Thranduil watched the entire scene play out in absolute, dizzying confusion. But before he could even open his mouth to inquire, Antrea, completely possessed by an overwhelming, primal fear, broke. She turned on her heels and started sprinting blindly toward the tree line. In her panic, her foot caught a jagged rock, sending her tumbling hard, face-first onto the unforgiving gravel. She scrambled up instantly, ignoring the blood violently streaming from her nose, and bolted straight into the dense, dark thicket of the forest.
"Antrea, wait!" Thranduil called out, his voice echoing uselessly.
"Are you completely stupid?! Go after her!" Veronica roared. The sheer volume of the Queen's voice snapped Thranduil right out of his frozen state, and he immediately lunged forward, giving chase into the shadows after the running girl.
"Well, now that we're alone..." Veronica muttered, a dangerous smile returning to her lips as she leaned slightly toward her daughter. "Cyra, I want you to go warn the villagers right now," she added in a fierce whisper.
"There is absolutely no need for that," Carl said, his cheerful smile unyielding as he casually stepped deeper into the courtyard. "We took the people of your little kingdom into account well beforehand. Right now, I am entirely sure they have all been gently put to sleep and carefully tucked away in their homes, just in case a massive battle were to occur."
Veronica's white ears pinned back tightly. "There are more of you?"
"Well, naturally," Carl shrugged, shifting the heavy book under his arm. "To be completely honest, I fully expected Areia to be traveling with you guys today. It would be quite difficult for me to battle her directly, even with my newfound power... so I obviously had to take some heavy precautions."
"But why?!" Cyra yelled, her voice thick with a crushing inability to comprehend what she was seeing. "We were comrades, weren't we?! We were friends!"
"Believe me, I have absolutely no personal problem with any of you," Carl said, taking another calm step forward toward the three women. "But if you choose to keep actively helping that literal devil, then that is exactly where the problem lies."
His deep blue eyes hardened, the pleasantries completely evaporating. "Just hand over the girl, and we will leave this place like nothing ever happened. We don't want any unnecessary trouble here. I was given a divine job by the heavens, and it is something I absolutely must execute."
"My Queen... I can't read his physical moves at all," Haki whispered through gritted teeth, her slender frame shifting into a highly cautious, defensive stance.
"Well, it wouldn't be that simple now, would it?" Veronica grinned from ear to ear, her silver canine tail thrashing with raw adrenaline. "You see, kid... I have been so incredibly bored lately. And I think you are going to satisfy my boredom just fine."
With a sudden, violent burst of insane speed that fractured the mossy stone beneath her boots, the small Queen charged straight at Carl. She closed the distance in a fraction of a heartbeat, her fist cocked back, entirely ready to obliterate his head.
"If this is truly the absolute fastest you can go... I am deeply sorry to say that you have already lost," Carl said slowly.
The exact millisecond Veronica got within arm's reach, space itself seemed to betray her. It was as if she were suddenly surrounded by a dozen invisible, hyper-dense hammers. Before her fist could even connect, she was violently and brutally pummeled from all sides at once. A shimmering, pure white bubble of force warped tightly around her small frame, pinning her in place as the invisible beating continued mercilessly, the sheer kinetic shockwaves rippling through the air.
Carl didn't even bother to look at her as he continued his slow, measured walk forward.
Haki's instincts flared in pure alarm, her entire body locking up as she became intensely cautious.
Then, Carl calmly lifted the ancient book in his left hand. He began to utter a sequence of strange, completely incomprehensible words—a bizarre, echoing language that sounded like grinding glass and holy chimes.
Instantly, a sickening, hollow pop resonated through the courtyard.
The vibrant, flowing mana inside Haki and Cyra's bodies was abruptly, violently snapped off. The magical tethers completely vanished from their cores, instantly stripping away their supernatural strength and leaving them as nothing more than ordinary, non-magical beastkins in the presence of an absolute predator.
"Antrea, stop!" Thranduil yelled, his voice bouncing uselessly off the towering ancient trees as he tore through the dense undergrowth.
Antrea didn't look back. She couldn't. Jagged, moss-covered branches struck out from the shadows like reaching claws, ripping through her braided hair and tearing the heavy fabric of her rugby shirt. Thorns sliced across her cheeks, leaving deep, crimson cuts that bled freely down her pale face, but the stinging pain was nothing compared to the absolute panic hammering in her chest.
"Damn it, how the hell is she so fast?!" Thranduil cursed under his breath, his boots trampling through damp ferns and decaying leaves. "Just what the hell is going on?"
Antrea's sneakers kicked up clouds of dark, moist soil as she desperately picked up speed. The suffocating canopy above blocked out the morning sun, plunging the forest floor into a dim, emerald twilight. The air was thick, suffocatingly humid, and smelled heavily of damp earth and rot. Every twig and thorn bush seemed actively hostile, clawing ruthlessly at her bare legs and exposed flesh. When a thick, low-hanging branch violently caught her braided hair, she didn't even pause—she fiercely wrenched her head forward, tearing her strands free with a ragged gasp, and kept running.
"Antrea, wait! Stop!"
Thranduil's voice echoed closer this time. Seeing the dense thicket abruptly open up ahead into a blinding wall of pure sunlight, the elf mage closed his eyes. His spatial magic flared.
POP.
He vanished instantly, materializing at the absolute edge of the tree line.
His hands shot out, catching Antrea by the waist with a desperate, bone-crushing grip just as her boots skidded off the dirt. She had run straight off a blind precipice. Her legs dangled helplessly over a dizzying, jagged cliffside that dropped hundreds of feet into a rocky ravine below.
Thranduil grunted, his muscles straining as he dug his heels into the crumbling dirt, trying to haul her back over the edge. But Antrea was completely blind to the drop beneath her. Possessed by a terrifying, primal fear that stripped away all rational thought, she violently lost her mind. She began screaming—a raw, guttural sound—and clawed viciously at Thranduil's face.
"Let go of me! Let go!" she shrieked, her fingernails narrowly missing his eyes as her arms flailed wildly. "I promise I'll never set foot in Utopia again! I'll leave this dimension too! I'll go somewhere completely ancient—somewhere forgotten! Please, I'm begging you, just let me go!"
"What the hell are you talking about?!" Thranduil shouted, dodging another frantic swipe. He firmly clamped his hand around one of her wrists and, with a massive heave, violently hauled her back onto solid land.
Antrea scrambled to her feet instantly. Bathed in the intense, blinding morning sunlight of the cliffside, her dark eyes darted frantically around. From this bright vantage point, the dense forest behind them looked like a pitch-black abyss, making it entirely impossible to see whatever was lurking within the shadows.
She turned to flee along the ridge, but Thranduil lunged, grabbing her arm and pinning her down against the earth.
She screamed, twisting and thrashing beneath his grip. Her small, powerless frame mustered every ounce of desperate strength she had left—biting his hands, kicking his shins, and pulling against his hold with a terrifying, wild energy.
"Listen to me! What the hell is wrong with you?!" Thranduil yelled over the sound of her frantic breathing and heavy tears, his grip unyielding. "I've never seen you like this!"
"Oh... so this is where you hid yourself," came a smooth, buttery voice drifting from the tree line. It was an airy, almost angelic melody, yet it carried an underlying chill that instantly froze the blood in Thranduil's veins.
A girl with cascading, spun-gold hair stepped slowly out from the darkness of the forest into the bright sunlight. She was clad in a magnificent, heavy set of plate armor identical to Carl's—crafted from a metal so impossibly, pristinely white it seemed to glow with its own holy resonance. A massive, ornate broadblade rested securely against her hip. Her eyes were a pale, crystalline blue, entirely cold as a winter storm.
Behind her, a dozen identical figures stepped out in perfect, silent synchronicity. Their white armor caught the direct glare of the morning sun, reflecting the light so intensely they shone like human disco balls, casting blinding, dancing fractures of white light across the clearing.
The moment the golden-haired girl appeared, the fight completely drained from Antrea. She stopped struggling entirely, collapsing into a small, petrified heap under Thranduil's grip, quietly trembling like a leaf in a gale.
The warrior girl raised a single, gleaming armored hand, her cold gaze locking onto the broken girl in the dirt.
"Antrea of Utopia. Code: four thousand six hundred and four," she announced, her voice echoing across the canyon with the weight of an absolute, divine judge. "By the golden context of The Angels... for the unspeakable act of destroying an innocent planet with your wicked deeds; for breaching multiple dimensions and fracturing timelines while being a classified fallen angel; for establishing a demonic religion on the said destroyed world and leading a vanguard army to ruthlessly wipe out the native creatures there..."
The wind picked up along the cliffside, whipping her golden hair across her pristine white pauldrons as she drew the heavy blade from her hip. The metal hummed with a terrifying, pure energy.
"...the elders of the heavens have come together in unified council. They have decided your insolence and wicked ways shall no longer go unpunished. By the divine decree of the law handed down by the highest world... you are hereby sentenced to DEATH."
"Hey!" Thranduil barked, stepping directly in front of Antrea and shielding her with his body. "Sentenced to death?! If the world you're claiming Antrea destroyed is Carl's world, then you've got it all wrong!"
His shout echoed uselessly across the open canyon. Behind him, Antrea was curled into a tight, pathetic ball, her entire frame trembling so violently that her teeth practically rattled.
"Bring me her core," the golden-haired commander ordered coldly. She didn't even blink. She didn't acknowledge Thranduil's existence. It was as if a mortal's defense was nothing more than static noise to her ears.
The moment the command left her lips, the sea of white-armored knights behind her moved. They broke into a collective blur, their heavy boots cutting through the air with terrifying speed as they converged on the cliff edge like a pack of gleaming predators.
"Carl is an absolute fool," the golden-haired girl muttered to herself, turning her back on the precipice and walking calmly back toward the shadows of the forest. "Had he just touched her core back there, I wouldn't have had to go through all this tedious trouble."
With a faint shimmer of holy light, she vanished into the darkness of the thicket.
Sensing the suffocating pressure closing in from all sides, Thranduil didn't hesitate. He scooped Antrea up into his arms, pivoted, and leapt straight off the cliffside into the dizzying abyss below.
The wind shrieked in his ears as they plummeted toward the jagged, unforgiving rocks of the ravine. Right on his heels, he could feel the terrifying, unyielding presence of the white-clad knights. They were diving after them, cutting through the air like falling stars.
POP.
Thranduil tried to command the space around him to warp, but nothing happened. "Damn it!" he mentally cursed. Before he could even process the lock on his magic, a sudden, sharp spike of psychic pain violently tore through his mind.
—Thranduil. Give me an immediate update on the situation.
The voice in his head was calm, calculated, and dangerously level.
Areia?! Thranduil thought frantically, his eyes darting as the rocky floor of the ravine rushed up to meet them.
—Give me an accurate estimate of the situation, the telepathic voice repeated, completely unbothered by his panic.
"I don't even know!" Thranduil yelled back in his mind, his eyes wide as the canyon walls narrowed. "Some fanatical knights just sentenced Antrea to death! I'm currently trying to outrun them, but my spatial magic is completely locked—I can't teleport!"
At the absolute last fraction of a second before they obliterated themselves against a massive, protruding boulder at the bottom of the ravine, Thranduil twisted his body. He violently channeled his raw physical momentum, swaying upward into a sharp, aerodynamic curve.
CRASH.
Two of the pursuing knights, unable to maneuver their heavy armor in time, slammed directly into the boulder, shattering the stone into a spectacular explosion of dust and debris. But the rest of the squadron adjusted instantly, curving through the air to continue the relentless chase.
"We are in a massive bind here!" Thranduil shouted internally, grunting as he hoisted Antrea tighter against his chest. "I can't fight a vanguard while carrying her! And to make matters worse, she has completely lost her mind! She's totally unresponsive!"
—Understood, Areia's voice replied, her telepathic tone dropping into a chillingly quiet register. —Survive for the next twenty seconds.
"Twenty seconds?!" Thranduil ducked his head as a blinding beam of pure, holy light shot past his ear, violently scorching the canyon wall beside him. "Aren't you supposed to be like a whole day's journey away from the kingdom?! What the hell can you do in twenty seconds?!"
—I am about a week away, actually, Areia said simply, her tone completely devoid of stress. —Now give me the precise coordinates of the beast kingdom. I don't want the attack to get lost.
"A week?!" Thranduil's mind went completely wild as he ducked another incoming projectile. "Fine! Let's see... it's a rough calculation, but—Southwest, twenty-three degrees, just below the celestial meridian!"
—Received.
The telepathic link snapped shut with a definitive click.
A week's distance away, at the absolute summit of a desolate, frozen mountain range, the world was a dead, silent void.
Areia stood alone at the peak. The freezing, high-altitude wind howled violently around her, slapping strands of her long white hair against her pale face. Her striking purple eyes bore a terrifyingly dim, hollow light—the look of a calamity waiting to happen. Scattered across the frozen stone beneath her boots lay the broken, unconscious forms of countless white-armored knights, their divine plates cracked and frozen over with thick sheets of frost.
Slowly, Areia lifted her right arm, holding her hand just above the center of her chest.
CRACKLE.
The ambient moisture in the atmosphere instantly supercooled. A violent swirl of black-indigo frost gathered around her palm, crackling with intense, dense mana. Within a heartbeat, the ice began to expand rapidly, lengthening and sharpening until it formed a massive, terrifyingly long spear of dense, abyssal ice. The weapon pulsed with enough raw, concentrated energy to warp the air around it.
With practiced, terrifying elegance, Areia spun the massive ice spear behind her back in one fluid motion, her eyes locking onto the impossibly distant southwestern horizon. She bent her knees, anchoring her footing into the bedrock of the mountain.
Then, she threw it.
It was a motion of pure, unadulterated devastation. The explosive kinetic force of her throw completely detonated the peak of the mountain, shattering the ancient stone into a massive avalanche of rock and ice as the spear launched itself into the sky.
The weapon broke the sound barrier instantly, a deafening sonic boom ripping through the clouds as the abyssal spear tore through the atmosphere, ascending straight into the stratosphere like a dark, guided meteor, locked entirely onto a coordinate a week away.
"Going against the Angels will surely lead to your absolute death," one of the fallen knights growled from the middle of the shattered mountain peak. He was coughing up blood, his pristine white plate armor cracked and partly buried beneath a heavy pile of rocky debris. "Our Commander, Hevana... she will surely make quick work of a devil like you."
"Didn't you loudly proclaim that you were the sole leader of this sorry bunch just a moment ago?" Areia asked slowly.
She bent down, her knees cracking slightly as she leveled her hollow, purple eyes with the man's terrified gaze. The freezing wind continued to howl around them, biting at the ruins of the summit, but her face remained entirely expressionless.
"To be completely honest with you... I will never understand people like you," she murmured, her voice a flat, dangerous drone. "I was fast asleep when your entire vanguard decided to ambush me. I'm sure you all thought I'd be incredibly easy prey up here. You should consider yourself extremely lucky that I don't kill blindly anymore."
She stood back up to her full height, casually reaching up to scratch her head as she looked out over the vast, empty horizon.
"I guess I'll just have to run there," she muttered to herself, her eyes tracking the distant southwestern sky where her ice spear had just vanished into the stratosphere. "It should only take me a few seconds though."
"You will surely die—" the man began again, his voice thick with fanatical rage.
"Look here, mister, would you mind just playing dead for a moment?" Areia interrupted, her arms crossing over her chest as she looked down at him with an intensely annoyed expression. "I am desperately trying to think here. Just play along with the rest of your men over there. If you open your mouth to speak one more time... I might actually be tempted to kill you for real."
Thranduil took the full brunt of a holy beam directly to his upper back. The explosive shockwave sent him tumbling violently across the ravine floor, but even as his vision blurred, he instinctively twisted his frame to shield Antrea's fragile body with his own. He landed hard on his knees, skidding to a brutal halt as the jagged rocks shredded the flesh of his legs and arms, leaving a dark trail of crimson in the dirt.
The white-clad knights closed in slowly, their broadblades drawn and humming with a suffocating, divine light. Gritting his teeth against the searing agony in his spine, Thranduil gently laid the unresponsive Antrea onto a patch of moss to his side, bracing his battered body to fight the vanguard to his absolute last breath.
Miles away, back within the palace courtyard, Carl was violently hauled through the grand castle wall, his body leaving a horrific trail of blood across the shattered masonry.
Queen Veronica hopped lightly on one foot, a dangerous, razor-sharp smile breaking across her blood-stained face. "To think you actually imagined that taking away our mana would give you a definitive advantage over us," she mused. Though her royal overcoat was torn to absolute ribbons and her small frame was slightly battered, her primal beastkin anatomy remained highly, terrifyingly functional.
"Damn it..." Carl cursed under his breath, coughing up a thick glob of crimson as he forcefully broke himself free from the collapsing stone wall. His pristine white plate armor was now cracked and broken in multiple places.
Seeing an opening, Haki and Cyra charged at him simultaneously with raw, feral speed—but they froze dead in their tracks.
A massive, highly suffocating pressure suddenly tore through the atmosphere, heavy enough to crack the surrounding pillars. Commander Hevana stepped into the ruined courtyard, her golden hair catching the morning sun. Both beastkin women halted completely, paralyzed by the sheer gravity of her presence as she approached the bleeding boy.
"You absolute fool," Hevana said slowly, her voice dropping into a chilling, venomous register. "If you cannot properly follow basic orders, I will personally see to it that you are stripped of your divine title the second we return."
"I am... deeply sorry, Commander," Carl apologized, dropping to his knees as blood poured freely from his nose onto the stone.
Hevana stepped over him, her cold, winter-blue eyes locking onto the three beastkin women. "Well... I guess I will just have to deal with you lot myself," she spoke slowly. She didn't even bother to draw the massive blade at her hip, casually approaching them with her hands resting at her sides.
"Is she seriously planning on taking the three of us on all at once?" Cyra asked through gritted teeth, her non-magical muscles tensing.
Veronica's silver eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. Down in the deep ravine, Thranduil coughed up a violent spray of blood as his remaining mana was constantly being drained by an unknown, oppressive force. Despite being miles apart from one another, both the Queen and the elf mage muttered the exact same realization:
"This is going to be trouble."
But before anyone in either location could make the first physical move, a fresh, catastrophic wave of absolute sub-zero cold washed over the entire kingdom.
This chilling energy had absolutely nothing to do with the current heavenly invaders. Everyone—the knights, the beastkin, and Carl—violently looked up toward the heavens as the clouds above completely parted. Despite the morning sun being high in the sky, the atmosphere instantly darkened into a twilight shadow as something resembling a colossal, pitch-black meteor descended from the stratosphere. Its sheer, dense magical pressure was so immense it was literally tearing the air molecule by molecule, creating a deafening sonic roar.
Hevana's cold composure finally shattered. Sensing the apocalyptic threat, she drew her massive broadblade, bracing her boots against the stone.
Down in the ravine, Thranduil gathered every ounce of his remaining strength and, with a desperate swipe of his hand, managed to construct a localized barrier around himself and Antrea.
In the courtyard, Veronica's form violently distorted, growing exponentially in size as she transformed into a massive, towering silver wolf, using her giant body to entirely cover and shield Haki and Cyra from the sky. Carl frantically erected a desperate holy barrier around his own broken armor.
Hevana took one aggressive step forward, bent her knees, and launched herself like a rocket directly at the falling star.
She collided with the descending object mid-air, her divine blade clashing against the tip of the spear. For a localized heartbeat, neither side yielded—but the sheer, unadulterated kinetic impact of the spear was far greater than her initial strength. The colossal force violently sent Hevana rocketing straight backward, crashing deep into the earth.
The abyssal ice spear didn't slow down for a single millisecond. The exact moment it struck the center of the courtyard, it detonated.
*BOOM.*
The entire atmosphere froze solid in a fraction of a second. A blinding, catastrophic wave of black frost violently erupted outward, instantly freezing the sprawling forest, the white-armored knights, and every single living creature within a five-mile radius—turning the once-lush, green beastkin kingdom into a dead, silent fortress of absolute ice.
Areia took a single, deliberate step toward the edge of the fractured peak. She cast a brief look back at the white-armored knights she had laid out across the shattered stone. They'll be fine, she thought passively. Her heavy leather boots gritted against the frozen earth as she tensed her slender, perfectly toned leg muscles. Then, with one explosive leap, she shot into the sky like a rocket, leaving a massive shockwave of displaced air behind her.
Back in the courtyard, the catastrophic frost still hung heavily in the air.
"What the hell was that?!" Veronica growled, her massive wolf form shrinking back down to her regular five-foot-two frame.
Her pristine silver hair was completely frozen solid, snapping like glass with every movement, and her ragged breath brought a thick mist of frost into the air.
"Are you okay?" Haki asked quickly, her voice tight.
Before anyone could answer, Cyra broke free from the group, her wolf ears pinned back as she ran toward the village with raw, desperate speed.
"Do I look okay to you?" Veronica muttered, her teeth chattering violently as she huddled into herself. "Who the hell did that...?" Then, a sickening realization suddenly dawned on her. "Haki... follow Cyra. The people—the village—"
"They're perfectly fine," Hevana spoke softly from a distance.
The golden-haired commander emerged from a deep crater in the earth, completely undamaged. She calmly brushed a stray flake of frost off her shoulder. "You guys are literal monsters, so we naturally expected a fight of this exact scale. We didn't only put your people to sleep before we arrived—we erected a localized holy barrier of our own to preserve them."
"My Queen, can you stand?" Haki asked, ignoring the commander as she leaned over Veronica.
"I honestly feel like I'll completely crumble into pieces if I try to," Veronica whispered, a bitter smile touching her lips. "I'm sorry, Haki... but I'm going to have to sit this one out."
"Right," Haki said, standing up to her full, slender height. Her blindfolded face turned toward the source of the oppressive cold. "Don't worry. As your knight, I'll be sure to dispatch this new intruder. But it's going to be incredibly difficult without my mana. Damn, it's freezing... Who on earth would do something like this?"
Down in the deep ravine, Thranduil finally let his flickering barrier drop.
His fingers were completely frozen numb, his blue hair laced with frost, and his eyes were heavy with absolute exhaustion. He stared at the white-clad knights frozen mid-stride right in front of him. Each and every one of them was encased in a thick, flawless pillar of abyssal ice, locked like statues. He let out a ragged cough and turned his head to look at Antrea. The pitch-black ice had caught the very edges of her dark hair, but she was entirely alright, breathing softly in her petrified state.
"You are a truly sorry sight."
The calm, slow voice drifted into his ears from right beside him. Thranduil spun his head around instantly, his face catching her eyes just inches away from his own.
Areia's deep, mesmerizing purple gaze was staring directly into his soul.
The last time he had seen Areia, she was a complete, chaotic drinking mess. But the woman standing before him now was a striking, slender vision of absolute lethality. She was insanely pretty, her pale skin contrasting sharply with the dark elements around her. Her long, white hair blended seamlessly with the ice and snow behind her, blowing elegantly in the freezing wind.
She wore a meticulously crafted set of light armor over form-fitting black garments that clung tightly to her body like a second skin. Polished, silvered metal plating covered her chest, shoulders, and arms, detailed with jointed rivets that moved flawlessly with her posture. Matching armored plating guarded her knees and shins, built directly into high-heeled black leather boots that bit firmly into the frost. A short, delicate white cape flowed from her waist, while a small, elegantly crafted blade rested securely on her hip.
Areia looked away from Thranduil, her purple eyes tracking over the unresponsive Antrea, then over the frozen vanguard. She stood up to her full height, casually resting a single gloved hand on her hip.
"Did you... did you kill them?" Thranduil asked, finding his voice.
"I did consider the people living here, and you guys too," she said coldly, her analytical mind having already calculated the spell's variables on the way down. "The spell was designed specifically to freeze the aggressors. It will have a significantly lower impact on you guys and the common folks."
She turned around, looking out across the vast, glittering expanse of midnight ice that now covered the landscape.
"Where's Cyra?" she asked, her brow furrowing slightly. "I tried contacting her through telepathy on my approach, but the link just wouldn't connect. Is something wrong with her mana?"
"Up there," Thranduil pointed a trembling hand toward the high palace walls. "They're currently fighting Carl. If you're planning on heading up there, you need to watch out. One of the women with him is incredibly, monstrously strong."
Areia didn't look worried. She was always quick on the uptake, immediately sensing the abnormal flow of energy gripping the kingdom. She bent down toward Antrea, extending a slender hand to touch the girl's head. She closed her purple eyes for a brief moment, her consciousness probing the jagged, locked pathways of the girl's mind.
Satisfied with what she found, she stood back up and looked down at the elf.
"Act like a proper mage, you elf," she said, her voice carrying a sharp, commanding edge as she turned and began walking toward the sheer cliff face. "Antrea's mind and core have been artificially tampered with. Fix it."
With that final instruction, her body blurred into the wind, and she vanished completely.