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Valae rolled her frost-pale eyes. “Typical Dagon,” she muttered, her breath crystallizing into snowflakes. But Garran Voss never heard her next words.
A blade sliced through the air with the sound of a guillotine’s whisper.
Valae’s torso slid clean from her hips, her upper half crashing to the marble floor like a shattered ice sculpture. Garran roared, a sound that cracked the castle walls, and lunged toward her—only for an unseen edge to shear off his outstretched hand. The stone fist thudded to the ground, fracturing tiles into dust.
Mountain’s Resolve surged. Sentient energy rippled through Garran’s stony flesh as his severed wrist bubbled with molten minerals. The new hand that erupted was denser, darker, its knuckles gleaming like neutron stars. “WHERE ARE YOU?” he bellowed, cracks spiderwebbing through the floor with every syllable.
Valae’s bisected body erupted into a blizzard. Frost spiraled, her torso rebuilding itself—not with flesh, but with jagged plates of prismatic ice. Cryo-Regeneration armored her in a carapace of glacial fury, fractal patterns blooming across her reforged skin. “Do you know where the attacker went?” she hissed, her voice like wind through a frozen gorge.
Garran’s laugh shook the throne room. “Games? You want games?!” He slammed his rebuilt fist into the floor.
Stonebreaker Fists met stone, and the land broke.
The shockwave atomized pillars, the vaulted ceiling collapsing inward. Valae rode the chaos, her ice-armor screeching as it repelled debris. Garran’s rage became a localized earthquake, fissures splitting the castle grounds.
Then—silence.
The shadow dropped between them like a curtain of night.
Purple eyes burned in the gloom, their light warping the air. The creature stood taller than both Sentients, obsidian scales devouring the light. In its clawed grip throbbed a sword—one edge blazing solar gold, the other rippling with void-purple energy.
“VALAE!” Garran’s warning came too late.
She lunged, fingertip glowing with the deathly chill of Frigid End. Yet as she touched the shadow dragon’s chest, her hand passed through smoke. A thousand golden-purple afterimages flashed.
Valae shattered.
Not into gore—into a thousand geometric ice shards, each piece a perfect frozen fragment of her shock. The dragon’s maw yawned, a vortex of violet light swirling between its fangs.
Garran charged, fists trailing supernovas of force. “I’LL GRIND YOU TO—”
The dragon’s free claw flicked.
Frozen Coffin encased Garran in a glacier that hummed with anti-energy. Not ice. Absence. A void that locked even time itself.
“Disappointing,” rumbled the shadow dragon—its voice smooth, human, and venomously familiar. The darkness peeled back like flayed skin, revealing King Kael standing there, the dragon’s wings folded behind him.
Valae’s soul writhed in his left palm, a comet of blue light. “Your master built you to conquer,” Kael said coldly. “But you never learned to adapt.”
He crushed the soul-light against his chest.
Soul Devourer flared—violet energy exploding through Kael’s veins as Valae’s power merged with his. Armor plates shifted, now threaded with glacial fractals. His sword blazed brighter, gold and purple light painting the rubble.
A pulse of sovereign aura rippled outward—the signal.
Outside, the members of The Vanguard headed inside the castle.
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