The storm didn't just surround her anymore. It moved like she did.
Snow that had been falling in violent, chaotic sheets suddenly bent inward, curling around Katabasis's new form as though the blizzard itself had grown lungs and was breathing with her. Frozen mist thickened at her feet and rose in slow, deliberate spirals, and when she finally stepped forward, ice bloomed beneath every footfall, spikes bursting up through the ruined marble a half-second before she reached them — as if the ground itself already knew where she intended to be.
Azraeth's stomach tightened.
That's not an environmental effect anymore. That's her. All of it.
She came at him without warning, and this time there was no pattern to read at all — no ricochet timing, no telegraphed wind-up, nothing his instincts could hang onto. One moment she was thirty feet away; the next, a wall of frozen spikes erupted directly beneath his feet while her claws swept in from the opposite flank, the blizzard itself screening her real position behind a curtain of driven snow.
He barely twisted clear, Fire Protection's shield flaring as ice fragments tore past where his ribs had been a heartbeat earlier, and the ground beneath him buckled again — another spike field, another angle, forcing him airborne directly into her waiting claws. The strike caught him across the chest, and even through the shield, it felt like being hit by the palace's collapsing ceiling. He hit the ruined floor hard, skidding through frost and shattered stone, and didn't have time to breathe before a wall of compacted snow slammed into him like a fist made of winter, hurling him through a pillar that had somehow survived their first fight intact. It didn't survive this one.
He caught the follow-up claw strike on a raised forearm, the impact numbing him to the elbow, and pumped more of the shield's reserve into his guard. Katabasis pressed without pause, claws, wind, and jagged spikes arriving from three directions at once, and Azraeth found himself doing nothing but surviving — dodge, block, retreat, dodge again, every attempt to plant his feet and answer immediately punished by the storm shifting the ground itself beneath him, ice walls rising in his path only to collapse a heartbeat later, forcing him to change direction mid-stride again and again.
I can't find an opening. There isn't one. The whole room is her.
For the first time since the fight began, something close to real fear settled into his chest — not for himself, but for how badly he was losing ground.
He forced himself to stop reacting to her and started reading the storm instead, the same instinct that had once let him track her mist. It was harder now, denser, more alive, but Heat Sense still found her — a concentration of warmth and hostile intent buried somewhere inside the white — and Foresight, straining, began catching the barest fraction of movement before the storm committed to it.
The next spike field rose a half-second before it should have caught him, and he was already moving, already clear, landing a burning knee into her ribs as she emerged from the mist to press the advantage. It wasn't clean — she absorbed most of it and answered with a backhand that clipped his shoulder — but it was something.
There. I can read this. I just have to keep reading it.
She adapted before he could even finish the thought. The claw strikes stopped coming in straight lines. She began feinting mid-swing, redirecting attacks that should have connected into entirely different angles, using bursts of wind to disguise which hand was actually striking. A grapple he thought he'd read cleanly became a throw instead, her claws hurling him into a collapsing pillar hard enough to crack the stone further. He came up already burning with Fire Booster, met her next charge with a flurry of his own — elbow, knee, palm, pivot — only for her to vanish behind driven snow and reappear from directly above, claws raking down at an angle her position shouldn't have allowed.
Teleport saved him. Barely. He reappeared low, sliding across the frost, and slammed his palm flat against the ground.
Indigo Colored Fire — Mud Lava
Molten earth bloomed beneath where she landed, and her footing genuinely failed for the first time, one leg sinking to the knee in the burning mire. She tore free within a heartbeat, ice hissing where the mud scorched her — but it bought him space, a breath, a reminder that this fight could still be shaped.
Small wins. That's all I get right now. I'll take them.
He reappeared behind a listing pillar, chest heaving, and allowed himself half a breath before the pain arrived — sharper this time, a spike driving behind his eyes rather than the dull throb before. The world doubled for a full second, the storm smearing into overlapping images before snapping back. He staggered, and Foresight's warning arrived just late enough that her claws opened a shallow line across his ribs instead of missing entirely.
"Ugh—" He pressed a burning palm to the wound, forcing the pain down through sheer will.
Indigo Colored Fire — Lava Heal
The flame dulled the ache enough to think, though it never touched the pressure behind his eyes at all, that particular pain sitting stubborn and untouched no matter how much fire he poured into it.
This isn't just fatigue. I think I already know what this is — I just don't want to be right.
He didn't have the luxury of finishing that thought. She was already moving again, rhythm shifted entirely — no more spike fields, no more feints, just raw, relentless strength, closing distance faster than the blizzard alone could explain. He caught one strike on crossed forearms, bone aching beneath the impact, parried another, and answered with a burning counter that cracked ice wide across her cheek.
She staggered — a real opening — and Azraeth pressed it without hesitation, chaining a burning knee, an elbow off her guard, a palm strike into the crack he'd just opened. Katabasis answered by changing again, abandoning strength for something colder and more calculating, feinting a claw strike only to whip a spear of solid ice from the storm itself, forcing him to twist mid-combo or lose his shoulder to it. He twisted. It still grazed him, and blood joined the frost already crusting his sleeve.
She won't let me settle. Every time I find the rhythm, she breaks it on purpose.
He answered with something larger.
Indigo Colored Fire — Stellar Pull
He held the shape small at first — the compressed sphere — hurling it through a gap in her guard, the detonation cracking her armor along the ribs. She snarled, a sound that shook loose ice from the ceiling, and charged with everything, abandoning finesse for pure momentum.
He met it instead of dodging, driving forward with Fire Booster roaring around his feet, chaining strikes into the wound he'd already opened — knee, elbow, palm, knee again — each impact costing him ground as her claws found gaps he was too exhausted to close.
Both of them were bleeding into the ruined ice now, and the throne room had nearly finished collapsing around them, pillars reduced to stumps, the ceiling open to a sky the blizzard had swallowed whole. The pounding behind Azraeth's eyes had become a constant, grinding pressure, blurring the edges of everything, and somewhere beneath the pain he understood with total clarity that he could not afford to let this drag any further.
If this doesn't end now, I don't think I will.
Indigo Colored Fire — Stellar Pull
He let the star grow this time — not to its true size, never that, a shape vast enough to swallow the planet itself was not a thing he would ever unleash inside a dying room — but he expanded it until the compact blue giant filled the shattered chamber floor to ceiling, gravity bending inward, dragging debris and driven snow alike into its churning light. Katabasis roared and fought the pull with everything her new form carried, claws digging trenches through stone as she resisted being drawn in, and even at half a step from the star's edge, her movements slowed, weighted, the storm around her faltering as its mistress strained against the crush of her own gravity.
It was enough. Only just.
He collapsed the star and surged in through the opening it had bought him, meeting her stagger with a full-bodied chain of strikes, and when she caught his final blow on crossed claws, snarling, refusing to yield even now, Azraeth made his decision.
Indigo Colored Fire — Supernova
He compressed everything he had left into a single burning core between his palms, holding it a breath longer than instinct wanted him to, feeling her claws already descending toward him as the charge completed —
The release was silent before it was anything else, a single heartbeat of held light, and then the throne room dissolved into white heat, molten fire tearing through ice and stone and storm alike, erasing everything in its path in a flash too absolute to leave anything behind to convulse, to stagger, to rise again.
When the light faded, Katabasis did not move.
The blizzard died with her, the wind collapsing into silence so sudden it rang in Azraeth's ears, snow drifting gently now where it had screamed moments before. Her colossal form settled into the molten ruin, unmoving, and this time, nothing stirred.
DING!
⟢ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
[Enemy Defeated: Wendigo Queen — Katabasis]
[Level: 650]
[Class: Primordial Aberration]
[Exp Gained: +150,000,000]
DING!
[Level Up! Level 750 → Level 752]
Azraeth sank to one knee amid the wreckage, chest heaving, blood and frost mingling across the scorched marble beneath him. He pressed both hands against his temples, and the pain that had shadowed him through the entire battle surged now, unrestrained, a pressure behind his eyes so severe it blurred the ruined chamber into smears of white and gray.
This isn't normal. This was never just a headache.
He forced his breathing steady, forced his thoughts into something resembling order, and through the throbbing haze, one certainty rose above everything else.
"System..." His voice came out rough, quieter than he intended. "Show me my status."
Maybe I already know the cause of this headache. I just need to see it confirmed.