"Frost Domain."
The words slipped out in a murmur so faint that none of the three men of Night heard them—yet somehow, they felt them long before anything happened.
Then, without warning, the world changed.
It was as if reality itself had been severed, the three of them torn away and cast into another realm entirely—a world utterly silent, utterly still… and so cold that even thought itself seemed to slow.
The air grew heavy.
Winds howled into existence, sharp and restless, tearing through the space around them. Snow began to fall in thick, relentless waves, swallowing everything in white, while the very atmosphere turned dense and biting, each breath scraping their lungs like shards of glass.
But this cold… it wasn't natural.
It was absolute, oppressive, and alive.
It seeped into everything, devouring warmth without mercy, erasing it as if heat itself was an intruder that had no right to exist. It didn't just freeze, its only purpose was the complete and utter annihilation of anything that dared carry even the faintest trace of warmth.
By this point, things were already dire for the three agents of Night.
But then… it appeared.
As if answering the will of this frozen domain, a presence took form behind Arcanor.
A wolf.
A massive creature, its body as large as a house, loomed silently at his back. Its fur shimmered like frozen mist, and its deep blue eyes locked onto them—not with hostility, nor caution… but with the calm, chilling gaze of a predator staring at it's prey.
Their instinct screamed at them to look away—and they did.
But even then, their bodies betrayed them, trembling uncontrollably as if their very souls had been marked.
The werewolf's reaction was the most violent.
The instant the creature's gaze settled on him, his entire body froze. A suffocating wave of terror crashed over him, drowning every ounce of resistance he had. His transformation collapsed without his consent, his form shrinking back into that of a human.
It was as if, before the being standing behind Arcanor, his wolf side had been utterly crushed—too terrified to even exist in its presence.
Meanwhile, Alex simply stood there.
His left arm hung uselessly, completely broken. His right wasn't much better, trembling faintly from the damage it had sustained.
And yet…
He raised it.
Slowly, steadily, he pointed it toward the rhino, who had already retreated several meters back.
As if his injuries meant nothing at all—
Alex swung his arm once.
There was no force in his swing, no strain, no flourish, no killing intent spilling outward—it was nothing more than a simple, almost casual motion.
And yet...
A crescent of deep blue light slipped free from the blade.
It was mesmerizing in its purity, a flawless arc that glided through the air with silent grace. Beautiful… and terrifyingly sharp, as if the world itself would part rather than dare resist its passage.
Maurdin had only blinked once.
By the time his eyes opened again, the arc was already upon him.
His instinct took over and he immediately brought his arms up, crossing them in front of his body in a defensive guard, bracing himself for the impact.
The blue arc collided with him...and drove him back.
His massive frame skidded across the ground, feet grinding against the stone as he was forced several steps backward.
Yet…
The attack hadn't cut him.
Seeing this, a smug grin spread across his face.
But that grin froze almost instantly.
In fact… it wasn't just his grin.
Before he could react—before he could even process what was happening—his entire body was suddenly encased in a solid block of ice.
A massive one.
It towered over the battlefield, easily three times his size—and considering Maurdin himself stood at nearly three meters tall, the frozen mass was nothing short of colossal.
His two companions stared in stunned silence, their minds drawing blank as they attempted to understand what the hell was going on.
Alex, however, didn't seem to care.
He raised his arm again.
And swung.
Another blue arc slipped from his blade, this one descending cleanly from above. It carved through the frozen block with perfect precision, splitting it into two equal halves.
But it wasn't just the ice that was divided.
Maurdin's body—trapped within—was cut cleanly down the middle, his form separating without resistance.
Still…
Alex moved again.
A third swing.
This time horizontal. The arc that followed was wider and heavier.
It tore through the already split mass, cleaving both the ice and Maurdin's remains apart once more, reducing him to four distinct pieces.
Yet, it was as if it wasn't satisfied with just that.
The blade seemed to multiply on the spot, splitting into smaller blue blades that tore relentlessly through the rhino's remains until all that was left was a writhing mass of red, trapped within countless shards of tiny blue ice.
It was only then that the cutting stopped—but not the attack.
At that very moment, the tiny cubes of ice, as if responding to a single will, regrouped and rushed toward one another, merging and expanding until a massive block of ice, nearly twenty meters high, was formed.
The ice construct was so immense that it dwarfed the city walls and could be seen from anywhere within the city—and even from far beyond it.
And at the very center of it… there was a large red core, suspended like a stain frozen in time.
This red mass was what remained of the rhino.
With an unbothered gaze, Alex turned toward the two remaining members of Night, who still stood there, their bodies stiff and unmoving, as if they had been rooted to the ground.
"You," Alex said, looking directly at the hooded man, "you must be Froze from the Drazen family's main branch, right?"
The hooded man shivered the moment he heard Arcanor's words.
Unfortunately for him, Alex was already certain. He had sparred with Froze a couple of days ago and, seeing that he was on the losing side, the latter had cheated by using his ability to gain an advantage against Alex.
And this ability was the very same one this masked man had used in their last exchanges, when he had nearly succeeded in severing his head.
Now that he thought about it, it all suddenly made sense. That was why he had told the werewolf that if he used his ability, then Arcanor had to die. He knew that the latter would figure out who he was.
More than that, this entire operation and how things had unfolded now made perfect sense to Alex. Froze was a core member of the family main branch and the head of the procurement department, meaning that he not only held a high standing within both the family and the city, but he also had access to information and was in direct contact with every treasure meant to be auctioned—it would have been easy for him to add or replace one.
'He had probably replaced the treasure that was meant to be auctioned with the one that exploded and caused everyone to lose consciousness,' Alex reasoned.
Thinking further, he realized that Froze was likely involved in more than just this attack. The bastard had probably helped Maya's uncle abduct her. Apparently, the two of them—and likely a good part of the Drazen family's main branch—had ties with Night.
Alex didn't care about that, though. The only Drazens he knew and had a soft spot for were Maya and Freya. That their family had traitors among them wasn't really his concern—he had enough traitors in his own family to deal with.
However, Froze had not only tried to kill him, but had also endangered those he cared about while being responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people. For someone like that, there was only one possible outcome.
Death.
While Froze was practically trembling where he stood now that his identity had been exposed and Arcanor was still alive, the werewolf was facing a far greater dilemma.
Since the apparition of the illusory wolf behind Arcanor, he had lost his werewolf state and reverted back to his human form. He was now weaker, exhausted, and every injury he had sustained during the fight had worsened. As if that wasn't enough, Arcanor had survived their attacks and returned even more dangerous than before.
Yet, that wasn't what troubled him the most.
'Do I use it?' he wondered. 'The situation clearly calls for it… but… I might lose it forever.'
However, when he looked at Arcanor standing there with a longsword in his hand and a curtain of impenetrable coldness and killing intent acting as a sort of domain, his hesitation vanished. It was either that—or death.
What he planned to use was their ultimate trump card, reserved for situations where they had to face someone they simply couldn't handle during this mission. They had originally planned to use it against the elders of the Drazen family, but thanks to Froze's plan, they had never needed to go that far.
So instead, the werewolf had kept it in reserve… ready to use it against Arcanor, or anyone else who might stand in their way, should they fail to defeat them by conventional means.
Despite their line of work, they weren't sloppy. Every raid they carried out was planned down to the smallest detail, every variable accounted for as much as possible. Granted, they had never attempted something on this scale before—but even so, they had prepared layers upon layers of contingencies. Plans in case things went wrong… and backup plans in case those plans failed. Even their last resorts had last resorts.
This… was one of them.
He just hadn't expected to actually use it. They had underestimated him far too much.
The problem was that if he used it now, they might never recover it.
He took a shaky breath, then reached up and tore off the small metallic cube pendant that had been hanging around his neck this entire time.
That single motion drew Alex's full attention, his gaze snapping toward him.
"I admit we've lost this battle," the werewolf—now reduced to a burly red-haired man—grinned, "but not the war!"