The wall of mist didn't just reach the palace; it claimed it. Within minutes, the lush gardens of Hayden were transformed into a silent, white graveyard of crystalline statues. Alicia stood her ground in the training courtyard, the cold biting through her bandages like serrated teeth. Her breath came out in thick, frozen plumes.
*"Don't let the joints freeze,"* Alicia told herself, forcing her heavy arm to rotate. *"If I stop moving, I'm dead. Borden isn't even here yet, and he's already winning. This isn't a fight; it's an extinction."* She looked up to see the sky had turned a bruised, sickly purple—the color of an old wound.
Clen descended from the balcony, his boots crunching on the frosted stone. He looked remarkably calm, though his golden eyes were fixed on the northern horizon.
"You're overthinking the pain, Alicia," Clen said, his voice cutting through the whistling wind like a blade. "Borden wants you to focus on the sting of the frost. It's a distraction."
Alicia spat a bit of frozen blood onto the ice. "A distraction? My skin is turning blue, Clen. It's hard to focus on 'strategy' when my heart is trying to slow down to a crawl."
"Then let it slow down," Clen countered, stepping closer until he was inches from her. "Borden has always been a coward of scale. He drowns his enemies in the cold so he never has to look them in the eye. He thinks he can snuff out the Abyssal spark I've planted here. He is mistaken. Stop fighting the cold. Become part of it."
"You want me to become a block of ice?" Alicia rasped, her hand tightening on her sword hilt.
"I want you to become the winter," Clen replied. "Drel was a puppet who used **Demon Blood**, but he didn't own it. Borden is different. He *is* the North. If you try to stay warm, you will die. If you embrace the absolute zero, you might just live long enough to see him bleed."
Before Alicia could respond, a thunderous crack echoed through the city. The main gates of Hiderat—reinforced steel and ancient oak—shattered into a million icy splinters. Walking through the debris was a figure ten feet tall, draped in pelts of beasts that had been extinct for a thousand years. Every step Borden took sent a shockwave of frost radiating outward, turning the very ground into slick, black ice.
In the nursery, Nelluru stood in front of the Queen and Luna. Her knuckles were white, her muscles bulging with that terrifying Troll-density.
"Stay back, Your Majesty," Nelluru whispered, her voice trembling but her stance firm.
"He's at the gates, isn't he?" Queen Tala asked, clutching her son so tight her knuckles turned grey. "I can feel the life leaving the air."
*"He's coming for the baby,"* Nelluru thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. *"I don't care if I'm a nurse or a monster. If he touches this door, I'll show him exactly what this strength can do. I'll break the world before I let him take her."*
She looked down at her hands, the skin pulled tight over dense, inhuman muscle. "I used to be afraid of this," Nelluru said to herself. "I was afraid I'd break the people I was trying to heal. But for him? I'll break every bone in his body and enjoy the sound."
Luna sat on the floor, surrounded by frost. She wasn't crying. Instead, she was laughing—a tiny, innocent sound that seemed to mock the absolute zero of the room. She held a single piece of ice in her hand, and as she squeezed it, the ice turned black, dripping like ink between her fingers.
Borden stopped in the center of the courtyard, his eyes landing on Alicia. He didn't speak. He simply raised a hand, and the moisture in the air crystallized into thousands of jagged ice spears, all pointed directly at her heart.
"So," Borden finally spoke, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "You are the little girl who broke my gift. You shattered a blade I spent centuries tempering."
"It was a piece of junk," Alicia yelled back, her voice echoing in the silent courtyard. "Just like the puppet you gave it to."
Borden's eyes glowed with a killing frost. "A puppet is easily replaced. But a King's pride demands a payment in blood. Or perhaps, in this case, I shall simply keep you as a frozen ornament in my hall. A reminder of why humans should never touch things meant for gods."
*"So this is the end,"* Alicia thought, her hand finally closing firmly around the hilt of her sword.