"Huh."
It was surreal.
Of course, this was not Karina's first experience within a frozen domain. She had sealed equilibrium countless times before, pushing the environment into a state where motion slowed to the point it resembled suspended time.
But that had always been all it was.
A misdirection.
An illusion born from extremes.
A confined radius where everything moved so slowly that the mind interpreted it as solitude.
But this was different.
Karina knew it the moment she looked around.
This was not a zone where things moved forward at a glacial pace. Nothing was moving at all.
Karina looked up.
The clouds above had ceased and frozen mid-formation. The sea below, which by all logic should have been locked into ice, remained liquid, yet utterly motionless.
There was no flow.
There was no progression.
There was no allowance for change.
For the first time, Karina understood the distinction clearly.
Before, she had slowed the world.
