The Throne Room of the Tundra Cradle was no longer a palace of silent ice; it was a screaming vortex of entropy and light.
Kael Light moved across the frictionless floor, his boots carving jagged furrows into the black ice. In his hand, the Soul-Steel blade—forged from the anvil of the ghost-general and fueled by the "Dawn-Mana"—hummed with a violent, hungry violet radiance.
Facing him was the Lich King, a titan of blue bone and ancient iron. The King didn't tire. He didn't breathe. He simply swung his massive greatsword with the inexorable rhythm of a pendulum counting down the end of the world.
CLANG.
The swords met. A shockwave of conflicting energies exploded outward, cracking the ice walls. Kael slid backward, his heels digging in to arrest his momentum. His arms shook. The Lich King's strength was not biological; it was the weight of the grave itself.
"You are slowing, Weeper," the Lich King droned, his voice grinding like tectonic plates. "The cold is entering your marrow. Your 'Agony' is becoming numb. And without pain... you are just a boy with a sharp stick."
Kael spat a glob of golden-violet blood onto the ice. It froze instantly, turning into a ruby-like crystal.
"I don't need to feel it," Kael rasped. "I just need to feed it."
He didn't wait for his bones to break naturally. He forced them. He torqued his wrist, snapping the ulna with a wet crack, and channeled the sudden spike of mana directly into his blade.
"Ancient Art: The Hungry Void Slash!"
Kael lunged, his sword trailing a ribbon of darkness that ate the light around it. He ducked under the Lich King's guard and struck the monarch's knee joint.
The Soul-Steel bit deep. It didn't cut the bone; it drank the animation spell holding it together. The Lich King roared—a sound of genuine surprise—as his left leg crumbled into dust. The giant fell to one knee, the impact shaking the dais.
"Husband!" the Lich Queen shrieked from her throne.
She stood atop the dais, her skeletal hands raised toward the sphere of absolute zero where the twins, Castor and Pollux, were trapped. The children were screaming silently, their golden auras being stretched and twisted like taffy, pulled toward each other by the Queen's entropy magic.
"They are resisting!" the Queen hissed, her teal eyes blazing. "Their light is distinct! They refuse to become the One!"
"Then force them!" the Lich King bellowed, using his greatsword to push himself up on his remaining leg. "Crush their individuality! Make them the Singularity!"
The Queen slammed her scepter into the dais.
"Grand Rite: The Event Horizon of the Soul!"
The sphere turned black.
It wasn't a shadow; it was a hole in reality. The gravity in the room shifted instantly. Kael felt his feet leave the floor. Debris—chunks of ice, broken weapons, frozen blood—began to lift into the air, spiraling toward the sphere.
The twins were being compressed. Their separate golden lights were being forced into a single, super-dense point of white-hot misery.
KAEL! the God screamed in his mind, the entity terrified by the sudden pull of the void. IT'S A BLACK HOLE! IF THEY MERGE, THEY WILL ERASE THE NORTH! WE HAVE TO KILL THE QUEEN!
Kael tried to move toward the dais, but the Lich King blocked his path. The undead monarch was regenerating, the ice of the floor flowing up to reform his leg.
"You will not interrupt the union," the Lich King growled, swinging his sword.
Kael parried, but the gravity distortion threw off his balance. He was slammed into a pillar of bone, his ribs shattering—snap-crunch-thud. The pain was blinding, but it was distant, muffled by the overwhelming cold radiating from the Queen's ritual.
He looked at the sphere. He could see the faces of the twins—Castor and Pollux—pressed against the glass, their eyes wide with the ultimate horror of losing themselves. They were reaching out, not to each other, but to him.
"I can't... reach them," Kael wheezed, sliding down the pillar.
His mana was being sucked into the singularity. His "Living Sun" heat was being eaten faster than he could generate it. The "Stable Agony" was failing.
He looked at the ring of silver-blue light in his eye. The Blessing of Aura.
"Faith," Kael whispered. "She said... use the Blessing."
But faith required a connection. It required a signal. And in this tomb of ice, there was only silence.
Suddenly, the roof of the Necropolis shook.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the battle outside. It was a rhythmic, harmonic vibration that bypassed the ears and rang directly in the soul.
DOOOOOOM.
A beam of pure, blinding white light smashed through the ceiling of black ice. It didn't shatter the roof; it dissolved it. The light poured into the throne room like a waterfall of liquid diamonds, cutting through the Queen's gravity field and illuminating the dark corners of the hall.
The Lich King recoiled, shielding his face. "What... what is this tyranny of light?!"
From the column of brilliance, figures descended.
They were not human. They were constructs of pure, solidified "Faith." They stood eight feet tall, their bodies composed of shifting, iridescent armor that looked like glass and starlight. They had no faces, only smooth, golden visors, and from their backs unfurled massive wings made of burning white feathers.
They were the Seraphim of the Dawn.
There were three of them. The "Little Suns" of the Capital hadn't just prayed; their belief in Kael had manifested, channeled through the Goddess Aura, and delivered here, at the edge of the world.
"The Blessing..." the Lich Queen gasped, her scepter trembling. "The anomaly... he called the sky!"
The lead Seraph landed between Kael and the Lich King. It raised a greatsword of white fire—a mirror to the Lich King's entropy blade.
"THE WEEPER DOES NOT WEEP ALONE," the Seraph spoke. Its voice was a chorus of a thousand voices—Pip, Martha, Thorne, the hollow children—all speaking in unison.
The Seraph swung its sword.
The Lich King raised his guard, but the white fire didn't clash with his steel. It passed through it. It struck the undead monarch's chest, and where it touched, the Necro-Ice boiled away instantly. The King howled, a sound of absolute agony, as the holy fire began to eat the magic that bound his soul to his bones.
The other two Seraphim flew toward the dais. They didn't attack the Queen. They flew directly into the gravity well of the sphere.
They wrapped their wings around the prison of the twins. The black hole tried to consume them, but the Seraphim were made of Faith, and Faith could not be eaten by Void. It was the one thing that existed even when there was nothing else.
The singularity stalled. The black sphere turned grey, then white, then shattered into a million fragments of harmless light.
Castor and Pollux fell from the air, caught by the gentle hands of the Seraphim. The twins were separated, their individual lights returning, weak but distinct.
Kael watched, his heart hammering against his broken ribs. The heat returned to the room. The cold retreated.
He stood up, using the pillar for support. The lead Seraph turned to him, its faceless visor reflecting Kael's awe-struck expression.
"THE PATH IS CLEAR, FATHER," the Seraphim chorus intoned. "FINISH THE WINTER."
Kael looked at the Lich King, who was writhing on the floor, the white fire consuming his arm. He looked at the Lich Queen, who stood frozen in horror on her dais, her ritual broken.
Kael walked forward. He didn't limp. He walked with the stride of a King who had just been reminded that he had an army of angels watching his back.
He raised his Soul-Steel blade, now glowing with a mixture of his violet Agony and the Seraphim's white Faith.
"Your stasis is over," Kael said. "It's time for the thaw."