The metal spires of the Thunderstorm Plains pierced the leaden sky like ranks of spears thrust towards the heavens. Lu Chen stood on the edge of a tower's summit, below him an abyss roiling with purple lightning serpents and sulfurous smoke. The silver breastplate of a Light Realm Paladin bore the emblem of the "Oath of Radiance" – a sun icon – crudely gouged out, leaving a rough, ugly depression. The wind whipped his dark golden bangs aside, revealing a deeply furrowed brow and a fresh, charred burn mark on his eyebrow ridge – a mark of shame left by his own power running wild.
*Exile.* The word tasted like rust and blood on his tongue. Three days ago, he had been the youngest Paladin Commander in the holy city of "Dawnsplendor," where light and fire obeyed his command like docile lambs, symbols of order and purification. Until that utterly unexpected pulse deep within the Source Flow, like an invisible hammer blow. On the training ground, as he guided his comrades in a Flame Resonance ritual, the pure light energy coalesced in his palm had inexplicably boiled and mutated. The incandescent sphere violently detonated, and the uncontrolled holy fire, like venomous snakes, lashed towards his nearest comrade, Adrian.
The piercing shriek, the stench of scorched flesh, the horrifying sight of half of Adrian's body instantly charred to carbon, and the lingering, inextinguishable pale flames in his own palm… The judgment of the Sanctum Tribunal had been swift and icy: Power Out of Control. Endangerment of Holy Light Comrades. Exile to the Dark Abyss Borderlands. Until his sins were cleansed by the eternally frozen darkness, or he died within it.
The wind grew fiercer, carrying the Thunderstorm Plains' signature metallic tang and ozone bite. A faint tremor ran through the metal platform beneath his feet – the sign of the "Border Bridge" rail-disc activating, connecting the Light Realm to the Dark Abyss Borderlands. No farewells. No pitying glances. The disc slid silently into the sulfur-fogged abyss, leaving behind the spires of the Thunderstorm Plains and all past glories and sins, swallowed by the churning purple storm clouds.
The descent was a prolonged suffocation. Light was stripped away layer by layer. The last glimmer of daylight vanished above the thick, polluted clouds, and the world sank into a viscous, oppressive darkness. The air turned bitingly cold, reeking of stale earth and stone. The disc finally docked at the edge of a vast, subterranean cavern, seemingly gnawed out by some colossal beast. Rough stone walls were sheathed in perpetually unmelted, ghostly blue ice, emitting a feeble, cold luminescence that faintly outlined jagged contours and a path littered with shattered ice, leading deeper into the darkness.
This was the border of the Dark Abyss – the Everfrost Wastes. Land forsaken by the light.
Cold instantly seized Lu Chen. He tried to summon the light-fire power that had once obeyed his will. Only a few weak, flickering wisps of pale flame sputtered from his fingertips before being instantly snuffed out by the soul-freezing chill that permeated everything. Light here was like a guttering candle; fire, an impossible luxury. He pulled his thin exile's burlap cloak tighter. Every step on the icy shards crunched with a grating sound that echoed far in the deathly silent cavern.
He walked for an unknowable time before the cavern abruptly opened up. Before him lay a vast, frozen lake. Its surface wasn't smooth, but covered in countless sharp, twisted icicles and vortex-like patterns of bizarre ice, radiating an even more intense ghostly blue light than the cavern walls, casting the entire space in an eerie, underworld glow. At the very center of the lake stood a crude watchtower, cobbled together from rough black stone and distorted ice pillars. At its peak, a faint, murky orange flame was the only presence bearing any semblance of warmth in this desolate, frozen hell.
Just as Lu Chen stepped onto the frozen lake shore, chaos erupted.
*"Hssss—SCREEE!"*
A piercing shriek tore through the deathly silence! Several blurred, dark shapes shot out from the shadows at the lake's edge! Their forms were unstable, like viscous ink mixed with shattered ice crystals, featureless save for gaping maws that constantly opened and closed, dripping black ichor. Shadowspawn! The lowest predators of the Everfrost Wastes, drawn by the scent of a despairing exile.
The shadows pounced, bringing with them a bone-chilling, negative wind! Lu Chen's pupils contracted. An exile's only weapon was a crude stone dagger. Survival instinct overrode the sluggishness of his power. With a low roar, he instinctively thrust his palm forward!
*"WHUMP—!"*
A burst of pale, uncontrolled light-fire erupted! Blindingly intense, it momentarily tore through the thick darkness like a flashbang detonated in the deep sea. Yet this fire was violent and chaotic, devoid of the warmth and purification of holy flame, bearing only pure, destructive heat! The two Shadowspawn leading the charge were caught by the chaotic blaze. They let out agonized, soul-rending shrieks, bodies contorting violently within the light, billowing thick black smoke, before instantly disintegrating into nothingness.
But more Shadowspawn were enraged! Ignoring their companions' annihilation, they swarmed even more frantically from the surrounding shadows, like a black tide. Lu Chen's strength rapidly drained after the outburst. The pale flames flickered uncertainly, nearly extinguished. A freezing claw, formed of shadow and ice shards, carrying marrow-freezing cold, tore through the air, aimed straight at his throat!
At the critical moment—
*"HMMMMMMMM—CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!"*
A deep, bone-vibrating hum, accompanied by the rapid, dense sound of crystallizing ice, abruptly blanketed the entire frozen lake space!
Time seemed to freeze for half a beat.
The shadowy claw lunging at Lu Chen stopped dead in the air, mere inches from his Adam's apple. A layer of ice, thin and almost transparent yet radiating absolute-zero cold, visibly coated the claw and rapidly spread along the Shadowspawn's distorted limbs! Wherever the ice passed, the shadow-stuff solidified, became brittle, and lost its vitality.
Not just that!
The area where Lu Chen's uncontrolled pale light-fire had erupted was also swept by this terrifying cold power! The violently leaping flames seemed forcibly grasped and shaped by an invisible giant hand! A shell of ghostly blue ice instantly condensed over the surface of the leaping flames, freezing and imprisoning the chaotic energy! The light was locked within the ice, forming eerie yet beautiful suspended "frozen light sculptures"! Pale light shone through the ghostly blue ice, casting cold, distorted patterns.
*Freezing… light?*
Lu Chen's mind almost stalled. This completely defied his understanding of the Source Flow's laws! Light and heat were the natural enemies of ice. How could they be… imprisoned by ice?
A figure, as if woven from darkness itself, appeared soundlessly on the ice a few paces in front of Lu Chen.
He was tall, his frame seeming gaunt in the ghostly blue light, wrapped in a worn, deep-gray fur cloak, the hood pulled low, revealing only a jawline of cold, hard angles. He held no weapon, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. But his right hand, which had just been raised as if making a grasping motion, still had wisps of nearly invisible, faint cold vapor curling around the fingertips.
The remaining Shadowspawn seemed paralyzed by terror of this figure. They hissed incoherently and retreated like a receding tide back into the thick shadows at the lake's edge, vanishing. Only the frozen light sculptures hanging in the air, and the several Shadowspawn remnants completely encased in ghostly blue ice statues, remained suspended as eerie warnings in the cavern.
Silence descended again, deeper than before. Only the occasional faint, earth-groaning crack from deep within the ice.
The shadow beneath the hood shifted slightly. That icy gaze pierced the darkness, settling on Lu Chen. It held no anger, no curiosity, only a pure, detached scrutiny colder than the deepest ice of the Everfrost Wastes.
"Scum of the Light Realm," a voice rasped, low, flat, devoid of inflection, yet sharp as an ice pick scraping rock, chiseling clearly into Lu Chen's ears. "Your fire… is noisy."
Lu Chen's heart clenched, not from fear, but from the figure's utterly dismissive, contemptuous tone, and that inconceivable power – freezing light! His own residual light-fire power, provoked by the gaze and the words, stirred like a wounded beast deep within his chilled body, burning and writhing, causing waves of dull pain. Pale flames flickered uncontrollably at the edges of his clenched fists, like dying gasps.
The hooded gaze seemed to glance at the weak flames in his fists. A trace of derision, so faint it might have been imagined, flickered.
"Extinguish it." A command, brooking no argument. "Or I will grant you permanent… silence."
Cold radiated outwards, soundlessly. Not from the air, but from the figure himself, as if he were a moving ice core. The suspended "frozen light sculptures" over the lake seemed to respond to their master's will; the pale light trapped within the ghostly blue ice pulsed more rapidly, yet remained utterly imprisoned by that seemingly thin, yet indestructible, cage of ice.
Lu Chen gritted his teeth until his mouth filled with the taste of blood. The humiliation of exile, the image of Adrian's scorched body, the terrifying, unfathomable enemy before him and his power to freeze light… Chaotic emotions clashed in his chest like uncontrolled fire. He stared fiercely into the hood's shadow, trying to discern the face beneath.
"Who are you?" Lu Chen's voice was hoarse, strained with suppressed power tremor. The pale flames in his fists jumped more violently, as if about to break free and erupt again.
The gray-cloaked man didn't answer. He stood still, an ancient iceberg. Yet, at his boot tip, the hard ice began to silently spread with a circle of denser, darker blue ice patterns. The patterns weren't static; they slowly rotated and grew like living things. Where they passed, even the faint moisture in the air instantly condensed into fine ice crystals, sifting down.
An absolute field of cold was expanding. A silent ultimatum.
Lu Chen's skin prickled instantly, every pore screaming. He felt his own agitated light-fire power being forcibly suppressed, hemmed in by this intangible, overwhelmingly domineering cold, like magma plunged into an icy sea, hissing with impotent fury before rapidly cooling and solidifying. The flames in his fists struggled a few times, then finally died out completely, leaving only numbness and the hollow ache of burnt-out power.
"Tang Xiao." The gray-cloaked man finally spoke, uttering a name, but it sounded more like stating an irrelevant fact. His gaze moved past Lu Chen, towards the thick darkness deep within the frozen lake, as if something there demanded his attention far more. "Keeper of this wasteland." He paused. The hood's shadow seemed to lift slightly. That icy gaze returned to Lu Chen's face, carrying the detached scrutiny one might give a sacrificial offering. "And you, stray ember of the light-flame, have but one choice: Turn. Walk into the 'Shatterbone Rift' behind you." He raised a finger, pointing towards a narrow, deep fissure hidden amongst jagged ice cliffs behind Lu Chen. A mournful wind howled from it, thick with the scent of blood and decay. "The things inside hunger. Feed them your flesh and what little warmth you retain. That is your only worth. Your only path to 'silence'."
Shatterbone Rift? The mere aura carried on that wind was enough to chill the bravest warrior. It was a notorious deathtrap in the Everfrost Wastes, a graveyard for exiles.
Lu Chen's blood seemed to truly freeze in that moment. The cold emanating from Tang Xiao's