The cave was warm and quiet, the fire casting dancing shadows on the walls. With the food gone, the immediate fear of cold and starvation had passed, and the girl's deeply ingrained caution returned.
Blake turned from stoking the fire, his expression easy and open. "Well, my name's Blake," he said simply. "I'm a mage from the Fairy Tail Guild."
When he asked for her name and where she was from, Ultear's posture immediately tensed. She pulled her knees up to her chest, her eyes narrowing into a sharp, defensive glare. The warmth from the fire did little to thaw her inherent wariness.
Blake held up his hands, a gesture of peace. "Easy there. I just asked so I can call you by your name. I can't continue calling you 'hey, girl' or 'hey, kid' for the next few days, can I? That'd be rude."
The simple logic, stripped of any demanding authority, seemed to disarm her slightly. The tension eased from her shoulders.
"My name is Ultear," she said quietly, her voice still rough from the cold.
"Ultear. That's a nice name," Blake complimented. "So, Ultear, here's the obvious question: where were you going alone in this weather? And you didn't have any equipment to handle the cold. You were about to freeze."
Ultear shrugged, looking away. "I don't know," she mumbled.
Blake frowned slightly. "You don't know? Were you lost?"
"No," she said, her voice turning hard. "I was running away. I went to find my mother."
"Your mother?" Blake asked, surprised. "You're not an orphan, then?"
"No, I have a mother."
"Where is she?"
Ultear's face twisted into a mask of pure resentment. "She left me. I had a bad fever, so she took me to this medical facility when I was little. She promised she'd come back, but she never did. I realized she abandoned me."
"And you found her recently?" Blake pressed.
"Yes. I escaped from that place, and I went to the town where she lives. But when I saw her... she had already replaced me with two boys." Rage flared in Ultear's eyes, and she clenched her small fists. "She just replaced me like a broken doll."
Blake's internal Haki alarm bells were ringing wildly. He stopped stoking the fire and turned to face her fully.
"Backup, backup, backup. Let's go over that story again, because there are a few holes that are bigger than Gildarts's latest wall break."
He ticked off points on his fingers, his expression serious. "So, you're telling me your mother left you at a medical facility. And you, a little girl, escaped a highly maintained facility which had a lot of doctors in it—a facility that sounds like it was holding you—without anyone noticing? Or without alarms being raised?"
Ultear nodded defiantly.
"That, Ultear, is a million jewels question," Blake said, shaking his head. "Because no normal medical facility would require a child to escape, and if it were a secure one, escaping without detection is impossible. And if you did, don't you think those people would be searching for you right now?"
He paused, then moved to the second point. "As for 'replacing' you, tell me something vital. Did you talk to your mother when you saw her again? Did you knock on the door and ask her what happened to you? Or did you just run after looking at them from afar, being too close to your mother?"
Ultear's raging expression collapsed. The fierce certainty in her eyes was replaced by a look of confusion, doubt, and raw, agonizing pain. She bit her lip and looked down at the floor, unable to meet his gaze.
"I... I only saw her through the window," Ultear admitted, her voice barely a whisper. "She was laughing with them. She looked happy. I ran before she could see me."
"See?" Blake said gently, his tone firm but kind. "That's why you need to stop running. Right now, you are making a life-changing decision—one that will shape who you become—based on a two-second glance through a window."
He leaned forward slightly. "First, talk with her and know the whole story. Know why she left you there, and why she couldn't come back. Find out the truth behind that facility. And then, only then, make the correct decision. If she really replaced you, if she really abandoned you out of malice, then you have every right to be furious."
Ultear slowly lifted her head. The hate in her eyes hadn't vanished, but the focus had shifted from blind rage to determined curiosity. She saw the gaping holes in her own narrative.
She nodded. "I will talk to my mother. I will learn the whole story. If she really replaced me with those two boys, I will never forgive her."
"Fair enough," Blake said, giving a small nod. "But you're safe now. And you need to be strong for that conversation."
Ultear looked at him, her curiosity finally overcoming her caution. "What about you? What were you doing out here? You're not from this town."
Blake didn't hesitate. "I'm on a quest. A high-ranked monster hunt for my guild. I'm heading further north, deep into the ice fields."
Ultear's eyes widened slightly. "A quest? For a monster?" She nodded, accepting the inherent danger in his life.
"So, where does your mother stay?" Blake asked. "You look like you're in no shape to travel alone, and those people from the facility might be looking for you."
Ultear described the small, desolate town where she had last seen her mother, providing a name that Blake instantly recognized as the location of Ur's cottage.
"Good," Blake said, rising to his feet and stretching. "That's settled. The town is on my way, or close enough. I will accompany you to your mother. I need to be sure you make it there safely and that you don't run off before getting the truth."
Ultear looked surprised, then a hint of gratitude flickered in her eyes. She nodded in agreement.
The fire had burned low. The cave was cozy, a small bubble of warmth against the freezing night.
"It's late," Blake announced, checking the small clock on his pack. "We'll start our journey next morning. You get some rest. You've earned it."
Blake threw a log on the dying embers and settled down against the cave wall, his back straight, his black sword close at hand. Ultear curled up on the thermal blanket, the exhaustion finally pulling her under. She fell asleep faster than she had in months, safe in the presence of the kind-eyed stranger who had just shattered her certainty.
Blake didn't sleep. He watched the cave entrance, his Observation Haki spread out like a fine net over the frozen wilderness. He was supposed to be looking for a demon, but he knew, deep down, that the journey with Ultear was the real test he had been waiting for. The crucible had arrived, not in the form of a monster, but in the shape of a lost, deeply broken little girl.
------------------
Ur's lungs burned with the cold air and the strain of battle. The roar of Deliora was a physical shockwave, rattling the ice pillars she had desperately conjured. It was a beautiful, terrible fight—a dance of creation against pure, mindless destruction.
"Stay back, boys! Don't interfere!" she shouted, her voice hoarse, sparing a worried glance toward the shattered remains of the ruined city. She could just make out Gray and Lyon, two tiny, anxious figures huddled behind a chunk of rubble—her apprentices, her sons, who were too young to witness this nightmare. They were safe for now, and that was all that mattered.
The demon was unstoppable. Ur threw another massive Ice-Make: Lance formation, skewering the beast through its chest. It roared in momentary pain, but the effect was useless. Deliora simply flexed, shattering the ice.
The regenerative property of the monster is too fast, she thought, gritting her teeth. I'm only slowing it down, not stopping it.
A sweeping claw attack came too fast. She threw her weight back, but not quickly enough. The blow caught her left leg. A searing, blinding pain. She screamed, not from fear, but from the brutal finality of the impact.
Her leg was gone.
She stumbled back, throwing up a hastily erected wall of ice. The demon slammed into it, buying her a precious second. Sweat, despite the freezing air, beaded on her brow. Without hesitation, she knelt, focusing her magic and her will. A perfect, crystalline replacement leg shot out from the stump, joining her body. It was painful, stiff, and brittle, but it was there.
She stood, balancing on the magical prosthesis. This couldn't continue. Her body was failing; her magic was depleting. Every blow she landed was healed in an instant. She could feel the chilling realization sink into her bones: there was only one way to win.
Iced Shell.
It was the ultimate, forbidden sacrifice—the price of turning herself into the very seal that would forever encase the monster. She looked one last time towards Gray and Lyon, etching their faces into her memory. They would hate her for this, but they would live.
She closed her eyes, remembering Ultear for the final time in her life. 'I'm coming for you, Ultear'
Then she started gathering the immense cold required to initiate the spell. The air around her turned to super-dense frost.
Forgive me, my loves. Live on.
She was ready to utter the binding words when suddenly, the air beside her shrieked.
Not the sound of Deliora, but a violent, impossible rupture. A furious gust of wind tore past her, slamming into her cloak and sending snow spinning in a tight vortex. It was so fast, so sudden, that she didn't even see a projectile.
Then, Deliora, the massive, unyielding beast that had shrugged off mountains of ice, let out a bizarre, garbled sound of surprise. The demon was violently launched into the air, not by a spell, but by raw force. It spun like a weightless doll and slammed, with a thunderous CRASH, into the side of a few shattered, distant buildings, instantly embedding itself in the rubble and debris.
Ur stumbled, the surge of magic for the Iced Shell collapsing uselessly in her throat. She stared at the new hole in the distant buildings, then turned, bewildered, to the spot where Deliora had just been standing.
Standing there was a young man. He looked barely older than her apprentices, but his height—around 5'8"—and his rigid, intense posture suggested a trained warrior. He was clad in a simple black cloak over a white shirt and dark green 3/4 cargo shorts. A sleek, ominous black sword hung sheathed at his hip.
He looked absolutely untouched by the battle, his eyes locked on the distant, rubble-encased monster. He had arrived from nowhere, like a ghost made of wind, and with a single, invisible strike, he had solved the problem that was about to cost her life.
Ur watched him, her breathing ragged. Who was this boy? And what kind of impossible power was that?