.
A roar. Not of wind or ice, but of pure, untamed fire. It tore through the cavern entrance, a sound of wrath and annihilation.
The air itself screamed as the intense cold clashed with a sudden, blistering heat. A wave of steam exploded through the chamber, and a figure descended from the opening above, wreathed in flame and fury.
He landed between the frozen Ryn and the crawling knight with a impact that cracked the floor. Clad in crimson armor that glowed like freshly forged steel, a cape of smoke and embers swirling behind him, Prince Kael of Vulmir straightened, his amber eyes burning with the light of Ignathar's heart. He took in the scene in an instant: the shattered knight, the wounded, collapsing Sylphie hugging the ice-encased Fox, and the oppressive, ancient cold that sought to extinguish his very essence.
His lip curled into a snarl.
"Alright," Kael growled, flames licking up his armored fists, his gaze locking on the struggling ice golem. "Who do I have to melt first?"