A sound like the sky tearing open filled the valley as the dam's final restraints failed. Millions of tons of imprisoned water roared free in a cataclysmic, frothing wall. It was a force of pure, mindless destruction, and everyone could only watch in utter, soul-crushing devastation as it thundered down toward the two fallen girls.
Aisha, energy-depleted and trembling, saw the wall of death approaching. With the last dregs of her will, she conjured a small, dome from the debris around herself and the unconscious Jane, a pathetic shield against an oceanic fist.
A kilometer away, Sky dropped off the last of the rescued tourists and spun around. The sight that greeted him stopped his heart. The dam was gone. The white-water horizon meant Jane and Aisha had failed. And that horizon was rushing toward them.
No.
The thought was a silent scream. He poured every ounce of his mana, every fibre of his being, into his legs. The world dissolved into a streaking blur. He wasn't running; he was a projectile fired from a railgun, the air itself screaming in protest as he shattered the sound barrier.
I can make it. I CAN MAKE IT!
He did. He crashed into the dome to a stop in a shower of sparks and torn earth between the water and the girls. In a desperate motion, he scooped up Jane in one arm and Aisha in the other. He turned, muscles screaming to launch them all to safety.
His foot came down not on solid ground, but into a hidden crevice torn open by the initial explosions.
SNAP.
The sound was sickeningly clear over the roar. White-hot agony shot up his leg as it buckled, the bone giving way. He cried out but didn't fall. Gritting his teeth, he pushed off with his good leg, lurching forward in a grotesque, one legged sprint, the girls a precious, unbearable burden.
He saw Exalibar as a blur coming toward him. If I can just get to him… he can get the girls out.
But his body betrayed him. The pain, the awkward weight, the broken physics of his run—it was too much. He crashed to the ground, Jane and Aisha rolling from his grip.
Exalibar slid to a halt beside him, eyes wide with horror. "Sky!"
"Exalibar," Sky gasped through clenched teeth, his face pale. "Take the girls first. Then come back for me."
"What?! No, I can carry all three of you—"
"No just listen" Sky roared, a command fueled by agony. "I can move if it's just me. Take them so I can put weight on my good leg! GO!"
Exalibar saw the logic, saw the wall of water seconds away. He gave one sharp, agonized nod. In a flash, he had Aisha and Jane, vanishing back up the slope.
Alone, Sky tried to push himself up. A new, deeper agony bloomed in his lower abdomen, a cold, invasive fire. He looked down.
A three-foot-long piece of rusted rebar, jutting from the rubble, was lodged deep in his side. He hadn't even felt it in the adrenaline. Blood, shockingly dark, soaked his white trousers.
He watched, detached, as the leading edge of the floodwater, a churning soup of debris, crept toward his feet. The roar was all-consuming.
Suddenly a silhouette appeared between him and the water, backlit by the chaos. Then, she moved.
Her arm drew back and shot forward in a motion that seemed to tear the air itself. "HALF FIST OF THE CRESCENT MOON!"
An invisible, crescent-shaped force ripped outward. It didn't blast the water; it parted it. The oncoming tidal wave was cleaved in two along a perfect, unnatural line that stretched across the entire river valley, the water forced back and aside as if by the hand of a god.
The woman didn't hesitate. She bent, scooped Sky up with impossible ease, and with a single, powerful leap, carried him clear of the riverbed, landing on the high ground as the parted waters crashed back together behind them.
Meanwhile, Dylan, who had been a silent, gathering storm, finally acted. He shot into the air on a column of superheated flame, flying not away from, but into the oncoming main body of the flood that was now aiming for the distant city. He shot out the water having heated it enough and hovered before it, a tiny, fiery speck against the mountain of water.
The air around the flood began to sizzle. A massive, rolling wall of steam erupted as Dylan poured his pyrokinesis into the river, to try to boil away its leading edge on a monumental scale.
It still wasn't enough. The scale was too vast.
Then, the sky cracked.
Not with sound, but with light. A jagged, violet tear ripped open in the fabric of the air above the valley. Through it stepped a hooded figure, robes drinking in the light. They stretched out a hand, and from the shimmering air, a staff of dark, twisted wood capped with a pulsating crystal coalesced into existence.
The figure's voice ripped through the air. "A curious fact: warm water freezes faster than cold. This is because heating drives off dissolved gases. Less gas means faster nucleation. Thank you, young man," they said, nodding toward the steaming, superheated river created by Dylan's efforts. "You have made my work easier."
The hooded figure raised their staff. Symbols, not of modern mana scripting, but more fundamental, ignited in the air around them. A vast, intricate circle unfolded silently above the valley—a frost-covered flower of pure, crystalline light. Its geometry was hypnotically complex, centred on a six-pointed core that radiated a cold so intense it hurt to look at. Glowing, angular glyphs circled the design, shimmering with each word of an incantation that was not a request, but a command to reality itself.
"The wind's sharp teeth bite deep and true.
The world is ours, frozen through.
Bones now ache with ancient cold.
A story that the north wind told.
Let the brittle silence reign.
We command the frost and chain the rain.
Every breath a ghostly plume.
We freeze the sun and seal the gloom.
Rivers slow to crystal glass.
This bitter reign shall come to pass."
The effect was instantaneous.
The superheated river, the churning floodwaters, the very mist in the air—everything from the shattered dam to the distant city outskirts froze. Not with a gradual spread of ice, but in a single, SHOOM of captured motion. A jagged, breathtaking landscape of instant ice sculptures and frozen waves stretched across the valley, glittering under the sun, silent and still.
On the ridge, the crew—battered, bleeding, and stunned—stared at the impossible. This wasn't advanced mana application. This wasn't alchemy or telekinesis or speed.
This was something else. Something old, and powerful, and utterly something that was not supposed to be here.
This was Sorcery.