Lucy had only been inside this dungeon for an hour.
In that time, she had already frozen and killed more monsters than she could count—caves full of them, one after another, collapsing under the weight of her frost and silence. Her feet moved like they had a mission, but her mind refused to follow.
Why am I still thinking about them?
She had stopped asking it out loud. Her voice didn't even feel like hers anymore. Her breath misted in front of her with every exhale, not because of the cave's air, but because of the cold leaking from her skin.
Her thoughts were louder than anything else.
What's left of my life in my family? A name? A title? An empty chair at a dinner table?
It all kept circling back—her father's indifference, her brother's words. Someone tricked us, he had said. She hadn't believed him then. Now it was the only thing that made sense. They wouldn't have let this happen, not the old her. The careful one. The one who thought before stepping into any mess.
But she'd followed the trail anyway. Followed a stranger. Fought monsters for no reason other than instinct and confusion. And now look at her—knee-deep in ice and death, leaving behind frozen corpses she didn't even glance back at.
What if it had been poison?What if I had died?Would Father have even flinched—or just felt ashamed?
She hated the questions. Hated herself more for not having the answers. For still wondering where she would go after this. After getting her answers from whoever did this.
Assuming I even get out alive.
She raised her arm, and another monster—some shaggy thing with too many eyes—locked in place as ice engulfed it from the legs up. It shattered before it could scream.
There was no urgency. She wasn't fighting for survival. She wasn't struggling. She just… walked, killed, and kept thinking.
Each cave led to another.
Each enemy tried to fight.None lasted more than seconds.
Her power was too clean. Her aim was too perfect. The ice did exactly what she wanted—even before she finished deciding what to do. She would think stop—and they would stop. She would think suffer—and they would.
And she hated it.
The old her would never have used power this recklessly. Never would've slaughtered so automatically. Never would've stepped into a cursed dungeon just because someone else said it mattered.
Now, all she did was kill and wonder what she had become.
She entered another cave.
The air didn't change, but she noticed it.
These monsters weren't the same as the last orcs she fought, they—slightly larger orcs, more organized. Their weapons looked half-decent. But they still didn't register as a threat.
What made her freeze was the whisper.
It came from nowhere. Not loud. Not clear. Just… wrong.
Words she didn't understand echoed across the edges of her thoughts. Not from her memory, but like something scratching the back of her skull, trying to crawl into her ears.
Her body moved before she finished processing the sound.
She rushed in. The first orc didn't even notice her.
She reached out with no real plan, barely lifting a finger—and ice bloomed around its neck like a ring of frost. She didn't snap it. Not yet.
She flung him sideways toward a wall, which rose with spikes of thick frozen spears right as the body collided. The impact drove the ice into the orc's chest like skewers. It gurgled and died before its weapon touched the ground.
Another one came at her. She didn't look.
A wall of ice slammed together from both sides and flattened it between them, the crunch wet and final.
She turned toward the next one and let her hand hover just above the ground. Ice spires erupted, slowly slicing up the orc from its legs to its waist. It screamed—an ugly, high-pitched noise that broke mid-way as its upper half fell.
Lucy didn't flinch.
She walked through them like a ghost.
One orc tried to run.
She pointed.His feet froze. Then cracked.He fell. His mouth opened in a silent scream.She closed her fist, and the air around him compressed until his bones gave out.
Still that whisper lingered, curling around the edge of her awareness like smoke. She didn't know the words, but they burrowed in. Not a language. A feeling.
Like she was being reminded of something.
Of what?
She didn't stop moving. The next monster reached her. She didn't freeze it this time. She grabbed its arm, twisted, and slammed it against the floor until the cave cracked from the force.
Blood smeared the ground. The orc's body shook. She ended it with an icicle driven through the spine.
Lucy stood there.
Breathing.
Not tired. Not angry. Not scared.
Just… wondering.
What am I doing? Why am I still killing these monsters? What's even the point anymore?
She felt the power in her again—the cold, creeping energy that did whatever she wanted.
Not magic. Not really.
Something else.
Her fingers twitched, and her eyes started to glow faintly red. Not from magic. From her.
She stared at them, at her hands.
They looked like hers, but…
They weren't.
She heard one last whisper. It was closer. Louder.
She snapped around. But the cave was empty—just ice, stone, and blood. The orcs were dead.
And still, she felt like something had just spoken through her rather than to her.
She opened her mouth. No words came out.
Instead, she exhaled, and frost spread from her lips across the floor in a webbed pattern. Not on purpose. Just from breathing.
She kept walking. The frost didn't wait for her footsteps—it moved ahead like it already knew the way.
Lucy didn't stop it. Didn't slow it down.
Her mind, loud before, had started sinking into quieter, colder corners. But the thoughts were still there. Whispering just behind her breathing.
Maybe this is punishment.
She hadn't wanted to think that. Hadn't let it form in words until now.
But it kept coming back. The way her mother died. The strength she had back then. She could've stopped it. Could've done something. But she didn't. She was stuck, frozen. She'd waited for someone else to act.
And then it was too late.
Now she had this power—too much of it—and it only showed up after she lost everything. She clenched her hand. Ice curled around her knuckles like it was listening.
The memories of the party she had led back then when the dungeon still had meaning to her, to impress her father flashed through her head. A few of them were already dead. Torn apart. She hadn't looked for the others when they retreated, she avoided them.
What kind of person just keeps walking?
Was that what this power was? A consequence? A curse?
Or maybe… this world wants me gone.
She didn't say it out loud, but the idea rooted deep. Her red eyes flickered dimly in the dark, unblinking, as if even they agreed with her. She hadn't asked for these powers. She hadn't wanted them. She hadn't wanted her skin to feel cold all the time or her heart to go numb.
And she definitely didn't want to eat souls like how demons do.
"Not happening," she had whispered, days ago.
But saying no didn't stop the power from going away. Didn't stop it from moving ahead of her, through her, like it had its own direction.
Is this what being a demon means?
The word burned in her head, but there was no answer. She didn't know if that was what she was anymore. She just knew she was changing. And the world around her didn't seem to want her here.
She caught herself thinking about Caelen.
Not the dungeon. Not the monsters.
Just him.
He doesn't need to get involved in this.
He shouldn't. If something was wrong with her—if the power was some kind of curse—he didn't deserve to get pulled into it with her. She didn't want him to end up like the others. Like her mother. Like the teammates she couldn't even remember by name anymore.
What if this is what I do now? Just exist… and things around me break?
Tears didn't come. She didn't have the energy left for that.
"Damn it," she said softly, her voice cracking like thin glass. Her hands trembled for half a second before stabilizing, as if the ice inside her refused to let her be weak.
Then she heard movement—fast, heavy.
A pack of large dungeon tigers charged into the corridor. Their fur shimmered, their claws scraped against the frozen ground, and their iron jaws opened wide with growls that echoed across the cave.
She didn't even flinch.
They were already in mid-air when they froze solid. Not gradually. Instantly. The frost snatched them from the sky before their iron claws got near her. Their bodies turned to statues mid-pounce, the air around them crystallizing with a sharp hum.
They crashed to the floor like glass sculptures tossed from a roof.
Lucy didn't even turn her head to look at them. She just kept walking.
The dungeon shook—just slightly—and the boss appeared.
A massive white-furred tiger with glowing eyes stood in silent as it moved.
It didn't roar. It didn't leap.
It stared at her, growling low.
She didn't blink.
And she didn't give it a chance to act.
She raised her hand—and stabbed the ice directly into the ground beneath her. A vein of frost shot forward, a perfect crack line, racing under the stone and beneath the tiger. When it reached the beast, jagged blue ice exploded upward, impaling it from the stomach through the spine.
It didn't even get to scream.
The light left its eyes before its body hit the ground.
She walked past it, the frost parting for her like a curtain.
She kept walking.
More tunnels.
More silence.
Her heart felt heavy. Not just from guilt—something worse. Like her anger had finally burned out, and now all she had left was ash. Her feet dragged. Not physically. Mentally. Every step forward started to feel like she was wading through thick water.
She had come into the dungeon furious.
Now she just wanted to go home.
If I still have a home.
Her vision blurred for a second. Not from blood. Not from fatigue. Just… tiredness.
Real tiredness.
The kind that comes after holding yourself together for too long.
She saw a stone arch ahead. Maybe it led somewhere. Maybe it didn't. She didn't care anymore. She just needed out. She needed this to stop. The killing. The whispers. The guilt. The cold.
Her lips parted, breath misting in the air.
Her voice cracked.
"I want to get out…"
Her knees almost buckled. She caught herself.
Then clenched her fists, turned to the empty tunnel, and screamed.
"I WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE!"
Her voice echoed violently through the ice-covered cavern, loud enough to shake some loose icicles from the ceiling. They shattered against the ground behind her.
Then—nothing.
Just her breath. Just her frost. Just the silence pressing in like a blanket too heavy to move under.
She stood there, not moving.
And the dungeon remained still.