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.

In the stands, silence.

Even the air above the barrier shimmered, reacting to the sudden condensation shift. A few students near the front row had to wipe frost from their sleeves.

"She’s..." someone murmured.

Darius leaned forward, brow furrowed.

No way. She wasn’t supposed to use this. Not in round one. Not here.

And from deep inside, Ethan whispered:

"This was her true path. Not water. This."

She was always meant to become the Ice Visionary. Not because she was born special—because she worked harder than anyone else."

Down below, the floor of the arena gleamed under a sheet of layered, breathing frost. As Nerys raised her hand again, tiny fractals shimmered in the air—particles of vapor hardening mid-flight.

Still no sign of Kai.

But Nerys wasn’t finished.

She clenched her left fist. The ice responded.

A pulse of cold erupted from her platform in all directions—not an attack, but a sweep. The frozen ground cracked and lifted, fragments of jagged ice swirling into a sphere of detection. She was probing now, feeling for weight, for heat, for motion.

Nothing.

She nodded once to herself and raised her arms.

The ice rippled upward—dozens of short spears forming from the floor.

Then—she brought them down.

A coordinated barrage of frozen shards struck every inch of the field—no gaps, no openings. It wasn’t meant to kill. It was meant to flush out. To catch. To reveal.

The moment it hit—the earth buckled.

A crater exploded upward not ten paces from her, and Kai burst through, wrapped in a half-shattered shell of stone that cracked off him in layers.

He landed hard, skidding across the frost, boots kicking up chunks of shattered ice.

He was shivering—arms raised in defense, cuts along his sides glowing red against pale skin.

But his eyes burned.

"Still fighting," Ethan murmured.

The heat of the earth clung to Kai like a lifeline, steaming faintly against the frozen battlefield. But it wasn’t enough. He was breathing heavily now, legs trembling, aura flickering. His fists were balled, but his stance wasn’t perfect.

He was at his edge.

And Nerys?

Nerys looked down at him from her icy throne, gaze calm and proud.

She stepped forward, arms raised once more.

But her left knee buckled slightly.

She staggered—not much, just a faint slip—but enough to show she felt it too. That the massive surge of control had cost her.

She was stable, but her strength was thinning.

The battlefield had turned to frozen chaos—shards everywhere, patches of blackened stone underneath. The very terrain had turned against them both.

And the cold worked better for her than for him—until now.

Nerys moved forward, drawing the last remaining water into a spiral around her waist.

She lifted one hand.

Kai stumbled again, bent to one knee.

And then... stilled.

The crowd leaned forward.

Aiden’s eyes narrowed.

Nerys smiled.

She turned.

The crowd began to cheer.

The referee raised a hand—but did not signal.

Darius squinted.

He’s not calling it...

Then—silence.

Nerys paused mid-turn, eyes narrowing.

Something was wrong.

The ice beneath her ankle... shifted.

Just slightly.

Then came the crack.

A deep rumble echoed from beneath the arena floor, dull and rising like a mountain breathing beneath a blanket of snow.

Nerys moved instantly.

Her instincts fired before her thoughts could catch up. She kicked off the platform she had built beneath her boots and glided low, skimming across the frost on a thin ripple of water. From above, it looked like she was figure skating, graceful and confident.

She’d seen Kai’s tricks before. Another upheaval. A spike. A last-ditch wall of stone to clip her balance or stall her victory.

She darted right—then left—curved around a loose pillar.

But the ground behind her wasn’t buckling. It wasn’t cracking.

It was forming.

A split second later, the stone directly beneath where she had stood swelled.

Not a spike. Not a wall.

A knuckle.

And then—a fist.

A massive, earthen hand, twice the width of her entire body, erupted from the arena floor in one smooth, soundless burst, curled and patient.

It didn’t punch upward.

It rose.

Open.

Waiting.

And as Nerys slid around its edge, thinking she’d escaped, the fingers of the hand snapped shut.

The arena gasped as her body was swallowed mid-motion—grace frozen mid-dance—and entombed in earth.

No violence. No blood. No mess.

Just silence and containment.

The fist stood in the center of the ring like a statue. Thick, towering, perfectly shaped. The stone that made it was different—darker, denser, dusted with a fine sheen of frost and pressure lines where Kai’s aura had bled into its creation.

Darius stood, stunned.

"That’s..."

Aiden leaned forward beside him, not speaking.

Kai emerged from behind the hand a moment later—limping, shivering, steam rising from his back where frost still clung to his shirt.

He didn’t charge.

He didn’t posture.

He simply stepped up, raised one trembling arm toward the massive fist that held Nerys aloft...

...and clenched his own.

The giant hand began to lift.

Nerys, still inside it, struggled—but the stone fingers didn’t yield. Water streamed from between the gaps, leaking into the air, misting against the cold.

The outer layer of the hand began to ice over.

Frost spiraled across its knuckles.

She wasn’t done. Even from inside, even half-frozen, even breathless—she was adapting.

Darius’s heart pounded.

She’s freezing it. She’s going to shatter it from within—

But Kai had already seen it.

The moment the frost touched the surface, he moved.

He twisted his arm and brought it down.

Hard.

The stone hand followed.

Nerys’s body, still bound within its grasp, was slammed into the ring with such force that the ice beneath her shattered like glass. The surrounding ground cracked inward, dust pluming upward in a wide, cratering blast.

Stone and frost collided. The force shook the barrier.

For a second, everything was dust and silence.

Then, from within the cracked crater, a slow hiss of steam began to rise. Not from water. From pressure.

Kai fell to one knee, gasping.

The hand he’d summoned crumbled piece by piece—fingers snapping off, one after another, like dead bark breaking beneath weight. Bits of frost still clung to its surface.

And there, at the center of the crater, lay Nerys.

One arm sprawled to the side, her other hand twitching faintly.

The referee stepped forward, lips parted, waiting for any sign, any motion—

Nothing.

Kai rose to his feet.

Barely.

But upright.

His arms hung at his sides like dead weights. His knees shook. Every breath sounded like it came through a furnace—raw and blistering.

But he was still standing.

The referee raised a hand.

The crowd inhaled.

"Victory—Kai."

The roar that followed broke the arena.

Cheers, disbelief, shock, awe—all of it collapsed into noise. Some students stood on their seats. Others turned to each other with wide eyes, speechless. Professors in the faculty box had gone silent. One leaned forward to murmur something, but the words were drowned out by the storm of sound.

In the stands, Darius stayed perfectly still.

She wasn’t supposed to lose.

His thoughts weren’t angry. Not disappointed.

Just... shaken.

Ethan’s voice echoed from within his mind, softer this time.

"She was supposed to be a future visionary. Not now—but down the line. I gave her time. Gave her growth. This wasn’t where she was meant to fall."

Darius swallowed hard.

His eyes shifted back to the crater.

Kai was still standing. Still breathing. The ground beneath him blackened from heat and cold alike. His magic had broken the frost—defied it. His hands had shaped the battlefield itself.

He had made something enormous—alive with movement and intention.

And more than that... he had done it without desperation.

"And he..." Ethan’s voice came quieter. "...he was never supposed to awaken that level of power. Not here. Not this soon."

Darius felt it in his gut. That surge. That spike in magical pressure when Kai had lifted the hand—it had rippled like thunder. No first-year should’ve been able to release that kind of weight. Not unless—

He’s changing too.

Just like Lucien.

The air around him felt colder now—not from the battlefield, but from the shift in his thoughts.

If they’re growing beyond their paths... if this world’s no longer following what I wrote...

Then what happens to everything else?

He stared down at the ring. The cracked stone. The frost turning to mist.

Kai dropped to one knee again.

The crowd was still cheering.

But in Darius’s chest, a different rhythm beat.

What happens when the story breaks away from the hand that shaped it?

And for the first time in a while since he arrived in this world, Darius wasn’t entirely sure who would make it to the end.