No one ran.
Not because they were brave. They all froze. The heat hit them like a wall the moment the creature stepped fully into the clearing.
The ember golem was not fast. It did not need to be. Every step it took scorched the ground. The trees nearest to it bent away, their bark splitting with a dry crack as the heat warped the air around them.
Yvain dropped to one knee and drove his fist into the ground.
Slabs of rock surged upward, thick and uneven, slamming into the golem's midsection. The impact cracked stone against stone. The monster staggered, slowing down its momentum towards them. The slabs shattered into pieces. It caused little to no damage. It was like smashing two rocks against each other hoping to ignite a spark.
Yvain was already breathing hard. He raised another column from the ground, driving it upward like a spear into the golem's chest. The force was enough to push it back two steps. But the stone dissolved on contact, eaten by the heat radiating off its body.
He gritted his teeth. " I can't cause any damage."
Vince stepped forward, hands raised. He reached with his mind. He could barely lift the golem off the ground. The mass wasn't like the stones he had been practicing on.
The golem turned its hollow head towards him. It raised one massive arm and swung.
Vince dove left. The limb passed close enough that he felt the heat peel across his shoulder. No contact. But the branch behind him ignited on the spot.
The sight of this sent the rear group scrambling further from the tree line.
Tom flanked right, testing the distance. He stood with both palms lit, flame roiling off his hands.
He hurled a blast.
The fire struck the golem's side and was simply absorbed. The golem brightened briefly at the point of impact. It was like adding fuel into a burning fire.
"Stop that," Cateline said flatly. "You're just making it stronger."
Tom lowered his hands, feeling useless.
The golem advanced again. Slow. Distance was their only advantage, and it was shrinking.
Yvain tried again. He layered the assault this time, three slabs pulling from different angles, trying to pin the golem's leg to the ground. The stones cracked against its shins and dissolved.
Cateline spawned two copies, sending them sprinting in opposite directions. The golem's hollow head tracked one, then the other. Between the space of the split second confusion, Yvain drove another stone slab into its back. The crack was loud. A seam of black stone split across the golem's shoulder, ember light bleeding through the fracture.
The ember light bleeding released more heat waves. It was like trying to break through a furnace.
"There," Yvain gasped, sweat streaming down his face. "The stone is cracking. We just need more force."
"Then hit harder," Knox said, and charged.
He slammed his fist into the golem's side at full strength. The impact sent a jolt back through his bones and the heat came off it like an open oven. Knox stumbled back immediately, the front of his shirt scorched, the skin beneath red and raw.
"Knox!" Eleanor shouted.
The golem turned toward the sound of Eleanor's voice.
Toward the rear group.
Yasmine vanished. Not a word. Not a warning. One moment she stood at Eleanor's side, the next she was simply gone.
No one had time to comment on it.
The golem took step toward them. Then another. Its pace faster than before.
Eleanor moved in front of Marielle without thinking about it. A useless gesture, maybe. But it was what her body did.
For a split second she hoped it was a premonition and would go back in time just before the golem attack.
Vince tried to hold it back with his powers. Yvain followed with a wave of stone along the ground, trying to forceits legs apart and throw it off balance. All to no avail. Nothing seemed to work.
"Lets run back to the river side." Jade shouted.
They all set pace.
The golem lunged. It swept its arm sideways in a wide arc.
Eleanor threw herself down. The limb passed overhead.
Marielle scrambled back from the blast of heat, lost her footing on the uneven root-torn ground and fell.
Hard.
Her palms hit the dirt. One knee twisted but not broken. She looked up and the golem's hollow gaze was on her. It was close. Much too close. The heat was already building in her lungs.
Panic hit her like cold water.
She scrambled, trying to push herself upright, but her hands slipped and she couldn't get her footing. She couldn't move fast enough.
Something happened.
She didn't know what she did. She didn't do anything. That was the thing she would struggle to explain later. There was no intention. No decision. Only fear, pure and absolute, spiking through her like a current looking for ground.
The air around her answered.
It dropped.
Not gradually. Not like a breeze turning cold. It dropped the way a stone drops, fast, instant. The breath she exhaled turned into mist. The moisture in the ground around her palms crystalized in a ring. And the frost spread outward from her in a visible wave, racing across the earth in threads of pale blue-white.
It hit the golem. The golem's advance stopped mid-step.
The frost climbed its legs, threading into cracks in its stone shell. Seeping into the ember glow. The orange light within it flickered. The fractures Yvain had opened ran deeper as the cold forced the rock to contract. A thin, sharp sound filled the air like glass under pressure.
The golem's raised arm stilled.
Its hollow head turned toward Marielle. One slow rotation. Then the frost sealed its neck, crawled across its chest, and the ember-light behind its hollow eyes guttered and went dark.
It froze.
Completely.
Silence.
Just the distant creak of the charred trees and quiet hiss of frost still spreading across the ground, thinning as it reached its limit.
Everyone stared.
Marielle sat on the ground, both palms flat in the frost she'd made, breathing in shallow, disbelieving pulls. She looked at her hands. Then at the golem. Then at her hands again.
"What did I..." She couldn't finish it.
Yvain roared.
Rushing at the frozen golem. He didn't wait to see if anyone followed. He summoned rocks with everything he had left.
The ground answered with a sound like a mountain cracking open.
Stone erupted upward in a battering column and struck the frozen golem dead in its chest. The impact rang out sharp and clean, like a brittle crack of ice under force.
The golem shattered.
Pieces of black stone and dead ember exploded outward, skidding across the forest floor in all directions. The orange glow in each fragment dimmed, flickered, and went out one by one. The heat in the air died with it, replaced by the unnatural cold Marielle had called up, which hung in the clearing like a held breath.
The last fragment rolled to a stop.
Still.
Vince slowly lowered his hands. His chest heaved. He looked at the scattered rubble and then at the ring of frost still faintly visible on the ground around where Marielle sat.
"Wow, just in the nick of time." he said.
Marielle looked up at him. Something unreadable moved through her expression. Disbelief, maybe. Or the very first edge of something else.
"I wasn't trying to do anything," she said. Her voice was quieter than usual. "I just panicked."
"You froze it," Knox said from across the clearing. He was still holding his burned arm against his side, but there was something close to awe in his voice. "You literally froze it solid."
Marielle stared at the scattered remains. The broken black stone. The dead ember-light. She got slowly to her feet, brushing dirt from her hands.
"Don't make it weird," she said.
Cateline let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Tom sat down heavily on a root. Yvain braced his hands on his knees, head dropping as exhaustion finally caught up with him.
Jade moved to Knox first, pressing her palm to his burned arm without asking. The pale glow of her hands spread across the skin, mending what the heat had taken. Knox winced but said nothing.
Yasmine reappeared at the edge of the clearing. Quietly. Carefully. As if hoping no one would notice the timing of her return.
No one said anything about it. Not right now.
The cold was already fading. The fire that had drawn the golem was long dead, smothered under its own ash.
Jade moved to Vince to heal his bruised shoulder.
"Is there anyone else hurt?" She asked.
Her words was met with silence. "Lucky to have a healer by your side." she added with a smirk on her face.
"We need to move, "Yvain said, straightening up. "The battle was loud. If there are more things out here..."
"There are obviously more things out there and here," Cateline replied.
No one disagreed.
"What's your suggestion then." Yvain asked.
"I'm not against us moving," she responded.
"But we might as well be working into another monster's territory."