The silence didn't fall; it struck.
The cacophony of the battlefield—the clashing of steel, the guttural moans of the Grave-Walkers, and the rhythmic chanting of the Void-Singers—was severed by a sound that made the soul shiver. It was the sharp, crystalline crack of air freezing at temperatures that defied the laws of nature, followed immediately by the sickening, wet splintering of bone. It sounded as though the earth itself was being pierced by ten thousand glass spears.
The screams grew quieter, muffled by a sudden, unnatural frost, until they ceased altogether. The rage that had fueled the Osoroshi army vanished into a terrifying, frozen stillness.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
In the vacuum of sound, the only thing audible was the rhythmic patter of liquid hitting the permafrost.
Mikaela stood at the center of the carnage, her hand outstretched. From the grey mire of Osoroshi, a forest of jagged ice pillars had erupted on a scale that dwarfed the capital's walls. Every single Osoroshi soldier—thousands of them—had been impaled simultaneously. The ice had surged through their chests with such velocity that they remained suspended in mid-air, hanging breathless and limp.
But the ice was not white. It shimmered with a deep, haunting RED. It looked like raw ruby, a royal jewel of the macabre, as the blood of the defeated climbed through the crystalline structures, staining them from the inside out. The Osoroshi forces hadn't even struggled; one moment they were a tide of death, the next they were a silent garden of gore and glass.
Kael stood paralyzed, his own heat flickering in the presence of a cold so absolute it threatened to extinguish his embers. He looked at Mikaela, and the breath caught in his throat.
She had transcended.
Mikaela had entered the Elemental State. She was no longer a woman wielding a power; she was the power. Her form was flawless, terrifying, and ethereal. Her skin was no longer flesh, but a pale, translucent frost that glowed with a faint blue light. Her eyes were voids of freezing cobalt, and her silver hair had become a static halo of ice needles. Her very clothes had been subsumed by the transformation, becoming part of her crystalline humanoid form.
She stood as a weapon of the tundra, the atmospheric pressure around her so intense that the very air was liquefying and falling as blue droplets at her feet.
On the battlements, the three masters of Osoroshi had lost their composure. Vane's yellow-stained hands were shaking, and the Iron Lich Malphas had taken an involuntary step back, his rusted armor groaning. They had expected a fight; they hadn't expected to witness a mortal become a fundamental force of the universe.
Kael looked from the ruby-stained battlefield to the shimmering, icy figure of the woman he had spent five years training with. A low, dark chuckle escaped his throat. The fear he should have felt was drowned out by a surge of pride and something much deeper—a fierce, burning adoration.
"Incredible," Kael whispered, his voice carrying through the cold.
He looked up at the three leaders, his golden Emperor aura flaring just enough to acknowledge their terror. He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes never leaving the radiant, frozen form of his Vice Commander.
"I came here to dismantle this kingdom," Kael said, a smirk playing on his lips. "But it seems I'm overqualified for the cleanup. Perhaps I should just sit back and let you deal with them, Mikaela."
In that moment, amidst the blood-red ice and the scent of death, Kael realized he was in love all over again. Not with a girl from the North, but with the storm that stood beside him.
The Iron Lich Malphas drew a blackened blade, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and dread. "You think a change in state will save you? We are the masters of the grave!"
Mikaela didn't speak. She simply turned her icy gaze toward the ramparts, and the temperature in the capital dropped another forty degrees.