The fusion attack erupted from Storm's maw like the birth of a new star.
Lightning and ice didn't just combine—they transformed into something that had never existed before, a spiral of frozen electricity that screamed as it tore through the atmosphere. The beam was as wide as a city block and moved faster than thought itself, carving a path to Kruel that left the air itself changed in its wake.
When it struck the ground, the world ended.
Not metaphorically. For a radius of twenty miles in every direction, existence simply stopped being what it was and became something else. The temperature didn't drop gradually—it fell like a stone thrown from a cliff, plummeting from desert heat to subzero in the span of a heartbeat. Every molecule of moisture in the air crystallized instantly, creating a blizzard of ice shards that fell like glittering rain.
**CRACK!**
