The flower inside my chest pulsed again. The green light spread outward, brushing against every raw nerve already torn apart by the tempering. It felt like sothing was expanding inside of , pushing at the walls of my ribs as if wanting more room, as if wanting to break free. The frost answered it, rising like a frozen tide that wrapped around my spine and climbed my throat with a painful slowness.
[Progress: 51%]
I gasped, but no breath ca. The cold-fire dug deeper, threading itself through the hollow spaces of my bones. I don’t know if I can hold on... My fingers curled, nails scraping against invisible restraints. I wanted to fall, just collapse and let the darkness take , but the tempering held upright like a puppet strung by green flas.
The chamber trembled softly, as if reacting to the amount of frost gathering inside . It felt like the whole cave was waiting for one single mont. A mont where I either beca a powerful being, or died here and left nothing behind.
A fresh surge of frost ripped through my veins and the pain ripped a silent scream through my throat.
[Progress: 52%]
Every drop of blood inside felt like it froze and shattered, only to be refilled with more frost. I felt heavy for so reason, heavier than my body should have allowed. My arms shook and my vision blurred. My vision ca back for a short mont, and I saw the walls breathing again, the green veins pulsing as if they were watching, waiting for the next crack inside .
Ti did not feel real anymore. The pain beca the clock. Every heartbeat was a second, every second was an eternity.
[Progress: 55%]
Beelzebub floated ahead of , still trapped in the swirling green fire. His little body trembled, eyes wide and watery. His fur stuck out in every direction like he had touched an electrical outlet, and I swore if hamsters could faint, he was two seconds away from passing out. Yet he was alive. That’s my boy...Be brave, I whispered inside my mind, hoping he could hear . We are not dying today.
[Progress: 58%]
A violent pulse shot through my chest, as if the flower inside decided it had waited long enough. It blood fully this ti, petals of sharp frost pressing outward until I felt the echo of it in my shoulders, my back, even down into my legs.
The halo behind flared. It spun faster, shedding sparks of light that bounced off the walls in waves. Each spark carried a faint sound, like crackling frost or distant bells chiming underwater.
The fire reacted to it.
Cold tore through with a sudden brutality that I had not felt even in the first monts. My entire body snapped upright. My fingers clawed at nothing. My mouth opened but no sound escaped. It felt like every bone was cracking open so the frost could seep into the marrow.
I thought the first half was impossible, but the fifty percent mark felt like it had only been the warm-up.
[Progress: 60%]
At this point, the green flas went wild.
It began to burn with such intensity that I looked like a torch. As ridiculous as that sounds, that was exactly how it felt, as if I had suddenly beco the brightest, most unfortunate source of light in this frozen world.
My skin hardened again. A thin layer of translucent frost ford over my arms, shimring faintly under the green glow. The veins beneath my skin glowed with the sa color, like lines of light etched directly into .
Pain pulsed behind my eyes, sharp and unrelenting. I saw the world tilt sideways for a mont, then snap back as if the chamber itself slapped to stay awake.
Sothing inside whispered: endure.
Lyssandra? The voice was similar, yet the tone did not fit her usual mix of cruelty and playful mockery.
[Progress: 65%]
The flower pulsed again, the light brighter than before. It felt like it was feeding on the flas around . Absorbing them and growing like a thirsty sponge. My halo responded, I could feel it spin harder, the air around crackling like lightning frozen mid-birth.
But what frightened the most was how soon after, the flas drifted toward my heart.
They wrapped around it like a cage, squeezing until I felt it slow, then speed up, then stop, then restart. I panicked. For the first ti since the tempering started, true fear shot through . Was it going to kill ? Was this how vampires died here? A frozen heart shattered by green fire?
[Progress: 70%]
My chest slamd forward with a violent jolt.
The flower beat once with the force of an explosion. Frost shot down my arms, my legs, even to the tips of my wings. The mbranes of the wings sparked like frost fireworks. For a mont they stiffened, nearly frozen solid, but then the frost sank into them fully and a rush of strength flooded them. They felt powerful: Heavy and majestic.
But the pain never stopped. It only changed shape.
By the seventy-five percent mark, it no longer felt like I was being torn apart. It felt like I was being reforged. Each mont pressed sothing new into my body. A new piece of strength. A new strand of power. A new shard of frost waiting to answer my command.
[Progress: 80%]
A sudden wave of frost shot from my ribs to my skull.
I staggered forward, but the flas kept locked in place.
mories flickered through my mind. Random and strange. A forest of green-tinged ice. A woman with wings like mine, but they stretched wider than mountains. A flower floating in her palm, the sa one beating inside my chest. A throne carved from frost. A crown of ice shards rested on a figure I could not see clearly.
Who was that Woman? Was it a mory? A vision? Or hallucination brought on by pain? I could not tell... It looked real and fake at the sa ti.
[Progress: 85%]
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