The fourth day came to an end with Ryan and his group resting in the Clearing, an unusually warm and comfortable region. An oasis in the desert. They soon fell asleep with optimistic thoughts about the next day, when they could finally leave that infernal region.
However...
As for the beginning of the fifth day... it was struck by a terrible and overwhelming fear of an abrupt death.
"Cold…" Ryan murmured as he felt an icy breeze lash against his sleeping body like a painful whip. "So cold…" he said more loudly as the winds began to intensify rapidly. Before he realized it, his teeth were chattering uncontrollably.
The winds roared violently, but more than that, they carried ice and snow that soon infiltrated the tunnel network, reaching where Ryan and his group were. At the same time, a deadly freezing mist advanced through the tunnels, killing all living beings abruptly with its lethal cold. In the process, it froze even the stones, weeds, and flowers, forming a frozen deathbed over the Clearing's green grass.
Ryan, however, would have simply called it a frozen coffin rather than a bed. But he was in no condition to think about anything at that moment. As the snow piled onto his shoulders and limbs, it slowly buried him beneath a mound of deadly snow.
Ryan succumbed quickly to the snow, the cold advancing over him faster than he could notice the danger.
By the time he detected the threat and woke abruptly, his face was already bluish, as were his extremities. His mind was clouded and his vision blurred, while his teeth wouldn't stop chattering.
Worse than that, his mind, which had always been sharp, grew slower and slower, suddenly depriving him of his most precious resource.
Guided by instinct, Ryan tried to move, but the weight of the ice pressing down on him prevented any sudden motion. Even so, he gritted his teeth and tried again, but it was in vain. The strength he needed escaped him.
Fear built up in his heart as his vision grew increasingly blurred and his extremities became more and more numb. He opened his dry mouth and tried to shout for help in a desperate attempt, but soon found himself unable.
His consciousness faltered. For a moment, Ryan blacked out and fell.
Moments later, he regained awareness, confused, but quickly tried to recover.
"What the hell…" he tried to force his mind to think as fast as possible, but only deep fear took over his heart. "Is this how I'm going to die? After coming so far, am I really going to die against my very first enemy? The cold?"
In response, the roar of a distant, resentful beast echoed, making the ground tremble. The Glacinata laughed at his misery, believing it had been incredibly presumptuous of him to think that fleeing into a cave would be enough to escape its intense wrath. Ryan had tried to treat an Emperor like a pet, and now he would pay the price for such audacity.
Ryan, however, could not care less about it. His consciousness kept fading, his thoughts growing slower and slower. And gradually, he felt something he had never wanted to feel… he felt his awareness fading completely.
His death had begun.
At that moment, he did not know what to do, much less what to feel. His consciousness, everything he had and was, began to shut down like a computer being unplugged.He was starting to die. He felt every piece that made him come apart as if the threads of a line were being unraveled. Thinking had become impossible as his mind slowed to the point of being unable to form coherent sentences.
His heart beat weaker and weaker, until it nearly stopped.
The blackouts became more frequent.
The spark of life slowly faded.
Ryan knew that if he stopped fighting, he would die instantly.
Even so, he tried to stay awake.
He also knew by instinct that he was only prolonging his own suffering.
Even so, he tried to stay alive, for just one more second.
For just one more moment.
Before returning to nothingness, he wanted to feel the spark of life one last time.
He smiled slowly, unable to think coherently. He could only glimpse fleeting flashes of his past.
His life passed before his eyes, while he could do nothing but watch.
He saw himself growing and learning, winning and losing. Strangely, he saw himself losing so many times that it seemed ridiculous in hindsight. Even so, what made each victory so sweet later was certainly the countless failures.
At the end of that entire journey, a single feeling grew in his heart.
Satisfaction.
If he could say one last thing, it would be, "It's alright. I gave it my all. That's good enough. I can go now."
In the end...
He closed his eyes...
Accepting death...
…
However, it did not come.
Instead, his heart beat once more.
And then again.
And again.
The spark of life slowly returning.
Ryan slowly opened his eyes once more, feeling something warm and soft pressing against his chest with such force that it seemed absurd.
Amid the howls of the calamitous blizzard, Ryan's small companion, who had been with him since the very beginning of the journey, who had been brought back from the gates of death by Ryan's help, was now doing the same for him, clinging tightly to his companion and to the last spark of life within him, which he would never allow to be extinguished.
His body shared its own warmth with Ryan.
'This isn't enough…' Ryan thought, but soon felt something grasp him from the other side, feeding him with even more warmth than before. Slowly, he moved his head in that direction.
The apothecary gaze fell upon him, her white hair and braids fluttered in the cold wind, almost blending with the surrounding blizzard. Her expression was cold and calm despite the frost, clearly it did not bother her. Even so, his demonic companion, it seemed, had decided to help him at the last moment instead of betraying him once again.
Once again, Ryan simply stared at the ground with a somber expression. "Even so, it's not enough."
However, murmurs and more murmurs reached his ears, and he soon noticed the apothecary's lips moving up and down as she chanted something with a tense and solemn expression.
Ryan's eyes widened as his heart beat stronger, regaining its original vitality as warmth slowly returned once more.
"I said I would make it up to you for that…" she said, completely enveloping him against her chest. Her lips continued chanting in his ears as the temperature slowly stabilized. "I only hope this is enough…"
Ryan, speechless, simply smiled gently. "I had already forgotten about that…"
The three of them shared their warmth in silence as the calamity raged around them.