While the valleys of Osoroshi were being carved into a garden of ruby ice, the atmosphere in the Motherland—the heart of the A.N.Ts—was one of cold, clinical calculation.
In the High Command's Intelligence Sanctum, the air hummed with the vibration of a thousand data-spheres. Neith, the 99th Goddess of Knowledge, sat atop a floating dais, her small legs swinging idly. Her eyes were closed, her mind traversing the leylines of Tellus. Suddenly, her brow furrowed, and a single crystalline tear of mana rolled down her cheek.
"He did it," she whispered.
Across the room, Supreme Commander Harold stood before a panoramic map of the continent. He didn't need to ask. The shift in the world's mana was palpable, a violent spike in the south that felt like a needle pricking the back of his neck.
"Kael has crossed the border," Harold stated. It wasn't a question.
"Worse, Supreme Commander," Neith replied, opening her eyes. "He didn't just cross it. He brought the Vice Commander, and she has touched the ceiling. Mikaela has entered the Elemental State. Osoroshi is no longer a rogue nation; it is a slaughterhouse."
Harold's expression didn't change, but his aura flared—a brief, terrifying pulse of power that caused the stone floor to crack. "I gave him a crown, not a license for genocide. If the Rogue Nations unite in fear of his aggression, the serpent will be the least of our worries."
"The order is already being sent," Neith said, her voice sounding older than the stars. "The First Nation's Legions are mobilizing."
Outside the sanctum, the bells of the Motherland began to toll. It was a sound not heard in decades—the call for the Grand March. Thousands of elite A.N.T. soldiers, equipped with the pinnacle of Tellus's magical technology, began to board the heavy cruisers. Harold stepped toward the balcony, his white cape catching the wind.
"We march for Osoroshi," Harold declared. "Not to join the fight, but to end it. If Kael has become a tyrant, then I will be the one to strip him of his iron."
Back at the black-iron gates of Osoroshi, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of flash-frozen blood. Mikaela, in her radiant, terrifying Elemental form, glided forward. Her feet didn't touch the ground; they hovered over a carpet of frost that crystallized out of thin air.
The three masters of Osoroshi recovered from their initial shock. They were not Noelle; they were survivors of a darker, more pragmatic school of magic.
"Beautiful," Vane the Alchemist hissed, his plague mask clicking as he tilted his head. "A living diamond. I wonder how many jars it will take to bottle your essence."
Vane acted first. He didn't cast a spell; he smashed three iridescent vials at his feet. A thick, mustard-colored gas erupted, not drifting with the wind but moving with a predatory intelligence. It was an Anti-Mana Corrosive. Where it touched Mikaela's frost-pillars, they didn't melt—they rotted, turning into a black, foul-smelling sludge.
Mikaela raised her hand, and a wave of absolute-zero cold swept forward to freeze the gas, but the Dirge-Mother, Elara, intervened. She waved her bone-baton, and a wall of sonic vibrations—a "Mourning Frequency"—shattered Mikaela's ice before it could solidify.
"You are a force of nature, little girl," Elara chanted, her funeral veils billowing. "But even the storm has a rhythm. And I know the song of your soul's end."
As Mikaela was momentarily distracted by the corrosive gas and the sonic wall, the Iron Lich Malphas surged forward. He was a mountain of rusted plate, moving with a speed that defied his bulk. His blackened blade glowed with a necrotic heat—the polar opposite of Kael's pure fire.
CLANG.
Malphas struck Mikaela's defensive barrier. The impact sent a shockwave that leveled the nearby ruins. Mikaela's eyes flared a brilliant, blinding blue. She manifested an ice-blade directly from her forearm, parrying the Lich's strike.
The duel was spectacular—a dance of celestial blue against the grime of the grave. Mikaela moved like a flicker of light, her strikes leaving trails of ruby-ice in the air. But Malphas was relentless. Every time she sliced through his armor, the black ichor leaking from his joints would knit the metal back together. He was a construct of pure, stubborn will, anchored to the world by the very rot Mikaela sought to cleanse.
"You are cold," Malphas rasped, his blade locking with hers in a shower of sparks. "But we have lived in the cold dark of the grave for centuries. We are not so easily extinguished!"
Mikaela pushed back, her Elemental form pulsing with a rhythmic light. She was holding her own against the three, but for the first time in five years, she felt the strain. The masters of Osoroshi were a trinity of stagnation, a perfect counter to her pure, evolving element.
Kael watched from the center of the ruby garden, his eyes narrowed. He could see the stalemate forming. He looked toward the northern horizon, sensing the massive, disciplined mana-signatures of the First Nation's fleet approaching.
"The clock is ticking, Mikaela," Kael whispered, his hand drifting toward his own heart, where the fire lay waiting.