The temperature didn't just drop; it died.
The Silver-Wing crossed the "Cryo-Barrier," the atmospheric boundary where the moisture of the newly cleaned Oryn flow met the ancient, stagnant cold of the North. The transition was a physical wall of white-out conditions. Within seconds, the ship's rigging was coated in a layer of jagged rime, and the brass pipes of the engine room began to groan and contract.
"The Gravity-Keel is dragging!" Elian's voice crackled through the voice-pipe, sounding desperate. "The air is too dense, Kaelen! We're essentially sailing through liquid ice!"
"Hold the line, Elian!" Kaelen shouted, bracing himself against the mainmast. He looked up, his Void-Glass arm pulsing with a rhythmic, black light.
Above them, the Ice-Wraith Legion moved with terrifying, jagged grace. These weren't creatures of flesh; they were the crystallized remnants of a lost era, shaped like predatory birds with wings made of razor-edged glaciers. They didn't flap; they glided on the thermal currents created by the Third Harbinger himself.
The King of the Storm
Zephyr, the Third Harbinger, didn't look like a soldier. He looked like an aristocrat of the void. He was dressed in high-collared white silks that whipped violently in the gale, standing barefoot on a "Cryo-Board"—a sliver of enchanted Null-Iron that froze the moisture in the air beneath it to create a permanent, shifting rail of ice.
"Such a beautiful mess you've made, Little Crow," Zephyr's voice carried over the roar of the blizzard, amplified by the crystalline air. "You opened the lung, and now the world is catching a cold. Did you really think the High Spires would let you turn the sky into a playground for the poor?"
Zephyr raised a hand, and the Ice-Wraiths shrieked in unison.
"I am the Breath of the Peak!" Zephyr roared. "Cryo-Style: Glacial Needle!"
He flicked his wrist, and the moisture in the air for fifty yards around him instantly condensed into thousands of needles of black ice. They shot toward the Silver-Wing like a localized meteor shower.
"Jax! The shields!" Kaelen bellowed.
Jax slammed a lever in the center of the deck, activating the Aether-Buckler. A shimmering dome of gold light flickered into existence, but the black ice needles didn't just hit it—they drained it. Every impact sucked a portion of the ship's power, the needles turning from black to a glowing, stolen amber.
"They're Aether-leeches!" Lyra yelled from the helm, her knuckles white as she fought the turbulent currents. "If we keep the shield up, they'll stall the engine. If we take it down, we're shredded!"
The Void's Counter-Chill
Kaelen stepped toward the railing. He felt the cold in his Void-Glass arm—not as a pain, but as a familiar, hollow hunger.
"Lyra, drop the shield on the port side," Kaelen commanded.
"Are you insane?!"
"Just do it!"
As the shield flickered out, a wave of ice needles hissed toward Kaelen. He didn't use a sword. He reached out with his crystalline hand and spread his fingers.
"Void-Style: Absolute Zero Synthesis."
He didn't erase the friction this time. He did the opposite. He used the vacuum of his arm to suck all the kinetic energy out of the air in front of him. In a world that was already freezing, Kaelen created a point of "True Zero"—a temperature so low that even the Ice-Wraiths' frost-magic ceased to function.
The needles didn't hit him. They lost their momentum and shattered into harmless dust mid-air. The Ice-Wraiths nearest to the ship suddenly plummeted, their wings turning to brittle glass and snapping under their own weight.
"My turn," Kaelen hissed.
He leaped from the deck, using a burst of Void-pressure to launch himself toward Zephyr.
Duel in the Canyons
The battle moved into the Sapphire Canyons, a labyrinth of floating ice-islands that moved like grinding teeth. Kaelen and Zephyr blurred through the narrow gaps at terminal velocity. Kaelen was a streak of indigo and black, jumping from one falling ice-shard to another, while Zephyr banked and spiraled on his board, trailing a wake of freezing fog.
"You're fast, Crow! But you're fighting the wind!" Zephyr laughed, spinning his board. "Cryo-Style: Shatter-Zone!"
Zephyr slammed his foot down. The air around Kaelen didn't just freeze—it expanded. A massive shockwave of frost erupted, designed to crystallize the very blood in Kaelen's veins.
Kaelen twisted mid-air, his Void-Glass arm glowing. He drove his fist into the center of the shockwave.
"Void-Style: Singularity Fracture!"
Instead of absorbing the cold, he used his crystalline fingers to "shatter" the molecular bonds of the frozen air. The shockwave turned into a shower of harmless snow. Kaelen closed the distance, his hand reaching for Zephyr's throat.
But Zephyr was a Harbinger for a reason. He didn't dodge. He let Kaelen's hand pass right through him. His body wasn't flesh; it was a localized blizzard, a shifting mass of snow and wind.
"You can't cut the air, exile!" Zephyr's voice came from everywhere at once.
A frozen fist slammed into Kaelen's ribs, sending him spiraling toward the canyon floor.
The Navigator's Insight
On the Silver-Wing, Nova watched the duel with her silver eyes spinning. She could see the "Threads of the Gale"—the invisible lines of pressure that Zephyr used to maintain his form.
"Lyra! The resonance!" Nova shouted. "He is not the wind. He is the frequency of the wind!"
Lyra understood instantly. She grabbed the Resonance-Tuner, a device Jax had built to stabilize the engine, and turned it toward the canyon. "If I can match his vibration, I can make him solid!"
"Do it!" Jax yelled, bracing the tuner against his bionic shoulder.
A beam of invisible, high-frequency sound shot from the ship. It hit the blizzard that was Zephyr.
For a split second, the Harbinger's form flickered. The snow turned to skin. The wind turned to bone.
Kaelen, falling through the air, saw the opening. He didn't use a sword. He used his Void-Glass arm to "grab" the gravity of the canyon floor and pull himself upward with violent speed.
He arrived in front of the solidified Zephyr, his hand glowing with a terrifying, absolute blackness.
"Frequency this," Kaelen growled.
He drove his Void-Glass palm into the center of Zephyr's chest. He didn't release energy. He erased the friction holding Zephyr's physical molecules together.
Zephyr didn't bleed. He didn't scream. He simply... unraveled. His body turned into a cloud of fine, white mist that was instantly swept away by the very blizzard he had created.
The Ice-Wraiths, their master gone, let out a mournful cry and scattered into the clouds.
The Cost of the North
Kaelen drifted back to the deck of the Silver-Wing, his breathing heavy and ragged. His Void-Glass arm was covered in cracks, and he was shivering uncontrollably. The "True Zero" he had created had taken a toll on his remaining humanity.
"Kaelen!" Nova ran to him, her hands glowing with a warm, silver light.
"I'm... fine," Kaelen managed to say, though his lips were blue. He looked toward the horizon, where a massive, glowing blue structure sat atop the highest peak of the North.
The Second Valve: The Sapphire Heart.
"We're here," Lyra said, her voice hushed. "But Jax... look at the engine."
Jax looked at the gauges. The Aether-Core was red-lining. The Ice-Wraiths' drain had been more severe than they thought.
"We have enough power for one landing," Jax said grimly. "But we won't have enough to take off. If we don't turn that Valve and get the Aether-Flow from the North to kick-start the ship, we're spending the rest of our lives as ice-cubes."