Chapter 39: The Cold Beneath
The stone still gripped Nerys’s legs, holding her fast at the waist as her arms flared wide, water surging up in response to her silent command. Her control was battered but intact. Her eyes narrowed, breath calm.
Then—she exhaled.
And the temperature dropped.
It wasn’t dramatic at first. Just a shift—a slow, precise stillness that moved through the arena like a passing wind. The air changed, thinned, crisped. Then, in an instant, the shift turned sharp. Ice bloomed from the soles of her boots, then raced outward like vines of silver light across the battlefield.
Not a burst.
A conquest.
Frost spread in spirals and arcs, elegant and fast, curling up along the broken pillars, running through the veins of Kai’s manipulated terrain. The earth that had once pulled her in now resisted, tried to lock around her hips—but the moment the ice touched it, the ground stopped moving.
Not frozen stiff.
Frozen in reverence.
Crystalline patterns webbed across the arena floor. Every drop of moisture was drawn in and bound—crackling, elegant. A spiraling storm of cold blanketed the ring in less than six seconds. The temperature plummeted to biting chill.
Kai was still somewhere beneath her.
Nerys stood tall atop a wide lotus of frozen water. Cold mist curled around her shoulders, and her presence felt... divine. Like a winter god had descended quietly into the coliseum and claimed the floor as their own.