The zigzag tear of crystal formation near Caius appeared to be haunted by a malevolent darkness, an inky gullet in the icy perfection, and out of the bottomless depths of it slid a dark filament, paper-thin as written shadow, sharp as snapped obsidian, unspooling at hellish speed against his frozen body. The air within the crystal prison, a moment before so strangely silent, was now tense with a jarring, tangible tension, a suffocating weight of doom that broke the fragile silence. Aethel's mental scream of raw fury echoed in the echoing corridors of Elara's mind, a mad and jarring accompaniment to the terrifying spectacle unwinding with torturous slowness before her frozen eyes.
Elara's heart pounded spasmodically in her breast, a raw fear, icy and splintered as shattered ice, holding on to her. Caius, her anchor, her unyielding protector, now cold and utterly vulnerable, stood squarely and outright in danger. Her deep, unwavering love for him, which was born in the crucible of their common hardships, a love that had blossomed amid tempests and night, emerged at the forefront of her consciousness, pushing for the moment into oblivion the turbulent bewilderment of her fading remembrance and the ominous presence of Lysander.
"Caius!" she screamed inwardly, her mind's scream a soundless, anguished cry echoing through the crystal hollowness, a naked expression of love and terror.
The black tendril, as alive as a limb of the hollowness itself, brushed against Caius's naked arm, its contact spreading an evident pattern of crawling blackness that seemed to seep into the very crystalline casing enveloping him, a loathsome stain spreading like a stain on clean glass. A lightning flash of burning pain, immediately smothered by the crystalline trance, swept over his stiffened face, his brow furrowed into wordless agony, his lips bitten into a fine, white line of torment that lashed at Elara's heart.
Lysander, viewing this horrific danger to Elara's present passion, to the man at her side now, strained against his crystalline bonds with an aggravated and desperate fury, blazing with a fierce guardianship in his eyes that was the match of her own savage terror. His silent battle, all tightened muscles and clenched fists a testament to his unshakeable faith, was a poignant reminder of a love that, in defiance of the heartless passage of time and the void's insidious interference, still had a nucleus of selfless and abiding devotion.
"The equilibrium tips further toward darkness," the guardian's voice echoed, a deep, vibrating thrum that carried with it an urgency to be sensed, the fatigue now combined with a cutting note of alarm. "The void's corrupting influence accelerates at a terrifying rate. A decision, Elara, an honest and irreversible decision, must be made soon, before all is consumed."
Elara's brain reeled in frantic desperation, crying out for any means to save Caius, any weakness in their crystalline prison. Her own power slept hidden within the frozen serenity, a lovely, wild creature wanting to break its crystalline chains. She looked at Lysander, his tear of memory still shining softly on his crystalline cheek, an agonising and heartbreaking reminder of what they had once had and the love that had been so brutally stolen from them.
"Lysander", she thought desperately, the idea in her head a begging lament. "Can you do something? You're bound to the void somehow. Can you save him? Can you stop this?"
Lysander's frozen gaze met hers, and in the depths of his suffering eyes, she sensed a spark of understanding, a silent acknowledgement of her begging lament, a promise of aid in spite of his own imprisonment. He focused his will in a hot concentration that seemed to vibrate along the crystalline matrix, his forehead furrowing with the huge effort, and a gentle, unearthly radiance, moon-silver white, began to emanate from under his crystalline prison, a subtle but forceful counterstatement to the encroaching, suffocating dark.
The dark tendril recoiled from the oncoming ethereal light, its manic push halted for a time, hissing like a burnt shadow touched by unadulterated light. But the shattered crystal crack near Caius stretched out, webbed further into the ice surface, and fresh tendrils, thinner and more, began writhing out of the dark blackness, their movement sickeningly fast and inarguably menacing.
"It's trying to swallow him whole," Elara recognised with a sickening surety, a chill of fear settling like a weight in the pit of her stomach. "Aethel… this is your doing, your twisted revenge!"
Aethel's mental voice, now still imbued with the echo of its angry scream, carried a clear note of frenzied, almost euphoric exultation. "He is a barrier! A wretched diversion from the radiant fate that awaits us! Let the nothing take him; let him be nothing!"
Elara's fury kindled, white-hot, burning with an inner fire of righteous anger directed toward the ancient person who was so willing to put the man she loved, the man who had stood by her in her current life, into harm's way. "Never!" she growled, distilling all her will, all her essence, all the concentrated love she harboured for Caius into a desperate, inward thrust of unbridled energy.
The red rune on her palm pulsed wildly, emitting a heat that seemed to melt the air around it, and a quiet warmth, like the beginnings of a dawn, began to spread through her frozen limbs, a tiny, resistant echo of her stormy power fighting against the crushing crystalline silence.
"The bonds of love are strong, indeed," the guardian's voice called out, a note of something very like ancient approval, a resonance of hope in its ageless tone. "But strong enough to shatter the void's relentless grasp? Only time, and your choices, Elara, will tell."
The dark tentacles, momentarily driven back, took up their wicked attack again on Caius, their frenzied attempts more desperate, their dark power reaching further over his frozen form, a loathsome corruption spreading towards his heart. He lay motionless, helpless, his silent pain a torment to Elara to witness, an alive hell hung in limbo.
Lysander's astral light became more intense, a radiant spark in the advancing darkness, pushing back the presence of the void that surrounded Caius, creating a narrow, shining wall against its contaminating touch. But the stupendous exertion seemed to visibly drain him, his pinched face a mask of even greater pain, his brow furrowed in a silent combat that reflected Elara's inner struggle.
Elara focused every last shred of energy on the red rune, willing it to come fully alive, to unleash the raw, wild power that lay locked within her. The warmth spread further to her fingers, and she could feel a distinct tingle, the deep thrum of her wild energy awakening with increasing strength.
"I have to escape," she thought wildly, her resolve a steel rod against the cold captivity. "I have to rescue him, them."
She looked at Lysander, his eyes blazing with a selfless ardour, a profound and sorrowful understanding of her desperate struggle. In that moment, she felt an overwhelming, inevitable connection to him, a gentle acknowledgement of the powerful love they had once shared, a love now manifesting as a selfless wish to give up for her happiness, for protecting the love she now felt.
"Thank you," she sent to him, a silent, heartfelt thanks for his unselfish deed, a bittersweet goodbye to a ghost of a love that once was.
And then, with a new surge of determination, she turned all her focus again to Caius, her heart overflowing with a fierce, unbreakable love, a burning determination that defied the encroaching shadows. She focused every fibre of her will on the crystal bonds that held her captive, imagining them breaking, splintering, and falling into a million harmless pieces under the sheer force of her determination to be free.
The red rune on her hand pulsed again, a wild, nearly painful beat, and a vast wave of uncontrolled, raw energy swept through her trapped shape, a wild shudder rippling the very crystalline matrix that held her. The crystalline matrix that held her began to shatter at a chilling rate, hairline cracks racing across its surface like fine spiderwebs, eerily mirroring the cracks that marred Aethel's enormous eye.
As Elara's increasing strength starts to shatter her crystalline prison in a blast-like manner, the black tendrils coiled around Caius immediately stiffen with sickening speed, assuming a solid, spinning ball of darkness right over his chest, a wicked whirlpool already clearly pulling him further into the serrated crevice, down to some ghastly and hidden abyss. Lysander's ghostly radiance flashes brightly, one final, last-gasp release of energy, and then suddenly goes out utterly, plunging that area of the crystal further into darkness, and Aethel's mind shrieks out within his own, not in rage or triumph, but in a noise of absolute, undiluted, abject terror: "The other… it's awake! And it's coming for us all!"