CHAPTER 43: ICICLE

He didn’t move his hands. Didn’t tilt his head. Just let the system stay open in the corner of his vision.

One slot done.

He hovered over the glyph input field.

Something cold.

Something fast.

He thought about the knight boss. How it moved like fog and hit like falling bricks.

He needed control.

He needed reach.

He needed something that made people freeze long enough to breathe.

His thoughts flicked once.

And the system answered.

The screen shifted, threads of pale blue lining out across a circular sigil map. No branches this time. No weird logic loops. Just one central glyph with clean arcs spiraling out from a sharp-edged triangle core.

[Spell Design – Confirmed]

Name: [Frost Spire]

Type: Ice-element spike conjuration

Effect: Launches a narrow frozen lance from caster’s location toward designated target. Slows target on contact. Anchors terrain with ice patch.

Mana Cost: ~7

Cooldown: Moderate

Anchor Sigil: Stable

Trajectory Assistance: Enabled

Status: [Active]

Lucen blinked.

’Frost Spire. Sounds fancy. Looks lethal. We’ll call that a win.’

He let the screen minimize. The mana flow in his body hadn’t even shifted much. The new system was better, cleaner. No extra glyph burn. No memory drag.

And somehow that made him more nervous.

Taira’s voice cut through the air again. "We’re two minutes from checkpoint. You want to prep your faces or go in like battered street trash?"

Senna grunted. "I am battered street trash."

Mira asked, "Is that an option?"

Taira said nothing. Just flicked a rune on the dash.

The windshield tint adjusted. Outside light dimmed slightly.

Lucen asked, "Checkpoint’s guarded?"

"Not unless Gen pissed off another minor syndicate," Taira said.

Gen said, "They weren’t minor."

"You always say that."

"I have good taste in enemies."

Callen said, "Do we need to lie about what we found?"

Lucen didn’t answer.

Nobody did.

The car turned again.

The city started to feel normal again. Like the kind of normal that charged a thousand credits for mana bandages and had kids practicing spark spells behind dumpsters because their school cut drift funding.

Lucen stared out the window.

He wondered if anything still felt normal to him.

He didn’t have an answer.

Just the quiet buzz of mana in his skin.

And the weight of five more spell slots to fill.

—

The car dipped slightly as it crested the edge of a broken ramp.

Lucen shifted with the motion, letting his head thunk back against the seat.

The hum of the engine got sharper. More nervous.

Taira slowed, fingers tapping across the dash again. Runes shifted colors, pale blue to amber. The windshield glowed faintly.

Lucen glanced forward.

Ahead, the street narrowed. Not naturally. Just two cement barricades slapped down at uneven angles, like someone with too much overtime decided it was enough to count as official.

Two figures stood in front of a flickering field gate. Half-dome. Mana-patterned. Not Kyrel’s best.

Both wore cheap mana-suppressive vests and matching black gloves. Civil-tier gear. Enforcer-lite.

Lucen muttered, "Checkpoint looks bored."

Taira didn’t blink. "They are. Let’s keep it that way."

Gen cracked his knuckles softly. "Want me to talk?"

"No," said three voices at once.

Lucen adjusted his coat collar and kept his eyes down. Mira leaned her head against the glass and whispered, "They better not scan too deep."

Senna didn’t say anything.

She just flexed her fingers once, slowly, and dropped them back into her lap.

The car rolled to a stop.

One of the enforcers stepped forward. Woman. Short buzzcut. Mana reader clipped to her forearm like a fashion statement.

She rapped the window once.

Taira lowered it a crack.

"Standard drift clearance," the woman said. "Scan for signature lag."

Taira said, "Team of five. Private contract. We exited through Sector D–43. Unlisted but not redlined. You’ll find Gen listed as external recovery."

The enforcer raised a brow. "You say ’unlisted’ like that makes it legal."

Taira smiled once. Not nice. "I say it like it makes it fast."

The woman scanned the car with a wave of her hand. The reader blinked.

Lucen felt it pass over him.

His system didn’t react.

’Good. Still cloaked.’

The reader beeped twice. No alarm.

The enforcer tapped something on her forearm.

"Mana trace check passed. Time lag’s high but within range. Any artifacts?"

"None," Taira said.

Lucen could almost hear Gen swallow the word technically before it escaped.

The woman stepped back. "Move along."

Taira rolled the window up without waiting.

The dome field ahead blinked, parted, and let them through.

The car moved forward.

Nobody spoke for six blocks.

Lucen’s system pulsed again.

[Spell Configuration Updated]

[2 / 7 Active Slots]

Lucen stared at it.

Seven slots.

Two filled.

’That’s a lot of magic to fill with not a lot of sleep.’

He didn’t open the window.

Didn’t ask questions.

He just stared out at the street, and let the quiet thrum of mana in his bones remind him that things were changing.

Fast.

Lucen leaned into his seat, arms folded, watching the city drag past the window like a dying slideshow. Too much gray. Too many bent antennae. Kyrel always looked like it was halfway through a transformation it forgot how to finish.

In his peripheral, the system still glowed quietly.

No notifications. No pressure. Just those two lines and seven empty slots staring at him like a dare.

Lucen didn’t touch them.

Not yet.

Gen yawned in the front seat. Loud, theatrical. Like someone performing exhaustion for a crowd that never asked.

Taira didn’t even blink. She adjusted the side mirror with a flick of her knuckle and muttered, "Next one of you to make a noise loses legroom."

Gen stretched further. "Joke’s on you. I always sit diagonally."

Lucen stared at the back of Gen’s head. ’If I fire Frost Spire into his brainstem at a shallow angle, I could probably pretend it was a mana misfire. Or a cramp.’

He closed the system window.

Senna shifted beside him. The leather of her coat creaked. She was half-awake. Still bleeding slightly from a cut near her temple, but it looked more like an insult than an injury now.

Mira, on Lucen’s other side, was adjusting her gloves again. She did it every few minutes. Lucen didn’t ask why.