CHAPTER 429: ICE CATASTROPHE

It had been a few months since that unfortunate incident with Dennise and the EX Class beast. But, during that time, another incident occurred which was related to someone everyone thought... dead.

Leon Richards.

The guy who had tried to make life a living hell for Ethan back in the day. The guy who had tried to rape Andriel. The younger brother of Pisces. The guy whose existence had made Pisces live a life of hell and torture.

His deeds weren’t good in any way. He had even conspired with a dark group to cause chaos in the academy outing program just to kill Ethan. One could say... he was truly evil.

Sometimes, Ethan regretted that he hadn’t killed him, but it was too late to do anything. Or so he thought. After his battle with Lucien, the Wind Primogenitor, he had been in a coma for two decades.

When he woke up, the world had changed, and Leon was nowhere to be found. It was either that he had died during the war or something else, which no one believed.

But just recently, Leon had made an appearance. Not physically, but Pisces had sensed her brother. He wasn’t dead. He was very much alive and... different.

He had changed. Whether good or bad, no one knew. Until... today.

This would be Ethan’s hardest battle, and even more so with his powers dormant.

...

Morning should have brought warmth.

But the small towns scattered along the outer edge of Anbord awoke to a cold that did not belong to their world. Frost traced itself along rooftops and metal fences like a living creature marking territory. People stepped out of their homes, rubbing sleep from their eyes, confused by the sudden drop in temperature. They breathed out mist and wondered aloud if this was some malfunction in the weather control system.

Then the screaming began.

A woman collapsed first, her limbs stiffening as her skin turned pale blue. Cracks spread along her arms like the surface of a frozen pond. The next second, she shattered, not into chunks, but into glittering shards that scattered across the street. Neighbors ran to help, only for their lungs to crystallize mid-breath.

It spread fast.

Buildings iced over as if wrapped in clear coffins. Windows exploded outward, sending razor-sharp ice fragments slicing through anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. Children were frozen mid-step, their tiny silhouettes preserved like statues of pure terror. Vehicles stalled and became encased in thick layers of rime, alarms dying out with choked static before being silenced entirely.

A squad of patrol mechs attempted to raise barriers, but each one froze solid before its system could finish the command. Their cores ruptured, sending metallic limbs flying into the air before clattering to the ground, useless.

The entire region fell silent... except for the faint, crackling symphony of expanding ice.

Only one soul seemed to move unhindered.

A figure walked through the icy carnage like a shadow wearing frost as clothing. Their steps left trails of crystalline patterns across the metallic ground. Their breath danced as swirling snow that refused to disperse. They paused beside a frozen sentinel, brushing a gloved hand across its face.

"Too fragile," the figure whispered, voice distorted by electronic modulation.

Their eyes, glowing a haunting arctic blue, swept over the devastation. Satisfied. Not a single living warmth remained. The sun struggled to shine through the sudden storm clouds gathering overhead, but its rays could not pierce the deepening chill.

Before leaving, the figure pressed a hand into the air as if interacting with a screen only they could see. The ice beneath them rearranged, forming a perfectly carved sigil, circular, intricate, and unmistakably demonic or something worse. At its center lay a single clue: a fragment of black horn half-buried in frozen blood, pulsing faintly with mana.

Then, just as silently as they appeared, they vanished into a storm of swirling snow. No teleportation crack. No sound. Only unnatural frost spreading farther into the land, creeping toward the city.

By the time Anbord’s alarms finally blared...

Thousands were already dead.Entire communities erased in a single morning.The Ice Catastrophe had begun.

And whoever commanded this power had sent a message:

Anbord is not untouchable.

...

Hours after the massacre, a faint crack sounded beneath a collapsed transit hub. A small fracture ran across an ice slab, barely noticeable beneath the settling frost. Then a weak gasp escaped from underneath it, a sound so quiet that even the still wind almost ignored it.

A trembling hand, pale and drenched in half-frozen blood, scraped its way out into the open. Fingers snapped off as the survivor pulled, but they did not stop. Their breath rattled like shards grinding together inside their lungs.

One eye was gone, replaced by a jagged hole where edges were turning crystalline. Their skin flaked off like snow. Yet, something forced them to crawl out, if not instinct, then sheer terror.

They collapsed onto the frozen ground, chest heaving shallowly. Their head lifted just enough to see the sun overhead... and the wall of ice expanding across the land like a living glacier, consuming everything in its unstoppable path. Their remaining eye widened in primal fear.

They tried to speak once. No sound. Their throat crackled and bled ice.

Again. Blood spilled, but words formed.

"H-H...hel... help..."

The effort alone almost killed them.

A soft beep responded, faint but real. One of the patrol mechs destroyed earlier flickered back to life momentarily, sensors barely catching the movement. It sent a weak distress ping toward the city before the circuits froze solid again.

The survivor coughed violently. Tiny shards of ice sprayed from their mouth like crystal splinters. They forced themselves up onto their elbows, screaming silently in agony as joints cracked under the frozen curse spreading through them.

They knew they would die here.

But they couldn’t die unheard.

That figure... that voice... they had seen the sigil, the horn, the eyes colder than death.

"No... no no... h-he can’t... be back..."

Their vision blurred into white noise. They pressed their forehead against the ice, manic dread pulsing through what remained of their nerves. The words tore out, breaking the last strength left in their soul.

"The... Emperor... of Ice..."

Their body hardened instantly, breath turning to frost, skin to glass. The final tear solidified on their cheek as they froze into a statue of fear and suffering.

The distress signal pulsed again, this time stronger, echoing toward the central AI network of Anbord.

Help was coming.

But it was already too late for the outskirts.

The Ice Catastrophe was spreading.And the name uttered in dying terror would soon reach the ears of those who remembered what that title meant.

Ethan now had a new enemy.

One powerful enough to erase towns in minutes.One who left clues on purpose.One who wanted him to know...

They were here.