But at the very last moment, when the stench of burning hair filled Lucas's senses and his scalp felt as though it were being torn away strand by strand, when the skin on his face had already peeled so badly that even breathing felt like agony, something finally answered the silence the ice belle had been holding within herself.
A sudden burst of white, pure light erupted forward with no warning, not flickering or wavering like ordinary energy but exploding outward with absolute authority, the world itself had been forced to make room for it. The shadow inferno that had been moments away from erasing them simply scattered, torn apart and erased as if it had never existed at all, leaving no heat behind, no embers, no lingering corruption, only emptiness where death had been seconds earlier.
