Snow fell from the sky, cloaking the mountain in a thick, pristine shroud. The wind wailed down its jagged slopes like a furious beast, tearing through narrow passes and flinging flurries blindly. Shards of rock jutted from the mountainside—like the ribs of a fallen colossus, half-buried beneath the snow.
Cain wove up through the jagged spines, his breath fogging in the frigid air. His bone scythe dragging behind him, scraping over stone and snow.
BOOM!
Another explosion thundered overhead, with such force like crackling lightning, causing Cain to speed up with more urgency.
Evan stumbled after him, several strides behind—and falling further with every step. His lungs burned. His legs screamed. Cain was impossibly fast, as though exhaustion couldn't reach him. Even during their earlier brawl with the brutes, Cain had moved like he was possessed—displaying unnatural endurance.
KABOOM!
Above him, fire bloomed—a warm, hungry blast that tore through the air. Evan instinctively ducked, throwing up an arm to shield himself in case debris rained down from the mountain.
He didn't have much time. Who knew how long she could hold out?
Grim thoughts took hold in his mind. He couldn't lose her too. So, he pushed forward, ignoring the strain burning through his body as he raced up the mountain.
High above, where the mountain leveled out—where the last explosion had erupted—Zerin and Seren were locked in a fight for their lives.
The damned monster returned.
And it was nothing like before.
During Zerin's first encounter with the pale abomination, it was still human-like in some sense. Now, it had transformed, turned into a monstrosity, an abominable amalgamation of flesh with no defined form. A mass that had doubled in size since their last clash.
The only reason he recognized the creature was its head—now grotesquely swollen—and the wound beneath its neck.
Thorned cobalt veins, like rose thorns, twisted through the gaping lesion—the very gash Zerin had carved into its jugular. Its head lolled as a result—perched atop a heaving body.
Every attack was futile. Zerin's Astral blade merely sank into the creature's flesh with each strike, swallowed as if by a bog. The blade met no resistance—only a sucking pull that threatened to drag him in alongside it.
Seren fared no better. The explosions from her brazier numbered five and did little more than just ripple across the creature's pale mass, and the flames—previously deemed all consuming—died the moment they touched it. The creature drank in the heat like a sponge.
Its blood was the key.
The amalgamation carried winter in its veins.
A soft thump echoed behind Zerin. He flinched, a sharp hiss snapping his attention around.
Psshh.
Over his shoulder, he caught sight of Seren, her hand recoiling from the chained brazier she'd just dropped. It rested in the snow, its flames clawing at the air—wild, furious, and far too intense for her to control anymore. The heat shimmered visibly, warping the space around it like a mirage.
"I can't do this..." Her voice was quiet as a mouse as she raised her hands—the skin flushed red from low-degree burns. They quivered in the cold air, curling in slightly. "Zerin."
That was the last thing he wanted to hear. He had already known—he knew it the moment the first explosion of her memory did nothing. They were outmatched. Utterly, fatally outmatched.
But the jagged mountain plateau offered no escape. A crown of stone sealed them in, and even if they managed to overcome that, sheer cliffs loomed on every side. The only way down was blocked by the monstrous amalgamation.
"It doesn't care if you can't. It'll devour us either way."
Zerin's voice was low—practically a growl. He shifted his body toward the creature, tightening his grip about his sword.
"Attack it again," he commanded. "Just once more."
Seren hesitated briefly but knew he was right. She winced as her fingers closed around the hot chain of the brazier once again. She had left her glove behind—partly his fault for shaking her up so badly she'd forgotten them.
Meanwhile the creature was drawing closer—not sluggish but far from graceful. Clawing at the ground, it dragged its mass along, clearly still learning how to move in its newly malformed body.
Seren spun her brazier. Flames whooshed, licking through the air as liquid fire spilled from its cage. With a fierce whirl, it became a ring of fire—then she hurled it toward the Amalgamation.
The brazier struck with an explosion, hot, blinding, and immediate. The searing brightness bathed the crowned peak, and the sound crackled in the air.
But instead of waiting for the flames to fade and die, Zerin charged straight through them.
Seren gasped. It all happened too fast for her to object.
The heat slammed into him like a wall, curling around the two jackets he wore and seeping into every seam. His eyes narrowed, jaw clenched.
He swung.
One wide, blind, reckless slash.
He burst from the fire like a blade from its sheath, sword already mid-swing, aiming for the Amalgamation's veined, thorny neck.
Slish!
Zerin made contact.
His blade carved through one of the creature's thick, coiling veins. A pressurized spray of cobalt blood followed, hissing through the air.
Adrenaline surged through Zerin. He pivoted, planted his foot, and unleashed another strike with everything he had.
Sklishh!
Another vein was severed.
This time its cobalt blood caught him, splashing across his arms and neck. The icy temperature was at least ten-fold of what it was back then. But still, he gritted his teeth and readied a third swing.
He wasn't going to let it recover.
He would take its head. This would do it this time.
But—just as his blade arced forward, his body betrayed him and locked.
The biting chill of its blood crawled through his muscles, seizing them in its hold sending his swing off course. The Amalgamation's grotesque head, hanging by a thread, lolled dangerously—but then, thorn-like veins writhed from its wound.
"Damn it!" Zerin hissed, violently shaking his limbs in a futile attempt to rid himself from the biting chill sinking into his muscles. He staggered back from the creature, breath ragged, his body caught in wrestling against the icy shock still coursing through him.
But to his surprise, the creature didn't move to attack. It remained still, its severed jugular veins writhed and festered.
Then, something peculiar occurred—pale flowers began to bloom from its severed jugular veins.
In mere seconds, they multiplied, spreading across the amalgam's grotesque form, dressing it in a cascade of blossoms.
Zerin took another step back puzzled. "What... is this?"
Just the sight of it sent a shiver up his spine. It was completely random—something he had never seen from the creature during their first encounter. Could this be another evolution, like the one the Howler underwent back then?
His grip tightened on his sword as the flowers pulsed to life, their deep beautiful azure only deepening his confusion.
Then, without warning, the amalgam's body erupted. A wave of winter surged outward from the petals.
Zerin barely had time to react. Instinct took over. He threw his arms up in a desperate shield just as the wave of winter slammed into him and sent him sprawling. The impact jarred through his bones, and the snow cracked beneath his back as he hit the ground hard.
But the storm wasn't finished with him.
A gale from the creature howled past, shrieking like a banshee, thick with razor-edged shards of ice. They sliced across his forearms and raked along his ribs.
The pain was instant—searing, white-hot, and paradoxically cold.
He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw trembling. Frost clung to his lashes, his breath coming out in ragged plumes. Curling inward, he tried to shield his core, to trap what little heat his body still held.
For what felt like minutes—but was only seconds—he wrestled against the gale. Frost seared his brow and froze his eyelashes, but he clenched his eyes shut and endured.
Then, something changed.
The cold softened. It was still there, but muted—no longer a biting force, just a lingering presence. He dared to crack his eyes open.
His breath misted in the moonlight. He blinked against the frost clinging to his lashes and brows, disbelief etched across his face. His arms stayed raised by reflex, trembling from the cold.
And standing before Zerin was a person.
It was Cain.
He stood firm, bare-chested, his torso and face covered in frost. The moonlight etched hard shadows across his features, sharpening them into something statuesque. Despite the chill that had raked Zerin to the bone, Cain was unmoved by the biting wind.
And then he spoke, a voice as cold as the storm itself.
"I wish the dead stayed that way."
The creature let out a guttural bellow that echoed. Cain didn't hesitate.
He shifted back a step, boots scraping against the frost beneath him. In one smooth motion, he twisted lashing out.
His scythe hissed through the air, slicing across the creature's skull with a sharp crack, sending a spray of cobalt blood and fragment of bone into the air.
From the gash in the Amalgamation's skull, a fresh bloom of pale flowers erupted. They unfurled greedily, gorging the spill of icy blood and sealing the wound.
Then it blared—A scream that was as sharp as broken glass.
Cain staggered under the force of it, teeth clenched. He anchored himself, heels digging into the ground. Then, in retaliation he swung his scythe once again, this time in a wide, vicious arc, the blade whistling as it cut through the moonlight toward the creature's bloated head.
The strike hit the creature's head, the force completing what Zerin had begun—cleanly cleaving it from its mass.
The speed of his strike kicked up a halo of powdered snow around Cain, a lingering flurry that finalized the fight.
Zerin blinked. Had he done it? Had he truly managed to kill the pale abomination?
The battlefield was still. The amalgamation was motionless. But doubt crept in, suddenly grasping his spine.
No... It couldn't be that easy.
He remembered the last time—when the Howler had torn into the abomination with its iron-crushing jaws, sinking them deep into the creature's skull. He'd watched it happen, seen bone give way, heard the sickening crunch as its head was crushed. And yet... it managed to recover.
If it could do it once, it could again.
Unaware of this fact, Cain turned his back on the grotesque heap, its body still gushing cobalt blood like a fountain. He shifted his bone-forged scythe into a spear, the weapon cracking and reforming. He slid it down the nape of his neck, allowing it to vanish.
"Cain!" Zerin shouted.
But the warning was not enough.
With a wet, horrid shudder, the Amalgamation lurched toward Cain, seizing him by the torso with its mass. Swiftly, he vanished into the creature's roiling mass, swallowed whole.
Zerin's eyes went wide, disbelief carved into every line of his face.
Cain was gone.
So quick that he couldn't even cry out.
Devoured whole—right before their eyes.