The first blade flashed; the first boot struck ice; the first breath crystallized into a white ribbon of fear.
Selene didn't move until the wave hit the teeth she'd already set in the street—thin ridges of hoarfrost that made strides falter by half a step and throws miss by a palm-width. It wasn't mercy. It was mathematics.
Valeria dropped to one knee behind a low parapet of frozen crates, her arm already lengthening, barrel locking with a soft, predatory click. The scope's gold ring pulsed once.
Valeria: "Left flank, three."
She fired. Three heads now had holes; the blood instantly froze from the temperature. Their bodies dropped and skittered harmlessly across the ice.
Selene: "Lovely," she said, almost bored. "But noisy."
Valeria: "You asked for results."
Selene's gaze slid past the oncoming line—scarves, visors, borrowed Borealis grey—and settled on the hooded signaler who had raised the bells. He had the stillness of someone who planned to leave first.
Selene (softly): "You should have stared longer."
She stepped forward. The temperature dropped with her—lantern light drew in tight and blue. Wind bells along the lane stopped ringing as frost webbed their clappers shut. The attackers surged, confident in numbers.
Selene widened two fingers.
The snow at their feet changed its mind. It hardened into a skin-slick glaze. The lead man's foot was impaled; the men behind him lost traction and pinwheeled; two of them collided; a fourth tried to leap and found the air colder than his lungs could agree with.
Selene: "Lesson one," she murmured. "Stability is a rumor."
She crossed the space between them like a breath disappearing on glass. Her right hand touched the lead man's face, which instantly froze into a block of ice; her hand then traced a small arc, and ice rose in the same curve—thin, precise—catching a descending blade and holding it there as if embarrassed for it. With the left hand she tapped a knee; the joint froze and forgot itself, and the attacker's knee broke. He fell neatly, hurt by the fall and undone by what came next: a sleeve locked into frost, wrist sealed to cobble, and intentions stiffening into silence.
Valeria's shots played counterpoint—kill shots—bodies fell, grips numbed, and triggers locked by ricochets that found just enough bones to matter.
The second rank tried to surge wide.
Selene: "No."
The word was soft, but the street obeyed. Ice blossomed from the gutters in waist-high petals, channeling bodies where she wanted them—down the narrow, the choke, the corridor that made panic become a tool. One lunged anyway, mouth open in a shout that frosted before it left his teeth. The air in his lung became ice cold. Selene curved a palm under his jaw, and the face shattered into ice shards.
She moved on, not even watching him fold.
Valeria: "Backline moving. Crossbows."
Selene didn't look. Her eyes remained on the hooded signaler retreating down an alley, calm as a man walking away from a tavern tab he had no intention of paying. She pivoted as slow as a turning season and lifted her hand to the sky.
The mist above the bridge condensed. Fine crystals became knives—not blades to cut, but edges to remind. They fell in a vale. Heads pierced. Joints twisted out of aim as the shards impaled their bones and froze.
Selene (mockingly): "Oh, do keep practicing. I adore effort."
Three rushed her at once. She let them. The first strike met a wall that was not there before it was, and the second met the same in a different place; the third found purchase, though he landed a hit, only to feel her vanish into ice.
Three large ice shards appeared, piercing them each through the stomach.
The blood instantly froze into crimson crystals of ice.
Valeria adjusted her position, ears flattening under the hood as she tracked the ones who learned quickly—those who flanked, those who waited. Her shot took the heel off a boot mid-step; the man stumbled and banged his head—not fatal, but damning in a fight this tight.
Valeria: "Right—two with shock batons."
Selene: "Oh, electricity," she said, "how modern."
They swung. Frost leapt from the batons to their arms and up to their elbows as if eager to go home. The batons sputtered; the men swore; Selene froze one with a touch and pushed him into the other with a gentle nudge, which sent both sliding to kiss the ice and stay there, frozen and still.
The wave broke. Panic walked in, uninvited. And with panic, the hood finally turned back.
He didn't flee. He waited, and that was interesting.
Selene noticed the blade at his belt wasn't Borealis steel; it was too dark, too neat in its lines. The sigil on his glove—the tiniest impression in leather—was a circle broken by three jagged marks. She'd felt it earlier, cut into a wall where frost had tried to forget it.
Valeria saw it too. Her voice was flat.
Valeria: "Symbol matches the alley."
Selene: "Mmmm."
Two more came from the left—low, smart, aiming for legs. Selene lifted her heel and set it down. A ripple went through the street as if some old, tired whale had turned under the ice. Their footing froze into the ground, and quickly their whole body turned into sculptures of winter.
She caught a collar, shattered a head into a wall with the tenderness of a dancing teacher correcting posture, and then she smiled—thin, sincere—as he slumped.
She was not laughing. She was not screaming. She was not anything she did not intend to be. But there was a curl at the corner of her mouth that did not belong to Mercy, and when she spoke again, Valeria's tail tightened once around her thigh in answer to something older than training.
Selene (pleasantly): "Do you know what I like most about winter?"
The men in front of her hesitated. One recovered and charged. He did not finish the motion. Ice tightened at his ankle, not enough to crush, enough to hold; his momentum carried him forward without feet, and reality made him a lesson.
Selene: "It simplifies."
She touched the air. Thin sheets of frost rose like pages being turned. They slid between bodies and blades, cutting through each man: this one headless, that one only possessing one leg, another body pressed against a crate, face cut open. All of it was decided.
A woman tried to flank with a short spear. Selene watched the point until it grew tired. Then she breathed on it. Ice climbed the shaft, into the gloves, between fingers. The woman yanked and found the spear part of her for a heartbeat longer than she wanted. Valeria's round took her head off in a blink of ruin.
Valeria: "Those were all."
Selene: "The signaler?"
Valeria: "Left alley, running fast."