Vastarael dangled limp in her arms, his once-radiant form dimmed to a flicker. His breathing was ragged but he was alive. She managed to save him but it caused her to suffer from the beam. Thanks to her Sight Teleportation, she managed to escape the brunt of the attack.
The Frozen God's Primofrost, an Origin Element, was unraveling the very fabric of her Pinnacle Tether. Every whisper of her power was met by an equal and opposite freezing wave. Her Sight Teleportation faltered when the Primofrost's cold solidified even the space around her eyes, turning vision to ice. Still, she fought. They both had to live.
She narrowed her eyes and blinked but instead of her usual click through space, she found herself static, her surroundings crystallizing mid-jump. Panicked, she thrust her will outward, fracturing the Primofrost enough to tear open a sliver of space behind them. With a ragged breath, she yanked them both through, landing on a shattered plateau riddled with glass-like obsidian shards. She dropped him gently, cradling his head in her lap.
Blood trickled from her temple as she closed her eyes and reached out. With a trembling breath, she summoned her Essentia and Ascended Form at once. A pocket dimension tore open. It was her seconded Essentia Form, Dimension Creation. With all her strength, she shoved Vastarael inside, gripping the rim of the doorway as the Primofrost's edge began to bite. For one shining heartbeat, they were safe.
Then reality snapped back. The Frost reached into the dimension like claws, tearing streaks of ice through the starlight, shattering the realm to drifting particles that dissolved under the beam.
Desperation clawed at her chest. She opened her arms wide, summoning gravity beneath her feet meant to reel in the Primofrost's fragments and crush them. The Frost recoiled but only briefly. It reformed instantly, hitching a ride on the collapsing gravity and cascading through it. The gravity fields collapsed inward. She tumbled, the world spinning in slow motion.
Her Gravity Manipulation, her third Essentia Form didn't work.
Gritting her teeth, Narisva reached out a single finger and sliced through the air in an arc. Space itself split, creating a blade of pure geometry that she swung at the Frost. For an instant, the beam was bisected, the two halves drifting apart in silent suspension. She seized the moment, pulled Vastarael across the gap, tucking him close and leaping toward a ridge glowing with residual heat.
But the Frost reassembled instantly, dripping back together like oil. The cut closed.
Her Ascender Form awakened. With the last of her will, she summoned a tiny sun, a miniature orb of searing radiance cradled in her palm. It burned with blue light, meant to melt the Frost around them. She launched it into the beam.
The explosion was blinding. The heat pushed the Primofrost back, carving a blistered crater into the ice. She felt the warmth sear her arms but the Frost was ancient. She could not fully destroy it, only delay it. The miniature sun sputtered out, collapsing into a dying star and leaving them vulnerable.
Her vision sharpened. She perceived the subtle vibrations of the Frozen God's beam. And in that pulse, she found a pattern. She swung her arms in a circle, warping the space around her and Vastarael, bending them out of phase for the fraction of a second before the beam could strike. They shimmered as the Frost's edge sliced through empty air.
They landed on a plain covered in Primofrost. Vastarael gasped, drawing a thin stream of blood from his lips. For a second, she allowed herself relief.
Then the beam reformed.
All her Tethers screamed in unison. Sight Teleportation, Dimension Creation, Gravity Manipulation, Heavenly Body Creation, Spatial Awareness, every facet of her Pinnacle Tether had been tested, bent, broken, and re-woven in an endless cycle. She was a cathedral of power reduced to splinters.
The Frost gathered again. It coalesced around her and Vastarael, rising like a frozen storm.
"YOU WILL BOW. YOU WILL BE SILENCED."
Narisva wrapped her arms around Vastarael and felt his heart flutter one last time beneath her palm. His eyes met hers.
"Forgive me, Veneri."
She pressed her forehead against his and gathered the last ember of her will and raised it like a blade. Above them, the Frozen God's beam ignited again. Narisva reached out and pierced that silent wind with her own weapon she took rom Vastarael's inventory using her Dimension Creation, splitting the very instant into shards.
The beam intersected with her last reserve of power, shattering her Pinnacle Tether into a million fractals. Space itself unraveled around her, unraveling her with it. Her weapon had shattered.
And as the island trembled one final time, she realized she had done all she could.
The atmosphere shuddered. The Primofrost beam had evolved yet again.
Narisva was falling, barely upright, her celestial armor frayed, her aura sputtering like a dying star. Her spatial lattice was cracked. Her internal Tethers had frayed from overuse. Her blood was freezing beneath her skin.
She looked up.
The beam was coming straight at her, wide enough to slice the entire battlefield into two. She didn't scream .She didn't panic. She simply opened her hand.
"...You leave me no choice. Miniature Heavenly Body Creation, Event Horizon."
Her entire being flared in one final flash. The sky twisted. Gravity got heavier across the frozen lands above the Submerged Island. A black hole formed.
Reality twisted violently around it. Stars reflected in midday. The broken corpses of the Submerged Centaurs were flung into orbit. Screams of distorted physics howled across the ice. Space and time itself bent, warped and shattered under her command.
And she poured everything she had into it.
The Primofrost Beam met the black hole.
Time broke. For a heartbeat, there was no sound. However, the black hole collapsed.
It couldn't contain it. Its event horizon inverted. Its core swallowed itself and the beam kept coming.
A screech erupted and Narisva took the full hit.
Her body was flung upward and the sky shattered into frozen shards. She was driven into a massive ice pillar, one that formed midair, as if the beam birthed it from nothingness.
She was pinned at its peak. Her limbs drooped. Her skin was pale blue, rimmed with frost. Her lips were turning purple. Her heartbeat slowed to three beats per minute.
Her pseudo-core flickered as the lights in her eyes faded. The galaxies within her irises went dark. Stars no longer moved. Space no longer bent. And then, she opened her mouth.
"...Sorry… Veneri…"
A final breath escaped her lips. A tear slipped down her cheek, freezing halfway.
"I wanted to protect you…"
Her fingers moved weakly, trying to conjure one last teleport...
Nothing.
Sight Teleportation was gone. Gravity was not hers to command anymore. Her dimensions had collapsed. And... she was dying.
She slumped forward, her head tilted downward.