[POV Liselotte]
The world beca fire.
The impact was so brutal it tore the air from my chest. The crimson and black sphere struck my icy shield at the very instant I managed to form it. The ice shattered with a sharp, tearing sound. It was as if thousands of crystals broke in unison. The fire carved its way through with voracity. It devoured the frost. It devoured the air. It devoured everything in its path.
I fell to my knees upon the burning sand.
The ground seared beneath my feet. The tal of my sword vibrated with a high, continuous lant. A burst of pure energy hurled backward without rcy. The world beca a succession of white lights and distant noise. I could barely feel my arms. The sll of burnt flesh and fabric filled my senses completely.
“Lotte!” Leah’s voice reached distorted, as though I heard her through water. “Lotte, answer !”
I tried to lift my head with superhuman effort. My shield had held just long enough to keep from being consud entirely. But the impact had pierced through all my defenses as if they were paper. My body trembled uncontrollably. The poison still coursing inside continued draining —slowly and cruelly—stealing my strength with every heartbeat.
Around , the sand lted into a pool of liquid glass. The White Veil figures moved without the slightest hurry. They advanced through the steam and burning remains. They seed untouched. Completely relentless.
One of them tilted its head slightly. Its hollow voice echoed once again inside my mind. The words ca clear and cold.
“Ice cannot halt the eternal.”
Those words struck harder than any spell ever could.
I shut my eyes tightly. The crazed noise of the crowd. Leah’s desperate screams. Even the roar of the arena itself. All of it seed to fade into a distant, insignificant murmur. Everything turned into deep silence. Only my ragged breathing remained. And the echo of sothing far deeper—sothing awakening within .
It was an ancient murmur. A voice I knew far too well.
“Rember…”
That voice. It was the sa I had heard in my most vivid dreams—the one that spoke to in the world of eternal ice. The sa that had told of creation and of winter.
“Cold does not destroy. It preserves. It protects.”
A frozen spark ignited deep within my chest. It wasn’t warmth—it was the total absence of it. A void that wrapped around everything.
I rose with a strangled groan. My body scread to stop. Every muscle protested in pain. But my soul refused. I drove my sword into the sand with determination. The tal, blackened by the enemy’s fire, began to glow again. A bright, intense blue radiance surged from its core.
The figures of the White Veil froze in place. Sothing in the air changed suddenly—it grew heavy. Charged.
The wind turned sharp as a blade. The steam began to crystallize before our eyes, transforming into a mist of frost that drifted slowly down. It looked like silver ashes falling from the sky. The temperature plunged. Every breath stung as it entered my lungs. Every sound was abruptly silenced. Everything beca smothered by the white hush of winter.
“Lotte…” Leah murmured, eyes wide in awe. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t fully hear her. Or maybe I did. But I was no longer entirely present in that mont. My mind was elsewhere—in another place, another ti.
The ice spread from beneath my feet without my command. It crawled across the sand like a living, conscious river. It grew, climbed, twisted into intricate patterns. Blue runes began to appear on the ground—circles and shapes I didn’t recognize with my mind, yet my body understood by instinct alone.
The White Veil finally reacted. One of them raised its hands quickly, attempting to conjure another sphere of dark energy. But the ice reached it before the spell could form.
Frost climbed its legs with shocking speed. It covered the figure completely in seconds. Its white robe stiffened beneath a translucent layer of crystal. Another tried to evade, but the air itself solidified around it, trapping it in a frozen prison that mirrored the distant flas of the coliseum.
The cold devoured everything in its path. Not just the sand—but the very magic that saturated it. Even the air seed to freeze.
The crowd, hidden beyond the frozen haze, fell into absolute silence. Only the sound of the growing ice filled the world—a constant crackling. A song of winter.
And at that precise instant, I felt sothing inside break.
A crushing pressure ran through from head to toe. It was tearing apart from within—the price of forcing that ancient power. My hands spasd involuntarily. A thread of hot blood slid down my lips. Still, I clung to my focus with everything I had left. I couldn’t stop. Not now.
“Leah!” I shouted, my voice hoarse—almost unrecognizable. “Now!”
She understood without hesitation. She rose, staggering. Her eyes ignited with golden fire—a fire I had never seen in her before.
“Chloé!”
The wolf roared with all her might. It was a deep, guttural sound that shook the arena to its foundations. Leah channelled her magic through that powerful roar. Her fire flared with overwhelming intensity—different from before. Purer. Whiter. More alive.
The fla coursed through the ice I had created, running along it like a golden, burning vein. When both forces t at the center of the arena, the resulting explosion was beyond description.
Fire and frost. Creation and destruction. Two opposing natures rged into a single blinding flare.
The White Veil were swallowed by the light without escape.
The impact hurled backward uncontrollably. This ti, I had no strength to stop the fall. Everything turned blurry and confused—distant screams, searing heat, the deafening roar of the coliseum. And then, there was only nothingness.
Absolute silence.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the cold sand. Leah was kneeling beside , one hand on my forehead. Her face was sared with soot and streaks of dry tears. Chloé, visibly wounded, panted nearby—her silver fur covered in frost and dark dust.
In front of us, the White Veil lay motionless. Not completely destroyed—but unmistakably defeated. Their white robes were frozen and fractured, covered in tiny crystals that reflected the light like shattered mirrors.
The announcer took several seconds to react. He seed stunned by what he had witnessed. But when his amplified voice finally resounded through the coliseum, the roar of the crowd erupted with overwhelming force.
“Victory for the Silver Pack!”
Leah let out a broken, relieved laugh. “We did it…” she murmured weakly. “Barely… but we did it.”
I tried to respond. I wanted to say sothing—anything—but only managed a faint, tired smile. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. The cold I had summoned still clung to my skin, refusing to release . As if it were part of now.
While the ovation swelled around us, as the coliseum’s magic barriers slowly began to close, I lifted my gaze toward the gray sky above.
For a fleeting instant, I thought I saw a silhouette of white light watching among the low clouds. The sa figure from my dreams—the woman of ice and light.
And deep within my mind, a soft, distant voice whispered with terrifying clarity.
“Winter has awakened. But the price has only just begun.”
A cold shadow settled in my heart. Victory tasted like ashes.
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