Chapter : 1329

Jager’s mind was a storm of pain, shame, and a new, deep, and very scary worry about his beliefs. He made one last, animal-like jump. It was not a planned move. It was just a twitch, the last movement of a dying animal. He did not have a weapon. He did not have a voice. He did not have a spirit. He only had his bare hands and the last, tiny, and completely sad sparks of his will to live.

Lloyd did not even move. He just raised an eyebrow. It was a sign of small, almost bored, and very insulting surprise.

From the slippery black ice under Jager’s broken body, a dozen more shards of black ice shot up. They did not form a clumsy cage. They were a piece of art, a beautiful, complex web of impossibly sharp, frozen needles. And they went through his limbs—his arms, his legs, his shoulders. They pinned him to the ground like a rare and beautiful butterfly on a collector’s board. He was held on a cross made of his own frozen, and now very real, sadness.

The Winter King stood over him. He was a grand, terrible, and completely cruel figure of absolute, final judgment. The time for lessons, for talks, for the slow, beautiful examination, was over. The time for the final, harsh, and needed final mark had come.

“You were a tool, Jager,” the Winter King said. His voice no longer had any educational warmth or interest in beliefs. It was the cold, flat, and final voice of a killer reading a sentence. “A beautifully made, and very expensive, tool. But just a tool. And now,” he added, his golden, dragon-like eyes showing a hint of something that was almost, but not quite, pity, “you are a broken one.”

He looked down at the broken, bleeding, and now totally silent killer. For a quick, almost human moment, he felt a sting of something that was not victory. It was a deep and very tired sadness. “Your master has already left you,” he said. The words were a final, quiet, and brutally honest truth. “He left you to die the moment he faced a true king. You were a sacrifice, a piece in a game you thought you were winning. You died the moment you were sent to face me.”

And then, he prepared his final, all-or-nothing move. The battle was won, but the war was not over. Jager was a creature of the Seventh Circle. His soul was not his own; it belonged to the Abyss. To just kill him would be to set him free. It would let his being, his memories, his knowledge of Lloyd’s own impossible powers, return to his dark masters. He would become a file to be studied, a failure to be learned from, a new weapon to be made to use against him.

Lloyd would not let that happen. He would not just win this battle. He would wipe it from the history books. He would leave no proof, no witnesses, no ghosts.

He closed his eyes. His silver-white hair, which had been buzzing with a controlled blue energy, began to float around him as if he were underwater. His grand, crystal-like wings began to shed a bright, diamond dust of pure, total frost. He began to pull on the last, deepest, and most dangerous pools of his and Bingyu’s shared power. He was no longer just gathering energy; he was pulling it from his own soul. It was a suicidal, one-time use of power that would leave him a hollow, empty shell.

The air in the space screamed, a high, thin, and terrifying sound, as he began to create his ultimate weapon. The faint, soft light in the empty space did not get brighter; it got dimmer. It was swallowed by a new, impossible, and world-ending thing that was forming in his hands. It was the end of the song. A final, silent, beautiful, and star-destroying end.

The white, empty space, which had been a kingdom of pure cold, now became something else. It became a place of deep and scary emptiness. The very material of Lloyd’s personal dimension, a space that was outside the normal rules of the world, strained under the power he was calling. He was no longer just using his own spiritual power or the divine power of the Ice Dragon mixed with his soul. He was pulling on the basic building blocks of reality itself. He was like a god creating his own destruction, and his enemy’s.

Chapter : 1330

In his outstretched hands, which were held together like he was holding a small, new bird, a new thing began to form. It was not a blade of ice. It was not a spear of lightning. It was an idea. It was a perfect, silent, and wonderfully beautiful ball of pure nothingness.

It was the size of a fist, but it was as heavy as a dying universe. It was a tiny, collapsing star of pure cold, a point of anti-energy. It did not send out cold, but instead pulled in all heat, all light, all energy, all life. The clean white of the dimension, which had seemed so total a moment ago, now looked like a dull, dirty gray in comparison. The very light of this plain world seemed to bend and twist around the ball. This was a silent, screaming sign of its impossible and powerful gravity.

Jager, held on his cross of black ice, watched it being made. The terror, the pain, the shame—it all faded away. It was replaced by a strange, final, and almost calm feeling of deep, expert respect. He was an artist of death, an expert in destruction. He had spent his life studying and practicing the most graceful, effective, and beautiful ways to end a life. And he knew, with the total, solid certainty of a master seeing the work of a god, that he was about to see the most beautiful, perfect, and final work of his chosen, terrible art. It was an amazing and very humbling final lesson.

Lloyd, the Winter King, opened his eyes. They were no longer the liquid gold of a dragon, burning with a cold, old fire. They were two perfect, empty holes that swallowed light, just like the impossible, terrible ball that pulsed gently in his hands. He was an empty container, a channel for a power that was unmaking him even as he used it. He had poured every last bit of his will, his energy, his very soul into this final, amazing, and self-destructive move.

He looked at Jager. For a last, quick moment, he did not see the killer, not the monster, but a man. A broken, defeated man who had picked the wrong side in a war that was older than both of them. A war that had now, finally, reached its harsh and total end.

“Goodbye, Jager,” the Winter King whispered. His dual voice was a soft, final, and almost gentle farewell. It was a quiet blessing for a soul that was about to be wiped from the book of existence.

And then, he launched it.

The ball of pure cold did not fly. It did not travel. It did not explode. It simply grew.

There was no sound. There was no flash of light. There was only a silent, beautiful, and unstoppable growth of absolute, perfect nothingness.

The white empty space was erased. The floor of black ice, the cross of frozen needles, the very idea of a floor and a sky—it all just stopped existing.

Jager and the broken, frozen pieces of his spirit, Kroth, were not just killed; they were unmade. Their bodies, their spirits, their souls, their very existence were not burned or broken or torn apart. They were taken apart at the idea level. Their pieces were returned to the basic, meaningless static of the universe before it was born. They were not just a memory; they were a rumor, a story that had never happened, a dream that had never been dreamed.

The silent, growing wave of nothingness washed over Lloyd himself. For a single, terrifying, endless moment, he felt his own existence start to come apart, his own atoms start to forget what they were. But he was the center. He was the eye of the storm. The wave passed through him, and he was left standing in a new, and very different, empty space.

The white was gone. In its place was a soft, gentle, and total blackness, the quiet, peaceful dark of a universe before the first star was born. His personal dimension, his beautiful, clean cage, had been wiped clean. It was a fresh start. A new beginning.

And he was alone in it. His wings of frozen starlight were gone. His horns of ice were gone. His silver-white hair, in a slow, shining fall, returned to its normal, simple dark brown. The connection with Bingyu was broken. Her own divine power was completely used up. He was just Lloyd Ferrum again. A tired, aching, and very, very empty man.