The violet tide did not carry them into the fortress as easily as Clevatess had hoped. As they reached the shadow of the Feeding Station, the ground didn't just vibrate—it screamed. The Queen's engineers had anticipated a breach. From the battlements of the glacier-fortress, a liquid orange substance began to pour, cascading down the ice walls like a waterfall of molten gold.
This wasn't just fire; it was Solar Pitch, a chemical compound designed to burn even in a vacuum. As it hit the violet sea, the Absolute Zero hissed in protest. For the first time, the movement of the ice slowed. The violet transparency turned into a murky, boiling gray as the two primal forces clashed.
Clevatess stood his ground, but the gold embroidery on his cuffs flared with a frantic, uneven light. He could feel the heat draining his mana at a rate he hadn't prepared for.
They are burning the sea to kill the King, Alicia shouted, her blue aura flickering as the ambient temperature soared. If we don't move now, we'll be boiled alive in this frost!
Clevatess looked up at the battlements. Standing there was not a soldier, but a group of prisoners—commoners from the northern villages, chained to the pumps of the Solar Pitch. Their faces were pale, their eyes filled with a soul-crushing shame. They were being forced to destroy the very man who had come to save them.
The Queen is clever, Clevatess whispered, his voice tightening. She is using my own people as a shield of flame.
He couldn't just freeze the waterfall; the thermal shock would shatter the glacier and kill everyone on the battlements. He had to be a designer, not a destroyer. He reached into the inner lining of his midnight-black tunic and pulled out a handful of silver threads, leftover scraps from his tailoring work that were infused with his essence.
He didn't throw them. He wove them into the air.
The silver threads caught the heat of the Solar Pitch and began to spin, creating a localized vortex that didn't extinguish the fire but redirected it. He was creating a "thermal sleeve"—a tunnel of cold air protected by a spinning layer of heat.
Hold onto the mantle! Clevatess commanded.
As Alicia and Nelluru grabbed the edges of his raven-feather mantle, Clevatess stepped into the heart of the flame. The shame of the prisoners above turned to awe as they saw a shadow walking through the gold, untouched and unbowed. The King wasn't just fighting a war; he was proving that the Queen's cruelty had no power over a soul that had already walked through the dark.
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