Chapter 25 (Part 1): The Frostfire Harbinger
(When Ghosts of the Past Shatter the Present)
Prelude to Cataclysm
The garrison hall reeked of charred oak and panic.
Sir Span's sword clattered to the floor even as his battle cry still echoed. Twelve armored men followed—twelve ragdolls flung by an unseen puppeteer. Their smoldering uniforms painted grotesque shadows as they crashed into walls, tables, and Bennett's last shred of composure.
Robert, ever the loyal knight, lasted three heartbeats longer. His sword's holy aura flickered bravely against the silver blur—until frost crawled up the blade like vengeful serpents. When he collapsed, lips blue as winter dusk, Bennett tasted copper on his tongue. Not fear, he realized. Blood. I've bitten through my cheek.
Then She appeared.
The Living Ghost
Her hair flowed like liquid moonlight.
Bennett's lungs seized. Every childhood nightmare, every midnight whisper from the forbidden library, coalesced into this glacial vision. Impossible. She's dust. Ash. A footnote in grimoires.
Yet here stood the mirror of Selmer the Star-Eater—architect of celestial magics, scourge of the Third Dynasty, whose bones supposedly moldered beneath Roland Keep.
"You—" Bennett's voice cracked. He saw it now: the identical tilt of her snow-pale brows, the cruel elegance of fingers that had once unraveled constellations. Only the eyes differed—Selmer's portraits showed galaxies swirling in her gaze. This woman's stare held glaciers.
"Pathetic." Her laugh crystallized the air. "Does the Roland whelp wet himself already?"
A guard lunged.
She didn't blink.
The ice bolt pierced his breastplate with a sound like shattering wineglasses.
Dance of the Damned
Chaos erupted.
Blades flashed. Men roared.
She danced.
Every pirouette birthed a blizzard. When the twelfth attacker fell—frost blooming from his eye sockets—she yawned.
"Enough." A flick of wrist.
The explosion tore the roof skyward. Timber became shrapnel. Bennett glimpsed stars through swirling snowflakes before Solskya—cowardly, brilliant Solskya—feigned death at his feet.
"Vivienne!" The cry shook rubble. "Bring me the fearling, or I'll sculpt your friends into ice sculptures!"
Bennett's mind raced. Selmer's double. Vivienne's "sister." That damned contract's clause 12(b): "Magical liabilities inherited through familial ties—"
He stepped forward.
"Wait." Her silver brows arched. "The cub has fangs?"
"Bennett von Roland." He bowed, court-perfect. "May I know the name of my executioner?"
Her smile froze wine in casks three streets over.
"Executioner? Child, I'm your inheritance."
The truth struck as her palm ignited with starfire—the same sigil from Selmer's vault.
Chapter 25 (Part 2): Frost and Fury
(When Dragons Dance, the World Trembles)
The Storm's Eye
Bennett's cheek pressed into frozen mud as the world tore itself apart. Above, the sky vomited snowflakes—absurd in the southern heat—while the earth cracked under the weight of magic gone feral.
So this is a mage's wrath. His teeth chattered. Not some parlor trick, but this—a force that rewrites reality itself.
The ice-clad woman hovered like a vengeful goddess, her armor glinting with runes that devoured moonlight. Nearby, Vivianne materialized mid-air, clutching the fearling's cage like a child clinging to a doll. Her stutter returned in full force: "S-s-sis… p-p-please!"
"Weakling!" The sister's voice cracked like glacial plates colliding. She raised an emerald flute—a serpentine contrast to her frost-pale skin—and blew.
The sound liquefied reason.
Bennett retched as his bones vibrated. Soldiers collapsed, clawing at their ears. Vivianne alone stood firm, her hexagonal shield shimmering with the desperate geometry of panic.
"She's not just a mage," Bennett realized through the agony. She's a warrior. A blizzard given flesh.
Flight of the Rabbit
"Hand. It. Over." The ice mage lunged, fingers clawing for the cage.
Vivianne vanished in a burst of jade flames, reappearing atop the garrison's watchtower. "N-n-no! J-j-ju-ju-juju is T-teacher's—"
"To hell with that senile worm!" The sister's laughter frosted the air. "Last chance, little rabbit."
Her palm bloomed with a swirling white vortex—a miniature blizzard contained by sheer malice. Vivianne's eyes widened.
"R-r-run!" she screamed at Bennett, voice miraculously clear.
He tried. His legs refused.
The ice mage flicked her wrist. Invisible threads yanked Bennett upward until he dangled before her, a puppet in a snow globe.
"How quaint." Her breath frosted his eyelashes. "*My sister's first crush? Let's test how expendable *you are.**"
Vivianne's resolve shattered. "D-d-don't! I'll—"
"You'll what?" The vortex expanded, howling with trapped winds. "Cry? Beg?**"
The Dragon's Gambit
Vivianne closed her eyes. When they reopened, the stutter had burned away.
"Release him." Her voice carried ancient weight. "Or face Yggdrasil's Pyre.**"
The ice mage paused. "Old fool taught you that?**"
A tiny wand materialized in Vivianne's hand—charred wood glowing with inner fire. The air rippled as she chanted:
"Ignis Aeternum,
Per Fractas Caeli,
Da Mihi—"
The ground erupted. A pillar of flame birthed a crimson leviathan—scales like molten armor, eyes like collapsing stars. The Red Drake of Emberhold roared, its breath blistering paint from walls.
Bennett's hair crisped. So this is power.
His captor sneered. "Petty theatrics."
Her flute struck the frozen orb. Crack.
A clawed monstrosity burst free—a dragon carved from polar night, its frostbite breath turning grass to glass.
Chapter 26 (Part 1): The Sovereign and the Stormcaller
(When Laws Crumble Before Arcane Might)
A Crown's Hypocrisy
The words of Emperor Raldor the Ironclad still echoed through every courthouse in Roland:
"The Codex is sacred. Within these borders, none shall defy its writ."
Yet history whispers the addendum he scribbled that night in wine-stained margins:
"Except the Crown… and the Mages."
Magic, after all, is the great equalizer—or rather, the great unequalizer.
The Unwritten Pact
Centuries of precedent painted a grim truth:
A knight murders? The gallows await.
A baron steals? Lands forfeit, titles stripped.
A mage burns a village to ash? Ah, well…
The Accord of 312 AE enshrined it:
No intermediate+ mage may face mortal judgment without a tribunal of Crown, Guild, and Temple.
Magical duels, though discouraged in urban zones, remain beyond legal reproach.
Collateral damage? The Treasury sighs and rebuilds.
Thus did spellcasters stride above law like colossi. What care they for cobblestone justice when their fists clutch thunder?
Cataclysm at Midnight
Halfmoon Citadel's residents awoke to Armageddon.
Beds became ships in storm-tossed seas. Roof tiles rained like shrapnel. A baker clutching his infant swore he saw the northern wall breathe before crumbling into dust-clouds.
Above the panic rose twin suns—one silver-cold, one crimson-wrathful—clashing above Mount Fang's corpse. Each collision birthed new horrors:
Shockwaves flattened granaries.
Frostfire rain ignited orchards.
The mountain itself screamed as ancient stone sheared away.
A fishmonger's daughter, dragged onto a roof by her brother, gaped at the impossible spectacle. "Are… are gods fighting?"
Her brother crossed himself. "Worse. Mages."
The Collapse
When the first boulders tore through Cloudpeak Inn's east wing, Mayor Tollen knew the truth.
His knees struck cold cobblestones as the watchtower's alarm horn died mid-blast. Through ash-choked air, the mountain's silhouette warped—its proud peak sliding sideways like a drunkard's puzzle.
"By the Light…" A militiaman retched beside him. "The Accord's a joke. They'll kill us all for their squabbles!"
Tollen didn't answer. His eyes tracked the silver comet arcing toward the carnage—Vivienne? The sister? Some new player?—and the crimson streak pursuing.
Then came the Sound.
Not thunder. Not avalanche. The death-rattle of bedrock itself.
Mount Fang's western face sheared away in a curtain of stone, revealing glittering caverns… and something moving within.
Chapter 26 (Part 2): The Scar of Gods
(When Mountains Crumble and Dragons Weep)
The Dawn of Ruin
Halfmoon Peak had vanished.
Not collapsed. Not eroded. Erased.
Robert's boots sank into sand still warm from cataclysm. To his left, ice thicker than castle walls glittered cruelly. To his right, cracked earth hissed like a dying serpent. The garrison soldiers wept openly; even battle-hardened men crumbled before this geography of wrath.
"S-sir?" A guardsman pointed at the pit's center. "Footprints. But… wrong."
They were.
Each imprint spanned three human strides, clawed and smoldering. Robert traced one with his sword tip—steel hissed, reddened, melted.
"Dragons," breathed Lynne. Her bandages seeped crimson. "The old tales… they're real."
A scream tore the sky.
Robert whirled. Above the northern horizon, a crimson speck twisted in flight—a wounded comet trailing smoke.
Flight of the Fallen
Bennett's fingers bled.
Every lurch of the dragon's wounded wing sent fresh agony through his arms. Below, forests blurred into emerald streaks. The beast's scales burned hotter than forge-coals; his shirt charred, skin blistering.
"Slow down!" he roared into the gale.
"I-I c-c-can't!" Vivienne clung to the dragon's neck, tears freezing mid-fall. "Sh-Sh-She's still chasing!"
Bennett risked a glance back.
A silver speck pursued—tiny, relentless. His captor-turned-savior rode a crescent of ice, hair streaming like a war banner.
The dragon shuddered. Its left wing hung ragged, membrane torn by crystalline talons. With each labored flap, black blood rained on the clouds.
"Land!" Bennett kicked the beast's flank. "You'll kill us all!"
"D-d-don't!" Vivienne wailed. "H-H-He's trying!"
The world tilted.
Mountains rushed upward—jagged teeth eager to devour. Bennett's stomach lurched as the dragon corkscrewed, barely avoiding a granite spire.
"Enough!" He clawed toward Vivienne. "Where's your teleport spell?!"
"U-u-used t-too m-m-many—"
The ice mage's laughter rang clear across miles: "Run, rabbits! The hunt's just begun!"
The Descent
Smoke choked Bennett's lungs.
The dragon's labored breaths came in wet rasps. Its once-gleaming scales now dulled, flaking like burnt parchment. Vivienne pressed her wand to its neck, chanting through sobs:
"Ignis… s-s-sanat… per… v-v-vulnus…"
The spell sputtered. Her magic—once radiant—flickered like a dying candle.
"Useless!" Bennett seized her wrist. "Save your tricks! How do we land?!"
"H-H-He needs—"
"We need not die today!"
The dragon screamed.
A glacier erupted ahead—the ice mage's doing. The beast banked hard, throwing Bennett against its spines. He tasted blood, felt ribs crack.
Vivienne tumbled.
For one eternal second, she hung suspended—a pale doll against azure sky.
Bennett lunged.
His hand closed around her ankle as the dragon plunged.
Epiphany in Freefall
Wind stole Bennett's breath.
Vivienne dangled below him, robes flapping like surrender flags. The dragon spiraled downward, a comet embracing its doom.
This is it, he realized. Burnt to ash or dashed on rocks. What a joke.
Then he saw it.
Through tear-blurred eyes—a familiar silhouette in the valley. Roland Keep. Home.
"There!" He shook Vivienne wildly. "Cast something! Aim for the moat!"
"T-t-too f-f-far—"
"TRY!"
Her wand trembled. A feeble spark leapt forth—not magic, but desperation.
The dragon's wing snapped.
They fell.