CHAPTER 88: BODY HEAT

Ester kept her hand on his forehead for a few seconds, assessing. The faint heat from the fire reflected against Damon’s pale skin, but her body didn’t follow. He was still trembling—not just from being wet and exhausted, but from something deeper, something burning inside with invisible ice.

Her trained gaze captured the detail: his skin, even close to the flames, wasn’t gaining enough color. The cold seemed to come from within, not from without.

Ester narrowed her eyes.

This isn’t ordinary hypothermia...

She moved closer, placing her hand on his chest, feeling the uneven flow of his mana. The waves were choppy, colliding with each other, like a river forced to change course. It was icy, so icy that even her own natural affinity for the cold felt the impact.

"Idiot..." she murmured, her voice deep, almost irritated. "You’re not just freezing."

Damon’s eyes moved slowly, trying to focus on her. "What... do you mean...?"

Ester took a deep breath. She’d felt this before. During the most intense training sessions, when she tried to expand her own Cold Qi, when her body seemed to crack from within. That cold that didn’t come from the snow, but from her own mana trying to rebuild her body in its own way.

"It’s your body," she said firmly, as if explaining to herself. "It’s trying to adapt to the Cold Qi you absorbed. Your mana is transforming."

Damon blinked slowly, and a faint smile appeared, broken by the pain. "So... I’m going to turn into... an ice cube?"

Ester narrowed her eyes, ignoring the joke. "You could die if you don’t control this."

She closed her eyes for a moment, calculating. His body was in shock. The Cold Qi he’d absorbed wasn’t natural to him. Every cell seemed to reject it, while another part insisted on accepting it. The internal battle was resulting in a cold so intense that the mere heat of the fire didn’t penetrate.

She slid her hands up to hold his. The contrast was frightening—hard, almost brittle fingers, like thin glass.

"Listen, Damon." His voice was firm, but charged with something deeper. "I can stabilize this... but it won’t be easy."

He let out a weak laugh. "It never is... with you."

Ester ignored him again, though the pang of worry in her chest made her grip on his fingers tighten.

"I need to transfer some of my Qi to you. If I do it right, your body will be able to accept the energy without destroying itself in the process."

Damon opened one eye, not missing the opportunity to tease, even on the verge of collapse. "That... sounds intimate."

Ester rolled her eyes and replied dryly, "Shut up."

But deep down, she knew it too. The technique she needed to use required closeness, synchronicity—contact. It wasn’t something you did to just anyone. It was an intertwining of energies so profound it could confuse bodies and souls if executed poorly.

She took a deep breath, pulling him a little closer to the fire. Her own Icy Qi began to move within her, pulsing in a controlled, cold, and steady manner.

Damon’s eyes followed her, even half-closed, and for a moment there was no mockery, only silent trust.

Ester stared back at him, determined. "Don’t die." The sentence came out more like an order than a request.

He smiled, albeit weakly. "I don’t plan on... giving you that job."

She took a deep breath, steeling herself. She knew that from this moment on, there would be no room for error—or distractions. The cold that was killing Damon was the same one that coursed through her veins. And she would be the one who would have to show him how to survive this.

The storm raged outside, but inside the cave, the silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire and the pounding of Ester’s heart.

The next step would decide whether Damon would live... or be lost forever to the ice that now tried to consume him.

Damon’s body, until then restless between tremors and taunts, suddenly felt too heavy against Ester’s hands.

"Damon?" she called, her voice sharp.

No response.

His eyes, previously half-closed, were now completely closed. His breathing, irregular, fell into a shallow, weak rhythm. The bluish color spread across his skin again, as if the cold had decided to claim every part of him at once.

Ester shook him by the shoulders, firmly but not harshly. "Damon! Look at me!" she commanded, but nothing.

A lump formed in her throat. Outwardly, she maintained her icy, calculating expression; inside, her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to echo throughout the cave.

"Not now. Not like this."

She placed her fingers on his neck—there was a pulse, but faint, so faint it seemed to disappear with each beat. The internal chill, the Frost Qi, was taking over. His body simply didn’t have the strength to resist on its own.

Ester gritted her teeth, her eyes narrowed, her mind spinning at a furious speed. If he passed out, it meant the internal battle had reached its limit. He was giving in.

"Damn idiot..." she murmured, bringing her face closer, her breath hot against his icy skin. "You make me furious even when I’m unconscious."

Her hands slid to his chest, firm, resolute. The Qi within her was already stirring, as if recognizing the urgency.

"If I don’t stabilize him now, he’ll freeze from the inside out."

She took a deep breath and began gathering her own Cold Qi, shaping it into a steady, dense, controlled flow. But instead of letting it escape as she always did, she held it close, concentrated, ready to be injected into him.

The heat from the fire wasn’t enough. The flames only warmed his skin. What Damon needed was for his cold to find a balance with another cold—hers.

Ester closed her eyes, leaning in until her forehead touched his. His cold skin almost made her flinch, but she forced herself to stay.

"You’re not going to die... you’re not going to leave me alone with this weight," she murmured softly, a confession hidden within her determination.

Her Qi began to move, coursing through the contact between them. Like a chaotic river meeting another, the energies collided, but Ester maintained control, firm as solid ice in the midst of a storm.

Damon remained unconscious, but his body reacted: stronger tremors, cold sweat, breathing quickening and stopping in sudden intervals.

Ester held on tighter, her teeth clenched. "Fight, damn you. I’m here." Her voice trembled, but it didn’t lose its authority.

The cold of the cave seemed to vanish. Only them remained, connected in that brutal, intimate flow of mana.

Damon’s breathing was growing shallower.

Ester could feel his body becoming rigid, as if the ice were taking over his bones and veins. The Qi transfer helped contain it, but it wasn’t enough.

She gritted her teeth. "No... it’s not enough."

She opened her eyes and saw sweat dripping from her own forehead. She was expending too much energy, straining her concentration to dangerous levels, but Damon remained too cold. The heat from the fire wouldn’t penetrate his skin. It was like trying to warm a frozen stone with a breath.

"I can’t lose him... not now."

That was when a bitter decision emerged, sharp as a blade. The only way to stabilize him was to offer not just Qi, but real heat—direct, unhindered.

With quick, resolute movements, she pulled at the ties on his clothing. The fabric was stiff with ice, heavy, but she didn’t hesitate. She removed his upper garment first, revealing skin marred by bruises, cuts, and a bluish hue that made her hold her breath.

She closed her eyes for a moment, suppressing the weakness that threatened to surface, and continued. She peeled back each frozen layer, ignoring any trace of modesty. What mattered was saving Damon.

"Bastard... even when you’re unconscious, you make me do crazy things." Her voice was low, bitter, but trembling.

When she finished, she took a deep breath, staring at his naked body in the brutal cold. She knew what she needed to do next.

Her own hands went to her clothes. She peeled back the layers slowly, the biting wind from the cave entrance biting at her exposed skin. Each strip of fabric felt like a sacrifice, but she didn’t flinch.

Until, finally, only she was left, naked in the cold and the shadow of the flickering fire.

Carefully, she lay down on top of him, pressing her body against his. The difference in temperature made her shiver immediately—Damon was living ice, a human block of unbalanced Qi. But that was precisely why she was here.

"You’ll hate me for this... or you’ll use it as an excuse to tease me for the rest of your life," he muttered with a half-smile, humorless. "But if that’s the price, I’ll accept it."

Ester wrapped her arms and legs around him, pressing every possible part of her body against his. At the same time, she reshaped her icy Qi, creating a thin film within herself that regulated the transfer. It was as if she were the conduit, absorbing the excess cold and restoring stability with her own flow.

The contact was raw, intimate, and necessary. Her skin burned, not from heat, but from the contrast between his ice and her exertion. Still, Ester held firm.

Her heart was beating fast, out of control. But his... it was still there. Weak, irregular, but there.

She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, like a prayer she would never admit aloud:

"Come back, Damon. Listen to me. I didn’t let you run alone in that blizzard to end up like this."

His body trembled, as if in reaction. A brief spasm ran through his muscles.

Ester held her breath, strengthening the flow of her Qi, and the heat of her body against his seemed to finally penetrate the layers of ice.

The cold that threatened to engulf Damon now flowed into her, but Ester absorbed it, molded it, controlled it. A silent struggle raged within the cave—two existences of icy Qi trying to balance each other through the raw connection of skin against skin.