The march into the heart of the Silent Tundra was a journey into a graveyard that had forgotten how to rot.
With the destruction of the Frost Lords' vanguard, the grey mist had retreated, revealing the true face of the North. It was not a landscape of white snow, but of translucent, blue ice. The ground beneath the boots of the Army of the Broken was clear as glass, extending down for hundreds of feet.
And in that ice, there were bodies.
Millions of them.
Kael Light walked at the head of the column, his boots clicking on the frozen surface. He looked down. Beneath him, preserved in perfect, agonizing detail, were the armies of eras past. Soldiers of the old Aethelgardian Empire, warriors of the nomadic tribes, and even creatures that defied classification—beasts of fur and fang that had gone extinct before the Academy laid its first stone.
"They aren't buried," Thorne rumbled, his voice tight. He gripped his new, black-iron sword, the Soul-Steel blade humming with a hungry vibration that made the air shiver. "They're displayed."
"It's a museum," Kael whispered, the steam from his breath freezing instantly and falling as diamond dust. "The Frost Lords don't just kill. They collect."
Ignis, riding atop the stripped-down chassis of The Dawn's Hammer, scanned the horizon with his mechanical eye. "Saint, I'm picking up a massive energy signature dead ahead. It's not just Necro-Ice. It's... organized. It feels like the Prime Cradle, but inverted. Instead of a heartbeat, it has a flatline."
They crested a ridge of jagged obsidian glass, and there, sitting in the center of a frozen crater, was Site-Six: The Tundra Cradle.
It was not a fortress of stone or iron. It was a palace constructed entirely of bone and black ice. Spire after spire rose into the grey sky, formed from the ribcages of leviathans and the skulls of giants. Green "Necro-Fire" burned in iron braziers along the walls—a fire that radiated cold instead of heat.
And standing before the gates of this Necropolis was the Death Army.
They were not the mindless, fragile Ice-Wraiths the army had slaughtered in the village. These were the elites of the ancient world, resurrected and bound to the ice. Ten thousand skeletal warriors stood in perfect, silent formation. They wore armor of rusted bronze and blackened silver, their eye sockets glowing with the same piercing teal light that Caspian possessed—but twisted, corrupted into a hateful glare.
"Skeletons," Pip muttered, pulling his coat tighter. "Why did it have to be skeletons? I hate the ones that don't have skin."
"They are the 'Preserved'," Garret growled, his hackles raised so high he looked twice his size. "They smell of old dust and new magic. My pack is restless, Father. The wolves do not want to bite meat that has no blood."
Kael stepped forward. The "Stable Agony" in his chest gave a violent lurch, a rib snapping and resetting in a warning rhythm.
THUD-CRACK.
"We don't have to bite them," Kael said, his voice amplified by the silent air. "We just have to break them."
He raised his hand. "Thorne! Frontal assault! Use the Hungry Iron! Garret, take the flanks! Ignis, target the gates with the Radiant Cannons!"
"For the Sun!" Thorne roared, raising his black sword.
The Army of the Broken charged.
The Death Army did not scream. They moved with the synchronized click-clack of bone on ice. They raised shields of frozen shadow and spears of bone.
The clash was the sound of a landslide.
Thorne led the wedge, his Soul-Steel sword shearing through a skeletal warrior's shield. The "Hungry Iron" did its work; as the blade connected, it didn't just shatter the bone—it drank the teal light animating the skeleton. The undead warrior collapsed into a pile of inanimate dust.
"Feed the iron!" Thorne shouted to his men. "Don't let them reform! Strike the joints!"
The battle was chaotic and brutal. The Death Army fought with a discipline that the living militia struggled to match. Skeletal archers on the bone-walls fired volleys of ice-arrows that exploded on impact, freezing limbs and shattering armor.
Kael moved through the melee like a wraith. He didn't use a weapon. He used the "Living Sun." He kept a localized field of intense heat around his body, melting any skeleton that got too close. He wasn't fighting the soldiers; he was fighting the path to the gate.
He reached the massive doors of the Necropolis—two slabs of black ice etched with runes of preservation.
"Ignis! Now!" Kael ordered.
From the ridge, the Dawn's Hammer fired. A beam of iridescent Dawn-Mana struck the gates. The ice screamed, turning to steam, and the doors blew inward.
Kael walked through the breach, leaving the chaos of the battle behind. He entered the Throne Room of the Tundra Cradle.
It was a cavernous hall, the floor a mirror of black ice. At the far end, upon a dais made of frozen blood, sat two thrones.
On the left sat the Lich King. He was a giant of a man, his flesh desiccated and blue, stretched tight over broad bones. He wore a crown of iron icicles, and in his hand rested a massive greatsword that pulsed with entropy.
On the right sat the Lich Queen. She was skeletal and elegant, draped in a gown of woven frost. Her eyes were twin voids of teal fire, and she held a scepter topped with a frozen human heart.
Between them, floating in a sphere of absolute zero, were the Source-Vessels.
Twins. A boy and a girl, no older than seven. They were curled around each other, their skin glowing with a desperate, golden warmth that was slowly being siphoned off into the thrones. They were the batteries for this eternal winter.
"The intruder," the Lich King spoke. His voice was the sound of a glacier calving—deep, grinding, and inevitable. "The one who brings the noise. The one who brings the rot of heat."
"He is warm," the Lich Queen whispered, her voice a chilling wind. "Disgustingly warm. He reeks of change. He reeks of life."
Kael stopped in the center of the hall. The temperature here was so low that even his "Stable Agony" struggled to keep his blood liquid. He felt his movements slowing, the heat being sucked out of his marrow.
"I am Kael Light," he said, his breath freezing before it left his lips. "And I have come to melt your kingdom."
The Lich King stood up. He stood seven feet tall, his shadow stretching long and dark across the ice. "You misunderstand, boy. We are not conquerors. We are preservers. The world outside is messy. It decays. It dies. It suffers. Here, in the ice, nothing changes. Nothing hurts. We are saving them from the agony of time."
"Stasis isn't life," Kael countered, his iridescent eyes blazing. "It's just a pretty grave."
"And what do you offer?" the Lich Queen asked, floating up from her throne. "You, the carrier of the Dark God? You offer chaos. You offer pain. You call it 'Growth,' but we know it is just a slow march toward the Void."
She gestured to the twins. "These two... Castor and Pollux. They are the Binary Stars. Their light is too bright for this world. If we let them go, they will burn themselves out in a human lifetime. Here, they will shine forever. We are kind, Kael Light. We are the only ones who truly love them."
"You're draining them," Kael snarled. "You're eating their warmth to feed your army."
"A necessary tax," the Lich King grunted. He stepped off the dais, dragging his greatsword. "To maintain perfection requires energy. And you... you have brought us a feast. A God-Vessel. If we freeze you, Kael... we can preserve this world for eternity."
The Lich King lunged.
He moved with a speed that belied his size. He didn't teleport; he simply slid across the frictionless floor. His greatsword swung in a horizontal arc, trailing a wake of black ice crystals.
Kael didn't dodge. He couldn't. The air was too thick with cold.
He blocked with the Stasis Ring.
CLANG.
The impact drove Kael's feet into the black ice. The force was immense, but it was the cold that terrified him. The Lich King's sword didn't just hit the shield; it began to freeze the mana of the Star-Core. The violet-gold light turned brittle and cracked.
"Your sun is dying," the Lich King mocked, pressing down.
Kael gritted his teeth. Thud-crack. His radius snapped under the pressure.
"The sun doesn't die," Kael whispered. "It just sets."
Kael dropped the shield and ducked under the blade. He placed his hand on the Lich King's exposed ribcage.
"Ancient Art: The Fever of the First Breath!"
He didn't use fire. He used infection. He injected a pulse of "Hyper-Life"—raw, uncontrolled biological growth—into the undead King.
The Lich King roared, stumbling back. Where Kael had touched him, moss and vines erupted from the dry bone, tearing through the ancient armor. The "Life" acted like a cancer to the undead, disrupting the stasis of his form.
"He corrupts the purity!" the Lich Queen shrieked.
She raised her scepter. The sphere holding the twins began to spin. She wasn't just drawing power; she was preparing to merge them.
"If we cannot keep them separate," the Queen hissed, "we will fuse them. A Singular Star cannot be freed!"
The twins inside the sphere screamed—a soundless, psychic wail that shattered the ice windows of the palace.
Kael looked from the staggering King to the Queen. He was one man against two monarchs of death.
THEY WANT TO MAKE A BLACK HOLE, KAEL, the God warned. IF THE TWINS MERGE, THEY WILL COLLAPSE INTO A SINGULARITY OF ENTROPY. THE NORTH WON'T JUST FREEZE. IT WILL CEASE TO EXIST.
Kael wiped the frozen blood from his lip. He stood between the King and the Queen, his body smoking with the heat of his exertion.
"Then I guess I have to break the engagement," Kael said.
He reached into his tunic and pulled out a hilt made of the blackened Soul-Steel he had forged in the village. He hadn't just made weapons for his army. He had made one for himself.
He channeled the "Dawn-Mana" into the blade. The hungry iron didn't eat the light; it drank it and held it, turning the blade into a glowing, violet void-edge.
"Let's see who freezes first," Kael challenged.