"Pity Finn isn't here," Kael remarked. The warrior had vanished during the beast tide's chaos, his fate unknown. With Finn's fifth-rank prowess, their trio might have dominated the Frostspire hunt.
Amelia's lips quirked. "Scoundrels like him never die easily. Isn't there a saying—*the wicked outlive the virtuous*?" Her rare jest carried subtle reassurance.
Kael chuckled, conceding the point. That lecherous rogue likely thrived wherever he'd been flung.
As they pressed northward, their synergy deepened—mage and warrior anticipating each move with seamless precision. Hours passed in fruitless searching, their senses tuned to elemental aberrations. Such a spiritual treasure couldn't manifest without rippling the world's mana fabric. Yet the forest remained stubbornly quiet.
"Yuri and Sebastian remain our prime obstacles," Amelia assessed during a respite. "Yuri's a seasoned sixth-circle mage with ruthless cunning. Sebastian's newer to sixth rank but commands mercenaries and obscure arts."
Kael nodded. "Yuri's the greater threat. Sebastian fights with honor, as shown when he faced the lion king alone. Still, my true concern lies beyond them." His gaze darkened. "Should an Archmage catch wind of this…"
"Unlikely." Amelia gestured at their surroundings. "The lion king rumor serves as perfect smokescreen. Only a select few know the Frostspire's secret."
"Let's pray it stays that way."
Elder interference would render their efforts futile. For now, they tracked Yuri's faction northward—a calculated gamble, as veterans often followed prey to water. Kael's expanded spiritual sense could detect disturbances within miles, buying them critical reaction time.
Mist thickened as they advanced, ancient trees yielding to jagged glacial formations. Frostbite winds gnawed at exposed skin, each step crunching over permafrost. Danger lurked here in subtler forms: ice wyrm burrows disguised as crevices, spectral auroras that drained warmth from bones.
Amelia's sword glinted faintly, its edge kissed by condensation. Kael's staff pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, mana coiling like a serpent ready to strike. Somewhere ahead, primordial cold awaited its awakening—and with it, the crucible that would forge legends or graves.
Kael's true focus during their trek lay in deciphering The Book of Immortality. His sixth-rank breakthrough had shattered another layer of its seals, flooding his consciousness with forbidden knowledge. Alchemical formulas below eighth-tier, enchantment schematics, glyphcrafting techniques—all now lay bare. Even more tantalizing were the spell matrices: every incantation beneath eighth-circle, including the devastating Meteor Shower he'd wielded against the lion king.
Yet frustration tempered his awe. The tome's most arcane secrets—legendary seventh-circle spells and beyond—remained shackled by his current limitations. A flicker of light within his mental expanse drew his attention, revealing an unexpected treasure: forging arts.
Smithing.
A discipline jealously guarded by dwarf clans, now etched into his psyche. Human smiths rarely mastered beyond crude enchantments, but this was different—ancient methodologies capable of crafting artifacts rivaling legendary armaments. His fingers tightened around the Inferno Staff, its once-prized fire crystals now dulled by sixth-rank demands. With these techniques, he could forge a weapon worthy of his ascent.
Amelia's voice severed his reverie. "The northern peak."
Above the mist-choked valley loomed a modest summit, its crown shimmering with aberrant mana. The air itself crackled—not with cold, but an absence so profound it gnawed at reality.
Kael's staff flared in response, runes pulsing crimson. "The Frostspire's awakening."
No auroras or quakes heralded its birth. True primordial ice devoured all spectacle, its emergence marked only by the world holding its breath. They climbed in silence, frost crunching underfoot. By the time they breached the tree line, the sky had darkened to twilight hues despite midday sun.
There, embedded in glacial rock like a dagger through the earth's heart, stood a spire of living ice. Its surface shifted between transparency and star-strewn obsidian, humming with power that made Kael's teeth ache. Millennia of condensed elemental essence pulsed within, waiting to claim its champion—or executioner.
Amelia's blade hissed free. Around the spire's base, shadows coalesced into familiar figures: Yuri's glacial poise, Sebastian's mercenaries fanning outward, Chloe's predatory smile. Daniel leaned against a boulder, tossing a dagger skyward.
"Took you long enough," he called, catching the blade mid-spin. "Now the real party begins."
"There!" Kael surged forward, Amelia matching his stride as they raced toward the summit. The elemental disturbance now pulsed like a beacon, guiding them past gnarled pines and jagged obsidian outcroppings.
Yuri and Sebastian materialized through the haze ahead, their factions trailing behind. Both leaders froze at the newcomers' approach, hostility thickening the air. No words were exchanged—only calculating glances that promised violence when the moment ripened.
The summit revealed a hellish paradox: a vast caldera brimming with molten lava, its surface churning with fiery bubbles. Heatwaves distorted the air, yet the mountain's peak bore frost-rimed stones. At the crater's heart, a luminous thread of blue-white light writhed beneath the magma.
"Contradictory elements…" Amelia murmured, blade raised against the searing gusts.
Sebastian and Yuri fanned out along the crater's edge, their wariness toward each other momentarily eclipsed by the anomaly before them. Daniel and Chloe arrived minutes later, the former whistling at the gathered rivals.
"Cozy gathering," Daniel remarked, though his hand hovered near a dagger hilt. Chloe's playful demeanor hardened as she stared into the lava's depths.
The elemental surge abruptly stilled. Magma bubbles churned like a cauldron over hellfire, the submerged light intensifying to blinding radiance. A glacial resonance cut through the heat—a single pure note that froze sweat on brows and silenced all breath.
"It's here," Chloe breathed, her earlier flirtations forgotten.
The lava's center bulged upward, viscous streams sloughing away to reveal a crystalline spire ascending. Obsidian crusts cracked and fell, unveiling a core of living ice that refracted light into spectral auroras. Millennia of elemental conflict had birthed this paradox: frost thriving in fire's cradle, its cleansing power now ripe for harvest.
Kael's grip tightened on the Inferno Staff, its fire-gems dimming as if cowed by the Frostspire's majesty. Around the crater, mana flared in competing auras—Yuri's glacial mist, Sebastian's earthshaker gauntlets, Daniel's shadow-wreathed blades. Amelia shifted into a combat stance, her sword humming with stored kinetic energy.
The Frostspire's song crescendoed, a clarion call to war.