The ice knight, slowed to a crawl by the profound cold emanating from Ryn, turned its featureless head toward the new, blazing heat source. The crimson-tinged light in its chest pulsed with a malevolent rhythm, and the cavern itself seemed to groan in response. The very air became a battlefield, the absolute zero of the Ice Fox's awakening warring with the volcanic fury of Vulmir's prince.
Kael didn't wait for an invitation. "You messed with my people," he snarled, the words dripping with embers.
He shot forward, not with grace, but with pure, explosive power. The ice beneath his feet melted instantly into steam with every step. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, his right fist wreathed in a white-hot corona. He drove it straight into the knight's chest plate.
BOOM.
The sound was not of cracking ice, but of a miniature sun going off. A shockwave of heat and force radiated outwards. The knight was hurled backward, slamming into the far wall of the cavern with a thunderous crash. A massive, molten crater was left in its chest, the crimson light within flickering wildly.
Kael stood panting slightly, steam rising from his armor. "One shot. That's all it usually takes."
But this was no usual foe. This was a construct of primordial ice, powered by a fragment of a goddess and anchored to a mountain of its element. As Kael watched, the intense cold of the chamber reasserted itself. Tendrils of ice, drawn from the walls, the ceiling, and the very air, snaked across the floor and flowed into the crater on the knight's chest. They writhed and solidified, not just repairing the damage, but reinforcing it, the new ice gleaming darker, harder. Within seconds, the chest was whole again, the crimson light burning brighter, angrier.
The knight pushed itself off the wall, the ice of its body groaning in protest, but its movements were now fluid, adapted to the cold. It raised its remaining hand, and from the palm, a jagged spear of black ice coalesced and shot toward Kael with the force of a ballista.
Kael swatted it aside with a flaming forearm, the spear exploding into a cloud of superheated steam that scalded the air. "Annoying," he grunted.
He launched another assault, a blistering combination of fiery jabs and kicks. Each impact melted inches of ice, sending plumes of steam billowing through the cavern, creating a thick, choking fog. He was a whirlwind of destruction, a living forge hammering against an anvil of ancient frost. He shattered the knight's knee, melting the leg to a stump. The knight collapsed, but even as it fell, the ice flowed, rebuilding the limb before it even hit the ground.
He blasted its arm off at the shoulder. The ice regrew, thicker, sprouting wicked, icicle-like spikes.
"Stop… getting… back… up!" Kael roared, delivering a double-fisted hammer blow to its head that shattered the helmet-like formation into a thousand pieces.
The head began to reform instantly.
A guttural, grinding sound emanated from the knight—its version of laughter. It was learning. It was evolving. With each reformation, it became denser, colder, more resistant to his heat. The ambient temperature was dropping again, the Ice Fox's power solidifying its hold on Ryn and this place. Kael could feel the heat being leeched from his armor, the fire in his blood being challenged by a cold that wanted to snuff out stars.
He was losing. The realization was a colder shock than any ice.
He risked a glance behind him. Sylphie was barely conscious, her blood staining the ice, her body shivering violently as she clung to the frozen statue that was the Ice Fox. The sight sent a fresh wave of fury through him, hotter and more focused than any before.
Enough.
He planted his feet, ignoring the creeping frost that was trying to anchor him to the floor. He reached deep, past the limits of his own spirit, into the bond he shared with the ancient, wrathful creature of fire that was his other half.
"Ignathar!" he bellowed, his voice no longer entirely his own. It was a roar that held the echo of volcanoes and the birth of mountains. "I need you! NOW!"
The cavern ceiling above the knight… vanished.
It didn't collapse. It didn't shatter. It was simply unmade. A beam of concentrated, solar-white heat, wide as a palace tower, speared down from the sky. It was the pure, distilled breath of the Flame Sovereign, a force that could carve continents. There was no sound, only a terrifying, absolute silence as the air itself was vaporized.
The beam struck the ice knight dead center.
There was no steam this time. There was no molten slag. The knight, the dais it stood on, and a colossal cylinder of the mountain itself beneath it, were simply erased from existence. A smooth, glass-lined tunnel now plunged deep into the heart of the Glacial Spire, open to the raging sky above. The blizzard howled through the new opening, but was beaten back by the residual heat that made the very stone glow cherry red.
Kael stood at the edge of the newly forged abyss, his chest heaving. The power that had just coursed through him was not the half-measure he usually wielded. It was the full, terrifying potential of the dragon spirit, and it had a price.
The crimson light in his eyes, the birthright of Vulmir, flickered, faded, and was replaced by a blazing, molten gold. The eyes of Ignathar. The eyes of a dragon. The power thrummed through him, immense and alien, a tide of fire that threatened to burn away the man and leave only the vessel.
He breathed in, and smoke curled from his nostrils. He breathed out, and the air shimmered. The gold in his eyes blazed, seeing the world not as stone and ice, but as fuel and ash. His gaze swept the chamber, and for a terrifying second, it lingered on the frozen form of the Ice Fox, a being of absolute opposition to his own essence.
The dragon within saw a threat. A void that needed to be filled with fire.
But then, his gaze—Kael's gaze—flickered to the side. To the small, wounded form of the wind princess, her white and silver hair stark against the ice, her blood a shocking crimson.
Sylphie.
His non-blood sister. The annoying, cheerful, irreverent zephyr who followed him into trouble and never knew when to quit.
The memory of her laughter, a sound so antithetical to the roaring in his ears, grounded him. The molten gold in his eyes swirled, the human crimson fighting its way back to the surface. The dragon's will receded, not fully, but enough.
The intense, world-ending focus left him. His shoulders, which had been held with the rigid tension of a god, slumped slightly. The golden fire in his eyes dimmed, settling into a steady, brilliant gold, no longer the volatile crimson of Vulmir, but not yet fully the human prince's either. It was a new balance, forged in the crucible of that overwhelming power.
He turned his back on the abyss he had created and strode toward Sylphie. The deadly cold still radiated from Ryn, but Kael's own aura was now a portable inferno, pushing it back just enough to create a small, habitable space.
He knelt beside her, his armored knees melting small depressions into the ice. He didn't touch Ryn; the primordial cold was still a danger even to him. But he looked at Sylphie, at the shallow rise and fall of her chest, at the dark blood on her wings and clothes.
She was alive.
A long, slow breath escaped him, a sigh of relief that carried the scent of smoke and cooled magma. The remaining tension bled from his frame. The immediate battle was over. The knight was gone. His sister was alive.
Now, the real problem remained: what to do with a living, breathing, and rapidly freezing godling.