"Damn luck's bastard!" Sebastian's snarl cracked through the clearing, face contorted with venomous envy. That upstart had annihilated a vampire countess with forbidden relics before claiming the Glacial Relic unchallenged. Now the whelp sat radiating unstable power like some winter deity's favored spawn.
Kael knelt motionless, skin mottled blue beneath frost-crusted eyelashes. The relic's energy raged through him—a blizzard trapped in mortal veins. Every labored breath misted the air as he wrestled containment, oblivious to Sebastian's earth-shrouded charge.
Amelia's blade intercepted in a shriek of steel. Ninefold frost barriers erupted between assailant and prey, their layered brilliance dwarfing Sebastian's six-tiered surge. Ice spiderwebbed across the necromancer's armor as he staggered back.
"Persistent wench!" Sebastian spat frostblood, gauntlets crackling with renewed earthen fury. Behind him, Yuri observed through slitted eyes, calculating odds.
Daniel's derisive laugh cut through the standoff. "How noble—vultures squabbling over carrion." The rogue mage leaned against a shattered monolith, examining his nails with theatrical boredom. "Run along, little graverobbers. I've no taste for corpse-tainted trophies."
Yuri's staff flared obsidian. "Spare us the sanctimony. We all crave power."
"Power?" Daniel vanished in a swirl of tattered robes, his parting sneer lingering like gunpowder stench. "Survive first. Then gloat."
Amelia held her ground as Sebastian renewed the assault. Each clash deepened Kael's crisis—the Glacial Relic's essence crystallizing his magic circuits. His final conscious act was sealing the tempest behind fragile mental dams before darkness claimed him.
The warrior intercepted another earthen spike, her blade's song faltering as Kael collapsed. Frost patterns bloomed across his prone form—beautiful, lethal, and utterly beyond mortal containment.
"Kael!" Amelia's composure fractured as the mage slumped unconscious. Sebastian and Yuri loomed with predatory intent, their covetous stares fixed on the glacial energies still crackling around his inert form.
She knelt briefly, fingertips brushing Kael's pulse point. Vitality thrummed beneath frost-rimed skin—the relic's power simmered contained, for now.
"Last chance, girl." Sebastian's gauntlets flared ochre, earthen spikes bristling along his vambraces. "Walk away."
"The boy dies." Yuri's staff carved runic sigils into frozen soil. "You needn't join him."
Amelia answered through steel song.
Her blade erupted in argent arcs, ninefold frost barriers materializing between assailants and their prize. The very air hummed with crystalline resonance as her combat qi surged to its zenith—a living blizzard given martial form.
Sebastian charged first, earthen maul swinging in brutal overhead strike. Amelia pivoted beneath the blow, frost-edged steel lashing upward in counterstroke that sheared through his kinetic shield. Rock shrapnel peppered the clearing as the warrior pressed her advantage, driving him backward with precision thrusts.
Yuri's incantation climaxed. "Sigh of the Frozen Wastes!"
False winter descended—a necromantic blizzard of black-rimed icicles spiraling toward Amelia. She spun through the barrage, blade weaving a Frostweb Array that trapped Sebastian mid-roar. Jagged ice strands pinned his limbs like arachnid prey, earthen fury muffled beneath hoarfrost gag.
The necromancer snarled, staff raised to summon darker arts. Amelia was already moving—a silver comet streaking across frozen ground. Her boot crushed Yuri's casting hand against glacial bedrock before his spell could coalesce. Bone crunched. The staff rolled away, its malevolent glow dimming.
"Persistent bitch!" Sebastian's roar preceded an earthen geyser erupting beneath Amelia's feet. She cartwheeled clear, frost barriers intercepting debris storm.
Yuri scrambled for his staff with unbroken hand, lips peeling back in rictus grin. "You'll tire before we falter, little guardian."
Amelia adjusted her grip on the trembling blade. Ninefold qi dimmed to seven—the relic's ambient drain sapping her reserves. Behind her, Kael's breathing hitched. Frost patterns bloomed across his chest in fractal blooms.
Time became currency she couldn't afford.
Amelia's respite shattered as Yuri's *Sigh of the Frozen Wastes* engulfed the clearing. The sixth-tier spell warped the battlefield into a maelstrom of razor-edged hail, its true malice aimed not at her, but the defenseless Kael.
Ice shards shredded the air where they'd knelt moments before. Amelia's frost barrier flared crimson under the assault, ninefold layers crumbling to three as she shielded Kael's prone form. Cracks spiderwebbed through her final defense—
—until she pivoted, abandoning the standoff.
Windborne ice masked her retreat. Amelia hauled Kael across her shoulders in a fireman's carry, ninefold qi burning through her meridians to fuel *Froststride*—a blurred dash downslope through skeletal pines. Behind them, the necromancer's roar of fury carried through the storm.
"After them!" Sebastian's earthen charge pulverized a glacial boulder in his path. Yuri followed with blackened ice surging beneath his boots, staff carving sigils mid-pursuit.
Amelia's breath crystallized in the subzero air. Kael's deadweight and the relic's residual drain eroded her lead. Yet her footfalls never faltered, each *Froststride* leap etching glassy craters in permafrost as she streaked through the undergrowth.
The hunters adapted. Sebastian's *Terra Surge* propelled him in bounding arcs, while Yuri rode a glacier of his own making—a moving platform of black ice grinding trees to splinters. Distance narrowed with each passing heartbeat.
Amelia's qi reserves bottomed at fourfold. She channeled the remainder into a single desperate gambit—a *Frostweb Array* detonated in their wake. The explosion of crystalline shrapnel forced pursuers to swerve, buying precious seconds to vanish into the mist-choked ravine below.
"Faster!" Yuri snarled, staff igniting with corpsefire to pierce the gathering fog. "His aura's a beacon!"
True enough—Kael's unconscious form blazed like a fallen star to magic-sensitive eyes. Amelia knew it. Her grip tightened on the mage as she plunged deeper into the ravine's throat, where jagged rock and thicker mists might cloak their trail.
The hunt plunged into white oblivion.