Her breath misted before her eyes, quickly turning to ice crystals that clung to her eyelashes.
“Impossible…”
She whispered against the frozen air, her words nearly solidifying in her throat. Her eyes, usually bright amber pools of warmth, were engorged with terror as she watched her hunters, the pride of Helidor, falter. She had thrown plumes of fire, desperate bursts of controlled inferno, at the advancing frost, only to see them choked, snuffed out by the unnatural cold. Her flames, normally so vibrant, so defiant, were mere whispers against this glacial haunt. There was little time to think, precious seconds melting away like snow in a phantom summer. She had to act, and act fast, doing the only thing she knew she could, the only thing her lineage had guarded for generations. She could not stop it entirely, not with any conventional magic she knew. But she could ensure that all was not utterly lost against the tide of unnatural frost. But it would come at a terrible cost, a price that clawed at her soul.
“Forgive me Noct…”
She murmured the words a promise and a lament. Her eyes, reflecting the dying embers of Helidor’s hearths, blazed with an inner fire, an inferno mirroring the legendary flame she carried within her very bloodline. Below, Helidor was succumbing. The vibrant market square, usually a cacophony of bartering and laughter, was eerily silent, dusted with frost like a macabre confection. The once proud banners of the hunter clans, emblazoned with roaring lions and soaring eagles, drooped, stiff and lifeless, glazed in ice.
Despair gnawed at the edges of her heart, a cold, insidious cousin to Jack’s frost. But despair was a luxury Helidor could not afford.
She, Aurelia, Queen of Illustralla, Blistering Fang of the Hunters, could not succumb. She had felt the spell’s insidious tendrils wrapping around her city, a creeping paralysis that threatened to suffocate Helidor under a blanket of eternal winter. There was no conventional magic, no counter-curse in the ancient tomes of the Citadel, that could undo such a potent, unnatural creation. Except… except for the one forbidden, desperate measure. The measure whispered about in hushed tones, a last resort carved into the very foundation of her throne.
“But there is no other way…”
She repeated, the words now carrying the weight of grim acceptance. The faces of her hunters, etched with fear and exhaustion, flashed in her mind. The hopeful eyes of the children who looked to her for protection. Could she condemn them all to a frozen grave? Taking a deep breath that burned like liquid nitrogen in her lungs, Aurelia closed her hand around the glowing amulet at her throat, the Dawn Flame’s vessel. The smooth, warm stone, usually a comforting presence, now pulsed with frantic energy, sensing her intent. She called upon the power within, not just for the warmth it offered, but for its very essence – the burning, untamed energy of creation itself. She delved into the depths of her inherited power, reaching for the inferno that simmered beneath her skin, the legacy of the Nameless One.
As the flame pulsed against her skin, a vision flooded her mind – a swirling vortex of frost, suffocating darkness, the terrified faces of her people, and then, the faintest glimmer of light, a searing path forged in sacrifice, cutting through the icy darkness. It was a path of annihilation and rebirth, of destruction and salvation, all intertwined in a terrifying dance.
“I am the breaking dawn…”
The words were no longer a murmur but a declaration, resonating with newfound power. Her body, so recently vibrant with life, with the quicksilver grace of a hunter and the regal bearing of a queen, began to glow. First, a soft, inner luminescence, like embers in a forge, slowly kindling to life in the deepest shadows. The frost around her faltered, recoiling instinctively from the nascent heat.
“The crackling ember in the shadows. The coming of spring, the end of eternal frost.”
Each word was a rung on a ladder, climbing towards something beyond herself. Her skin shimmered, then turned translucent, revealing the fiery core awakening within. The intricate patterns of her hunter tattoos, usually mere markings of clan and lineage, began to blaze like living fire, inscribing themselves onto her luminous flesh. The air around her crackled and popped, the unnatural frost recoiling as if burned by invisible flames. She felt the agonizing severance, the tearing of self as her very being transmuted into pure energy. Fear, pain, and even love, the memory of Noct’s warm smile, all became secondary, subsumed by the overwhelming, consuming power coursing through her veins, through her very soul. She was becoming the Dawn Flame, not merely its heritor. She was becoming something… more. Her voice, no longer Aurelia’s voice but something ancient, something elemental, boomed across the frozen city, shaking the very foundations of the Citadel.
“I am Queen Of Illustralla, Home to the Dawn-Flame, gift of the Nameless One. Aurelia, The Blistering Fang!!!”
And then, the supernova erupted.
A blinding flash of white-gold light ripped through the oppressive gloom of Helidor, banishing the shadows, and swallowing the frost spell in a wave of incandescent heat. The oppressive silence shattered, replaced by a resounding roar that echoed off the frozen mountains surrounding the city. Buildings shuddered, not in destruction, but in the sheer force of unleashed energy, resonating with the raw power washing over them. The cobbled streets encased in ice moments before, pulsed with a warmth that seeped into the frozen ground, a promise of thawing earth and returning life. Aurelia’s form, no longer human, but a radiant silhouette of pure light, ascended. She rose above the Citadel, above the miraculously thawing city, pushing through the swirling clouds of frost that still clawed desperately at Helidor’s edges. The air thrummed with the echoes of her sacrifice, a song of burning light against consuming dark. Higher and higher she climbed, an ethereal comet streaking towards the heavens. The light pouring from her soul wasn’t destructive, but purifying. It was a counter-spell woven from the very fabric of her being, designed not to simply push back the frost, but to absorb it, to neutralize its unnatural chill, to draw it away from Helidor and into the vast emptiness beyond. She could not hope to eradicate all of Jack’s frost but managed to pull but a few of them away from certain death.
Just as this became so Noct was drawn in by a light, not of Aurelia's making, but of Kilik's.
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The air hung thick and cloying, a suffocating blanket of shadow that clung to the ravaged battlefield. Death, cold and absolute, had painted the ground in shades of grey and crimson, a gruesome tapestry woven with the fallen. Noct, his armor rent and dark with grime, braced himself for the killing blow. A guttural chant had ripped through the air moments before, the unmistakable prelude to a B’halian spell, something vile and reality-twisting. Just as he raised his cursed black blade, a tear appeared, a violent rip in the fabric of reality itself. From this wound, a light erupted, not the warm gold of dawn, but a vibrant, pulsating pink. It sliced through the oppressive darkness, a blade of pure, ethereal energy, so intense it threatened to bleach the very shadows away. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the violent cut softened, the light cascading downwards, no longer a blade but a waterfall of luminescence, engulfing a figure at its epicenter. Kilik.
They were no longer on the desolate battlefield. The stench of blood and burnt flesh was gone, replaced by the sharp, clean tang of salt. Noct found himself standing on a beach of crystalline sand, each grain catching the strange pink light and reflecting it like a tiny gem. Above, a sky-like polished pearl stretched endlessly, reflecting the same pink glow that emanated from Kilik, now standing a short distance away. The “waterfall” had settled, not into a pool, but a vast, luminous ocean that stretched to the horizon in every direction, cradling their isolated island. This was not merely a change of scenery; it was a severance. They were removed, detached, existing within a space that was both real and unreal, connected to Kilik yet distinctly apart from her in its very being. The entire space…felt like her.
Kilik stood serenely at the edge of the luminous sea, the pink light now woven into her very form, no longer emanating from above, but from her. The water of the luminous sea seemed to coalesce around her, clinging and swirling with an almost sentient curiosity, then with an audible shimmer, hardening. Scales of pure crystal blossomed across her skin, beginning at her feet and climbing upwards, encasing her in an armor of shimmering, translucent facets. Each scale caught and refracted the pink light, making her glow with an inner luminescence. Her eyes, previously pools of amethyst, now burned with the same vibrant pink of the surrounding realm, burning with an ancient, inner power that thrummed in the air around them. She was transformed and ascended to something beyond the war-torn warrior he had crossed arms with.
Noct stood rigid, his grip tightening on the hilt of his cursed black blade. The air in this…place…hummed with an alien energy, pressing against him, subtly altering him. He felt a strange lightness, a lifting, almost soothing sensation that ran counter to the ravaged battlefield he’d just left. A sense of being…whole as if burdens he hadn’t realized he carried had been lifted. But beneath it, a prickle of unease. He had felt the shift, the snap as reality warped, and he knew, with a certainty that chilled him even in this seemingly serene space, that this was not a sanctuary for him. It was a cage. Beautiful, but a cage nonetheless.
Then, a whisper, softer than the gentle lapping of the pink waves, yet it resonated within his mind with the force of a physical blow.
Aurelia. Her voice was laced with pain and fading into nothingness. It was Aurelia’s voice, and it was gone. Gone as if swallowed by the void between breaths. At that moment, the serene beauty of this place shattered. He knew, with a sickening lurch in his gut, what had occurred on the outside. Aurelia was gone. And Aurelia gone meant… everyone. He had no way of knowing how many had perished beside her, holding the line until the last desperate moment, but Aurelia’s final whisper was an epitaph for them all. His heart clenched a fist of ice around his soul, overcome with the worst certainty. All that he had left, was gone.“Forgive me Noct…”
He stared at Kilik. B’halian scum. The name itself was a curse in his mouth, a synonym for pain, for loss, for everything abhorrent and monstrous. He had seen it all, countless campaigns, countless atrocities committed by her people, but this… this felt different. This felt personal. The relentless, merciless advance, the impossible numbers, the horrifying magic they wielded. The screams were swallowed by the battlefield, the cries for mercy ignored. And Aurelia… Aurelia, his heart ached with a freshly opened wound, raw and bleeding anew. He remembered her laughter, bright and clear as mountain water, echoing in the barracks, in the strategy tents, even amidst the grim preparations before the battle. Now silenced, frozen solid by the frost elf Jack, one of Kilik’s co-conspirators, he knew it instinctively. Kilik, the gateway of this devastation, was not just a soldier, but a leader, an architect of the forces that had ripped through their defenses, leaving only ash and despair in their wake. He would make her pay. For Aurelia. For everyone. For the stolen laughter, the extinguished light.
“Pray now to whatever god you are beholden to, scum,”
Noct’s voice was low, guttural, a snarl that barely sounded human. The lightness he had briefly felt in this space vanished, replaced by a crushing weight. The darkness within him, the darkness he fought to control, the darkness that clung to his cursed blade, began to pervade the space around them. The waters once pristine and clear below him slowly became tainted by his murk, tendrils of obsidian ink spreading outwards, staining the luminous pink with black.
“For you will not die, scum, no. Suffering eternally… that is your payment… for what you have stolen from me.”
His voice was ice, colder than any frost elf’s spell, each word a shard of pure hate. He drew his black blade, the cursed metal humming with malevolent energy, the air crackling around it as the darkness intensified, threatening to swallow the pink light entirely.
“Let me out of here… now.”
The team