Quinlan looked at them.
Then he let go.
Ice answered. True ice.
The element itself, flowing through his pathways with the same obedience that fire had shown him for months.
No compression cycle. No wind tricks. No stealing heat from moisture through thermodynamic sleight of hand. Just ice, pure and direct, pouring from his mana channels like it had always been there, waiting for permission.
It started at the shards.
The crude fragments in the air shattered and were consumed, swallowed by a crystalline growth that erupted outward from each piece like frost spreading across a windowpane. The cloudy imperfections vanished. What replaced them was clear, dense, and sharp, ice that glowed faintly blue and hummed with the same resonance as his mana.
His ice.
Quinlan raised both arms.
