Lucas stepped fully into the freezing pressure and met it head-on, and for a moment the corridor seemed to hold its breath as the ice surged toward him in layered formations meant to crush, bind, and erase movement itself, but this time something inside him responded differently than before, because the celestial energy he had absorbed from the empress had not simply remained dormant within his meridians, it had begun to circulate more naturally over time, refining itself under constant pressure, and now under the direct weight of a far stronger ice domain it finally surfaced in full.
