The Lich's threat hung heavy in the stifling air, every syllable feeling like shards of frozen glass in Valerius's ears. There was no time for negotiation, no room for doubt. As the violet light at the top of the skull-tipped staff reached a searing crescendo, it detonated in a single, merciless blast.
It wasn't fire or an ice spear but a bolt of pure necrotic energy, crackling as it lanced across the cavern. Wherever it passed, the black ice floor seemed to writhe, and the very air rotted, leaving behind the stench of ozone and freshly opened graves.
Valerius reacted with instincts honed over a hundred battles. His feet shifted, his body dipped low, and he thrust out his left hand, palm open toward the oncoming death.
"Aegis crystallina!" he roared, his voice echoing with a defiant, glacial power.
A hexagonal shield of flawless, transparent ice snapped into existence, gleaming like a colossal snowflake in the glow of his own magic. But as the necrotic blast struck, the impact was unlike anything he had ever faced. Valerius's magic was about order—about freezing chaos into perfect crystalline form. The Lich's magic was its antithesis: decay, dissolution, and the entropy that consumed all things. The violet energy didn't shatter or rebound—it clung to the shield like acid, spreading in a sickly bloom.
A hideous hissing filled the air as pure frost was devoured. Black fumes rose in curling plumes as cracks radiated in spiderwebs across the ice. He felt the tremor vibrating up his arm, an echo of the clash of wills between creation and corruption. His barrier quaked, held for scarcely two heartbeats—and exploded into drifting shards of blackened crystal.
Though the shield shattered, it had absorbed much of the assault's killing force. Valerius staggered back a step, feeling the necrotic residue sting his skin and leave a cold numbness that wasn't any natural cold.
The Lich laughed, a rasping, brittle sound like dry leaves crushed beneath a boot.
"Your fragile, pristine ice!" he sneered. "It is nothing but frozen water—a pathetic illusion of order in a world that yearns for decay. The truest cold, sorcerer, is the silence of the grave!"
With that, he drove the butt of his staff into the black ice floor.
DOOM.
The sound wasn't loud, but it reverberated with a dreadful depth. An unseen wave of corrupt magic rolled out from the impact, rippling across the cavern like a tide of darkness. As it passed over the corpses strewn around the altar, a horrifying transformation began.
In jerking, unnatural spasms, dozens of bodies began to rise. Broken limbs reset with crackling snaps. Slack necks straightened, and empty eye sockets ignited with the same baleful violet light. These were no longer mindless frost-ghouls. They were the Lich's personal legion—necromantic puppets driven by one vast will. A low, collective growl crawled from their throats as they turned, arms outstretched, claws bared. They closed in, encircling Valerius with inexorable purpose.
Surrounded, deep in the enemy's lair, Valerius felt an odd calm descend. Fear was a luxury he could not afford. He let his conjured light gutter to a dim flicker, leaving only the sickly glow of the altar's runes and the pulsing Heart of black crystal. In that darkness, his eyes shone even brighter—two icy stars burning against the void.
"Aura gelu," he whispered.
Not an attack—an assertion of presence. A wave of cold far deeper and purer than the fortress's dead frost radiated from him. A sheen of clear ice raced outward, glazing the floor in a circle fifteen meters wide. The undead stepped into it—and staggered. Their already sluggish movements slowed further, as though they were wading through freezing tar. Their feet froze in place, giving Valerius the precious instant he needed.
He didn't retreat. He surged forward, slipping through a narrow gap between two shambling corpses. In his hand, a slender, lethal sword of ice formed in a heartbeat, as natural to him as his own bones. Two quick, fluid cuts—two heads parted from two bodies. They landed on the glazed floor with dull thumps. Even headless, the corpses crawled, clawing blindly, still compelled by the Lich's foul will.
"Futile, ice-witch!" the Lich shrieked, his voice scornful. From beside the Heart, he flung a barrage of smaller necrotic bolts, not to kill but to harry, to limit Valerius's movements and force him to keep dodging as the dead closed in.
"They are legion—immortal! For every one you destroy, two more will rise! You will grow weary…and your sweet soul will belong to my Master!"
Valerius leapt back from snapping claws, his sword hissing as it sheared a corpse's arm clean off. He felt the truth of the Lich's words. This was a battle of attrition he could never win. Every spell he cast, every weapon he forged drained his spirit. And the Lich—he was a conductor standing at the heart of an endless choir, drawing limitless power from the pulsing crystal behind him.
That was when Valerius truly saw it. Not just noticed, but understood:
Every time the Lich spoke an incantation, the Heart pulsed brighter. The power did not flow from the Lich to his minions, but from the Heart through the Lich—a closed circuit of ancient, malignant energy. The Lich was not the true source—only a lens.
Not the sorcerer…but the Heart.
A desperate, dangerous plan took shape in his mind. He had to destroy it. But with the Lich hounding him and the dead pressing in, he could never reach it alone. He needed a distraction—something enormous, something that could match the Lich's power, even if only briefly.
He stopped dodging. He drove his ice blade into the ground, anchoring himself. He lifted his free hand, ignoring the undead wrenching themselves free of his frozen circle. He closed his eyes and reached deep, drawing in pure frost beyond the limits of safety. He ignored the agony in his soul—a pain that told him he was tearing himself thin. He pulled strength from the cold stone, the damp air, the essence of winter in his own blood.
"Spiritus montis…custodi glacialis…excitare!" His voice boomed across the cavern, a command to the mountain's spirit itself.
For the first time, the Lich's skeletal face showed shock.
The floor around Valerius exploded upward—massive slabs of ice ripped free, spinning in the air before slamming together in a roar of splitting glaciers. In seconds, a colossal humanoid shape took form—far larger, more formidable than any he had ever conjured.
The Ice Golem rose, nearly five meters tall, its shoulders broad as a siege tower. Its surface was jagged and raw as a newborn glacier. Two blue eyes burned with primal, unyielding purpose—a lighthouse of frost against the encroaching dark.
"Destroy him," Valerius commanded, voice ragged.
The golem made no sound. But the cavern quaked as it strode forward. The undead that moments before seemed unstoppable now looked like toys in its path. One vast arm swung in a crushing arc, swatting three corpses into the wall in an explosion of ice and rotted limbs. Another strike reduced more to powder.
The Lich shrieked in fury—tinged now with panic.
"Mindless brute! You think a heap of ice can stop me?!
He turned his focus entirely upon the golem, unleashing a stream of corrupt blasts. Each impact blackened and pitted the frozen giant, but its mass and inexorable strength carried it forward, heedless of the wounds.
That was the distraction Valerius needed. With the Lich's full attention diverted, he ran. Not toward the fight—but around it, toward the far side of the cavern where he had a clear line to the altar. He slammed his sword into the floor, not to defend, but to anchor himself. He laid both hands on its hilt, feeling the last shreds of his strength vibrating inside the blade. He closed his eyes, pouring every drop of spirit left in him into one singular purpose. His soul screamed with the strain.
When he opened his eyes, they were no longer just blue—they were a blizzard.
"Cuneus aeternus!" he roared—a phrase he had never spoken aloud, a word of power born of desperation. "Eternal Wedge!"
This was no spear, no blade. From the sword's tip erupted a beam of blue-white brilliance, so pure it almost transcended color. It wasn't a projectile—it was the embodiment of will itself. A wedge of absolute frost, made not to destroy but to penetrate, to divide, and to purge.
The light struck its mark unerringly—dead center in the Heart of the black crystal.
There was no deafening explosion—only a single, shrieking note so high it stabbed into the mind rather than the ear. It was the scream of something that never should have lived.
For an instant, the cavern was consumed by blinding white.
Then darkness returned—but everything had changed.
A cracking sound boomed out—a rupture like a mountain splitting open. A vast fissure, glowing with unstable violet and blue energy, gaped across the Heart's surface.
From the wound, raw, ungovernable magic gushed like blood. Blue and violet flames churned, colliding, birthing wild storms that annihilated whatever they touched.
The golem staggered, dissolving as the currents shredded its anchor. The Lich turned—movements jerky—and for the first time, fear overtook his hate.
The blue pinpoints in his sockets flared wide.
"NO!" he shrieked, voice fracturing with terror. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, FOOL? YOU'VE DESTROYED ITS BALANCE!"
The whole fortress began to quake—not with magic now, but physical collapse. Stones the size of a man's skull fell from the unseen ceiling. The ice under Valerius's boots cracked, venting poisonous vapors. His golem crumbled to nothing as the last reserves of his strength drained away.
The Frozen Raven Keep was dying from its Heart.
And Valerius, gasping and spent, was trapped in the middle of the cataclysm he had unleashed.