The world narrowed to the space between them. Gray and the white-haired woman were locked in a silent, motionless standoff. The only sound was the faint, unsettling bubble of the liquid in the stone bowl and the low, guttural growls of the Drowned. Her gaze was an unnerving physical weight on him, those glacial blue pupils seeing him with a clarity that felt impossible.
A cold dread, separate from the chamber's chill, trickled down his spine. 'How can she see me?' His mind raced, scrambling for logic. He glanced down at his arms, his hands, confirming the living darkness still writhed around them, a cloak of shifting shadow. It made no sense. His fingers, moving with agonizing slowness, crept toward the familiar, worn leather of his katana's hilt.
Then...
The attack came without a sound from her. A sharp hiss cut the air as an arrow shot past her stationary shoulder. It was a thing of lethal beauty, carved from crystalline ice, and it flew with unerring accuracy straight for his heart. There was no time for thought, only the honed instinct of survival. In one fluid motion, the katana was in his hand, its steel blade meeting the frozen projectile with a sharp, ringing crack. The arrow shattered, scattering ice shards across the frosty floor.
But the defensive act had a cost. The concentration, quietness required to maintain the veil shattered with the arrow. The darkness clinging to his form shuddered violently, then dispersed like ink dropped in water, unraveling from his body to melt away into the dank air. He was revealed. Completely.
It was an visceral sensation. Instantly, he felt the weight of the chamber's attention lock onto him, the hollow, void-white stares of the pale humans, the mindless, hungry snarls of the Drowned as their heads swiveled toward the new stimulus, the gazes the Cryovigils as their icy body's turned in unison. He dared not look at them but cpuld tell they were hodling even tighter to the groups body's He felt naked, exposed under the eerie blue torchlight.
"Damn it," he cursed, the words a hot puff of mist in the cold air. He dropped into a low, ready stance, the katana held before him.
From the tunnel entrance, Aurelle burst forth, his own slender blade already drawn and gleaming. His sapphire eyes took in the scene in a single, sweeping glance, Gray revealed, the armed foes, the awakened chamber. "The veil failed? What happened?" he called, his voice tight.
"I doesn't matter!" Gray shouted back, his attention never leaving the white-haired woman and the wiry archer who now calmly nocked another arrow. "The Drowned and the big one are yours! I'll handle these two and cut them free!"
Movement flickered in his periphery. Renn hovered at the tunnel's mouth, his face a pale mask of sheer terror, his body trembling. "Renn, stay put!" Gray barked, the command leaving no room for argument. The boy flinched as if struck and pressed himself flat against the icy wall, making himself small.
The standoff with the woman resumed, but the air now crackled with imminent violence. He could not wait. He had to make a move. He took a single, deliberate step toward the suspended prisoners above the bowl.
The chamber erupted.
He spun in a one-eighty, bringing his katana up in a wide arc aimed at the thick ropes. A blur of motion was his only warning. A boot, moving with silent, impossible speed, connected with his ribs. The force was immense, lifting him off his feet and driving the air from his lungs in a pained, explosive gasp. He crashed into the unyielding ice wall behind him, his vision blooming with white spots of agony. Slumping forward, he struggled to draw a breath, each attempt a sharp stab. She stood before him now, having closed the distance in the blink of an eye, her expression still chillingly blank, as if swatting him away had required no effort at all.
An arrow whistled toward his head, forcing him to jerk aside. The ice-tipped projectile shattered against the wall where his skull had been, leaving a massive fracture in the ice. Gritting his teeth against the fiery pain in his side, he used the wall to push himself upright and charged. The womans slim sword, sheathed in a permanent layer of glistening frost, appeared in her hand as if by magic, meeting his katana in a shriek of steel. Chips of frozen rime flew from her blade; bright orange sparks skittered from his. The vibration of the clash traveled up his arm, numbing his fingers.
They broke apart, circling each other on the icy floor. He was constantly moving, his attention perilously split between her silent, efficient lethality and the archer's patient, precise shots from the shadows. He saw an opening, feinted a high strike to her neck, and at the last second dropped his weight, lunging low for her legs. She dropped with him, her own blade sweeping in a low, horizontal arc meant to sever his tendons. Anticipating this, he planted his front foot and pushed off, using his momentum to execute a backward flip over her sweeping strike. He landed neatly behind her, his balance perfect. His katana rose, poised to drive straight through her back and into her heart.
But despite his perfect movements, he still failed to anticipate it.
A searing, cold pain erupted in his right shoulder. His perfect form broke. His thrust faltered, the blade dipping. Glancing down, he saw the fletching of an ice arrow buried deep in the muscle of his deltoid. His arm immediately began to go numb, a deep, invasive cold spreading from the wound down to his fingertips, sapping his strength and making his grip on the katana feel loose and clumsy. He tried to push through the blinding pain, to finish the lunge, but his body wouldn't obey.
He quickly realized his error and tried backing away but was too late.
Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.
Three more arrows hammered into his chest in quick, brutal succession. The impacts were like being struck by a hammer, throwing him backward. He lost his footing, stumbling, and landed hard against the cold, unyielding stone of the great bowl. The world swam, sounds becoming muffled and distant. Each breath was a sharp, ragged agony, and he could feel a warm wetness spreading across his chest, stark against the pervasive cold.
He turned his head, his cheek pressed against the frigid stone. The strange, oily liquid within the bowl shimmered just inches from his face, its surface rippling and coalescing without any visible cause. Gritting his teeth against a wave of nausea, he used his still-functioning left hand to grip the shaft of the arrow in his shoulder. With a grunt of sheer agony, he pulled, muscles straining. It came free with a sickening, wet sound. It was made entirely of ice, already stained a shocking crimson with his blood. A profound, unnatural cold radiated from each wound, a deep freeze that was beginning to seep into his very core.
A massive crash echoed through the chamber, followed by Aurelle's sharp cry of pain. Gray turned his head, vision blurry, to see the near perfect swordsman thrown against a far wall by a powerful swing from the giant's ice-crusted axe. Aurelle was a whirlwind of motion, his blade a silver streak, but for every Drowned he dismembered or beheaded, two more shambled forward, their wounds slowly sealing over with a glistening layer of new ice. He was being slowly overwhelmed.
They were losing. Hopelessly.
His gaze snapped back to the immediate threat. The white-haired woman had turned from him but hesitated, her eyes flicking between his prone form and the bubbling alter. She took half a step forward, then stopped, as if an invisible barrier prevented her from getting too close to the stone bowl.
'Is it because of the alter?' Gray thought, a spark of understanding cutting through the pain-haze. She wouldn't risk damaging it or spilling its contents, and that meant whatever was inside it was special to them. Even the monsters held things with value close to themselves.
But Gray wasted no more time. Seizing the moment, he grimaced and, with his left hand, wretched the remaining three arrows from his chest. Each extraction was a fresh wave of blinding, nauseating pain that made black spots dance in his vision. Blood, shockingly red, dripped onto the pure white ice at his knees, each drop sizzling faintly before freezing.
He had to fight stronger. Now. There was no more time for skill, for finesse. It was all or nothing.
He reached inward again., to the core of cold, dark power that always simmered within him. He channeled even more Vyre, feeling it burn through his veins, and forced it into his right hand. He wiped the dark-crackling hand along the length of his katana, and the steel seemed to drink the shadows, turning a deep, non-reflective black. He channeled more power into his left hand, the air around his fist shimmering with barely contained destructive force. Using his katana as a crutch, he pushed himself to his feet, his body screaming in protest with every movement.
The woman's eyes narrowed, finally showing a flicker of something, not concern, but calculation. The archer drew his bowstring taut once more, aiming for his heart.
Gray took a final shuddering breath.