In the Backroom
The cold in this room wasn't natural.
It wasn't Glais V's climate —
it was the cold of old ghosts.
Frost clung to metal crates stamped with forgotten rebel sigils. Posters of long-dead revolutionaries hung half-frozen on the walls, their edges curled like they'd winced at something unspeakable. Cryo-kegs lined the floor in uneven rows, humming with a soft cyan pulse that made the shadows shiver.
Dobo stood with his back to an ice-glass wall, goggles kicked up onto his forehead.
His stance wasn't casual.
It was defensive.
Evaluating.
Judging.
"Alright," he growled, voice low, gravel rasping like cracked ice.
"First question: who the hell are you three? And don't feed me the same kiddie-menu lie your dreadhead friend gives strangers."
Luto hesitated — barely a breath, but enough to make Saelara tense.
Onyx didn't.
He reached up and peeled back his hood, letting the dim frost-light slide over his dreadlocks and the sharp, carved lines of his face.
Dobo froze.
Luto followed reluctantly, slipping off his mask.
Saelara lowered her hood too, cheeks flushed from the cold, eyes anxious but steady.
He squinted.
Then his eyes widened.
"You're those rookie rebel brothers that faced off against—"
He stopped.
His breath hitched.
Recognition slammed into him like a collapsing glacier.
He stepped in close, studying them with a scrutinizing stare.
"You fought the Sentients," he whispered — quietly, because saying it too loud was a death wish.
"Not rumors. Not tavern tales. I know those battle scars. I've seen what their blades do."
He jabbed a finger at Onyx.
"You. Void-marked. Reforged. I've only ever read about cases like yours in old Saint dossiers — and every single one of them ended up a corpse or a drooling husk."
His brow tightened.
"So tell me how you're standing here."
His gaze snapped to Luto.
"And you — folding space like that? I've seen the reports. Only one man ever bent the universe that cleanly."
A pause.
"And he's been listed dead for decades."
Silence pressed in.
Dobo's expression didn't change, but his voice dropped:
"…So either the reports were wrong or everything we were told was a damn lie."
Then he turned to Saelara.
"You're not even supposed to be here. Starchilds don't mix with rebels. Not voluntarily."
Saelara stiffened, shocked he could see straight through her.
Dobo exhaled in disbelief.
"Well, either I'm hallucinating off cryo-fumes… or you three idiots are somehow still alive after pissing off the Seven Voices' personal attack dogs."
Luto crossed his arms.
"We prefer the term strategically disliked."
Onyx didn't smile.
"Dobo. We need information. About Arkann."
The temperature dropped like a plummeting star.
Dobo's shoulders tensed. His jaw locked.
And for the first time, his expression wasn't grumpy —
It was haunted.
"…You don't want to follow that trail, kid."
Onyx stepped closer, voice calm but iron-edged.
"You kept his poster. You froze it into your wall. You've been staring at it for years."
Dobo flinched.
Then muttered, "Damn perceptive voidspawn…"
He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking — hard.
"Fine. If we're talking Arkann…"
His eyes sharpened — then flickered with sudden realization.
He straightened.
"…Hold on. How did you even enter Val Coris?"
Luto answered casually, "We didn't use the main port. We hiked through the forest and came in through the inland gate."
Dobo's face drained.
Not fear —
alarm.
"The forest?"
He stepped closer.
"The monster-infested one? The one the locals won't even look at from a distance?"
Onyx frowned. "Yes?"
Dobo swore — loudly, viciously.
"You idiots… that forest is a surveillancecorridor. The Saints monitor it constantly to track rebel movement."
He slammed his fist against the cryo-keg behind him.
"If you came through there…"
His voice dropped to a growl.
"…then somebody saw you. And if the wrong Saint saw—"
Dobo froze.
"…it might already be too late."
The Tremor, The Seizure, The Saint
The frost-light flickered as Luto leaned in.
"Dobo… what exactly are the Saints?"
Onyx folded his arms.
"I've heard the name whispered. Never understood it."
Dobo clicked his tongue — the sound like ice breaking.
"Saints," he muttered. "Fanatics blessed by lesser gods. Mortals who give up pieces of themselves for unnatural strength. Some give blood. Some memories. Some their damn souls."
He spat onto the frozen floor.
"They act like divine enforcers. But they're worse. They turned my ki—"
He stopped.
Went still.
Luto narrowed his eyes. "Your what?"
Dobo didn't answer.
Onyx stepped in. "You said they stole your kingdom. Your kingdom. So what are you? A dethroned noble? A rebel general? A—"
Dobo's jaw tightened hard enough to crack teeth.
"I'm nobody."
Luto shook his head. "That's not what you said."
Dobo opened his mouth—
But the building answered for him.
A deeptremor, rolling through the shop like an unseen beast dragging its claws across reality.
The frost lamps flickered.
Cryo-kegs rattled.
Saelara froze mid-step, eyes widening.
Luto whipped toward the front of the store.
"…Ryu."
Front of Frosted Relics
A minute earlier—
Ryu sat reclined in his chair like he owned the universe, boots kicked up, half-finished dessert in hand.
Cryos darted around behind him, excitedly demonstrating sword forms.
The boy's ice blade hummed to life — a shimmering translucent katana.
Ryu blinked.
"No way! You can do that at your age?"
Cryos grinned proudly. "Grandpa's been training me since I was little!"
Ryu rubbed the back of his head.
"Man… I've tried to make a fire-sword for years. I just get explosions."
Cryos laughed, circling behind Ryu, practicing a flourish—
Then stopped.
No sound.
No movement.
"Cryos?" Ryu called, still facing the counter.
"Bro? You good?"
Silence.
Ryu started to turn—
Something struck his neck.
A precise blow.
A pressure point he didn't even know he had.
Instinct fired — a compressed firebolt launched from his hand, detonating backward—
SFX: BOOM—hiss—spark
—but it hit nothing.
Ryu fell to one knee, vision wobbling.
Through the smoke he saw Cryos collapsed on the floor…
…beneath the boots of two armored men.
Saint footsoldiers.
Snow-colored cloaks.
Opaque frost-visors.
Armor made of layered glacial plates that breathed cold.
Ryu growled.
"Hey— don't touch—"
Then the laughter came.
Cold.
Playful.
Cruel.
A woman stepped through the haze like a painting in motion.
Tall.
Blue hair drifting like frost smoke.
A coat of shimmering winter-silk.
Eyes hidden behind a visor shaped like a jagged icicle.
"Well," she purred.
"You certainly caused a commotion."
Ryu tried to stand—
Took one step—
And felt his blood freeze.
His cosmic energy stuttered.
Slowed.
Stopped.
"What… the hell…?"
"Frozen cuffs," she teased.
"Specially designed to suppress divine-adjacent anomalies. You qualify."
Two Saints grabbed him.
Clamped the icy shackles on his wrists.
He felt his temperature plummet.
His limbs went numb.
His vision blurred into lavender streaks.
Ryu collapsed, cheek pressing to the cold floor.
His last flicker of thought wasn't for himself.
Cryos…
Then darkness.
⸻
Backroom
They were already running.
Dobo shoved past Luto and Onyx, slamming the backroom door open.
Smoke filled the front.
Tables overturned.
The scent of frost-burned air searing their lungs.
Saelara gasped.
"Ryu—?! Cryos—?!"
Luto's eyes scanned the room — fast, methodical.
Empty.
Onyx's dreadlocks lifted slightly as void-sense pulsed outward.
Nothing.
Not a trace.
Just a torn scrap of Saint armor frost and a single set of footsteps burned into the ice.
Dobo's voice cracked like thunder:
"…They took the kid."
Luto's jaw clenched.
"No. They took two."
Onyx turned toward the open doorway, cosmic energy sharpening around him like drawn blades.
"We're getting them back."
Saelara swallowed, fear and resolve warring in her voice.
"Where… where do we even start?"
Dobo slowly lowered his goggles over his eyes.
Snow-blue glass glowed.
The old man didn't look old anymore.
He looked like a general returning from the dead.
"You start," he growled,
"…by hunting a Saint."
The Crownless Flame in Chains
The cold of Val Coris bit deeper than before.
Luto and Onyx tore through the streets like ghosts—
searching every alley, every rooftop, every trace of cosmic energy.
Nothing.
Not a scorch mark.
Not a ripple.
Not even the faintest echo of Ryu's fire.
It was as if he had never been there.
Onyx slammed a fist into a crystalline wall, the crack echoing across the block.
"DAMMIT—Ryu wouldn't just vanish!"
Luto paced in tight, furious lines across the frost-bitten ground, jaw clenched, breath sharp enough to mist the air like steam off a blade.
"He's too strong for a kidnapping. That means whoever did this—"
"—was stronger," Onyx growled.
The words tasted like poison.
Before regrouping, the brothers had swept through the outskirts of Val Coris, searching every ridge, ruin, and frozen trail. At one point, they stumbled upon amassiveabandonedestate, swallowed by silence and half-buried in permafrost. It sat alone in the emptiest part of the region—too large to be forgotten, too dead to belong to anyone living.
"What… is this place?" Luto muttered, tension coiling in his chest.
Onyx didn't answer. He was already moving.
He pushed his way inside the shattered doors, navigating the collapsed halls and crusted furniture. The entire manor felt wrong—cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. Something ancient lingered in the walls like a memory refusing to fade.
Then he saw it.
At the heart of the ruined estate, buried under layers of ice and dust, stood a structure—an arch-like construct of pure, sculpted frost, its surface etched with patterns too clean to be natural.
It resembled a portal frame.
But colder. Older. Dead.
Onyx stepped closer, reaching out. "No way… This can't be real."
The ice hummed faintly under his palm, like a heartbeat remembering it once lived.
He felt something stir.
Then—
"ONYX!" Luto's voice echoed from deeper in the ruins.
Onyx tore his hand away from the icy frame and turned.
"Come on—we're heading back!" Luto called.
With one last glance at the frost-carved arch, Onyx followed.
He didn't mention what he found.
Because even he wasn't sure
if that thing was truly dormant…
…or merely waiting.
⸻
They eventually returned to Frosted Relics, panting, irritated, and burning with frustration.
Inside, Saelara stood among overturned tables, trying to steady herself.
Dobo, however, was barely recognizable.
Dobo's Battle Attire
He now wore:
• A fur-lined frostcloak, cape split at the shoulders.
• An armored pauldron of dark-blue glacial metal over his left arm.
• His right arm, the artificial one made of layered, glowing ice, was reshaped—longer, sharper, jagged like a crystallized blade.
• Frost runes burned across his chestplate, half-hidden by worn leather straps.
• A wolf-pelt mantle hung at his waist, patched from countless battles.
The old shopkeeper was gone.
What stood there was the warrior the Saints had once feared.
Saelara tried to speak, but Luto stormed in first.
"Where—WHERE would they take him?!"
Onyx followed, voice shaking with a fury he rarely showed.
"You're telling me Ryu just got grabbed? Like he's some random street kid?"
Dobo's frost-arm crackled.
"My grandson was taken too," he snarled. "The Saints crossed a line they can't uncross."
Saelara slammed her palm on the counter.
"Enough! You're all panicking, and that's helping no one."
Luto stopped.
Onyx forced his breathing steady.
Dobo closed his eyes, fists trembling.
For a moment, the room stilled—
only the faint hum of cryo-kegs filling the silence.
Then Dobo exhaled.
"…If what you say is true, and he's really the Crownless Flame…"
Luto blinked. "Wait. You know that title?"
Dobo nodded grimly.
"There's only one person alive who could have taken him."
His voice dropped an octave.
A name spoken like a winter curse:
"LysandraKryos."
Even Onyx felt a chill.
Saelara frowned. "Who is that?"
Luto's fingers flew across his data-pad.
"Hacking… scanning… found her profile."
He read aloud:
"LysandraKryos. Saint-Class Ascendant. Ice Dominion lineage.
Known for devastating thermal inversion abilities.
Capabilities: Mass cryofreeze, atmospheric rupture, absolute zero manipulation—"
He scrolled, face paling.
"And supposedly… she fought Ignovar, the Fire Sovereign."
Onyx's head snapped up. "What?"
Luto kept reading.
"Records say their battle destabilized an entire star system. Two planets destroyed."
Dobo nodded.
"That's the rumor."
Then his voice darkened.
"But I don't deal in rumors. I deal in what I saw."
He stepped forward, frost-arm hissing.
"It all started thirty years ago. After the Glais V Grid Blackout. The day the world fell dark… and she arrived."
Luto's eyes sharpened.
"Start talking."
⸻
Saints Cathedral
Cold.
A cold so deep it carved into bone.
Ryu groaned, eyes fluttering open, breath trembling as frost clung to his eyelashes.
He was hanging.
Chains bound both wrists, hooks embedded in the ceiling of a massive ice chamber.
His arms forced above his head.
His skin burned where the cuffs drained his energy.
His breath formed crystals in the air.
"What… the hell…?"
His vision sharpened—just enough—
To see Cryos, limp but breathing, held gently across a woman's lap.
A woman reclining in an ice-hammock suspended by glacial roots.
Tall.
Elegant.
Beautiful in a way that felt unearthly.
Blue hair drifting like cold flame.
A crystalline visor covering her eyes.
Her presence warped the temperature around her.
Lysandra Kryos.
She looked at Ryu like he was an amusing page in a book she forgot she wrote.
"Oh…" she purred, stretching lazily.
"Look who's waking up."
Ryu tried to summon fire—
but nothing came.
Only ice.
Only cold.
Her smile widened.
"Welcome to my cathedral, Crownless Flame."
She stroked Cryos' hair gently.
"And don't worry. The boy is alive."
Ryu's teeth clenched.
"What… do you want…?"
She leaned forward, chin in hand.
"Oh, that's easy."
Her voice turned to honeyed frost.
"I want to see whether the legends of you are true."
Her gaze—hidden but piercing—seemed to dissect him.
"And then?"
Lysandra smirked.
"…then I decide whether you live long enough to meet the god you're destined to defy."
The frostlight dimmed.
Ryu's chains tightened.