Edward's cold question lingered in the air, frost creeping across the marble floor.
"Will you answer as a son of Stark… or as a boy who thinks himself untouchable?"
The council chamber held its breath.
Azriel tilted his head, crimson eyes gleaming, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. He looked at his father—not as a boy facing judgment, but as an equal staring into the storm.
"Why not both?" he said softly.
The words echoed like a spark in dry tinder.
Gasps, scoffs, and growls broke out instantly among the councilors.
"Insolent brat!" one thundered.
"Proof enough he is tainted!" another snapped.
Others, however, fell into uneasy silence, disturbed by the strange composure in the boy's voice.
Azriel took a single step forward, frost nipping at his boots, but his gaze never left Edward.
"A son of Stark should not tremble before power—he should wield it. And a boy who believes himself untouchable… may one day become exactly that."
His smile deepened, dangerous, amused.
"So tell me, Father… which would you rather I be?"
The chamber erupted into murmurs, but before they could swell into chaos
CRACK.
A surge of frost silenced the room. Edward Stark rose from his throne, the Frost Monarch's presence swallowing the chamber whole. His eyes, glacial and merciless, bored into his son.
"Words," Edward said, voice like grinding ice, "are wind. Let us see your truth."
He raised his hand, conjuring a shard of condensed mana pure frost, sharp as a blade, thrumming with lethal energy. It hovered in the air before Azriel, radiating pressure that made seasoned councilors shift uncomfortably.
"Crush it," Edward commanded. "Show me what lies in your blood."
The council leaned forward, watching with rapt attention. A test. A trial. A trap.
Azriel's smirk lingered. Slowly, his crimson eyes darkened—patterns unfurling within them like blooming crescents. The tri-colored mark appeared, a triple crescent moon twisting across his gaze.
The world slowed.
The shard's threads of mana unraveled before him, every line, every flaw exposed. It was beautiful. Fragile. Already his to command.
Azriel lifted his hand—and Sanreon answered.
The shard didn't shatter. It didn't explode. It simply… ceased. One moment it was there, the next it was nothing, dissolved into emptiness. Not even residue remained.
The silence was suffocating.
Even the most jaded councilors froze, their faces pale. To erase mana so completely… it was not natural. Not possible. It was annihilation itself.
Azriel lowered his hand, eyes fading back to crimson, a thin trace of blood dripping from the corner of his eye. He wiped it away casually.
"Is that enough… Father?"
The chamber was silent, save for the frost cracking beneath Edward's boots.
For the first time in years, the Frost Monarch's gaze flickered not with weakness, but with the faintest ripple of something he rarely felt.
Unease.
________________________________________
Azriel lowered his hand, eyes fading back to crimson, a thin trace of blood dripping from the corner of his eye. He wiped it away casually.
"Is that enough… Father?"
The council chamber held its breath.
Edward Stark's eyes narrowed, but behind his mask of frost, something stirred.
He had seen countless awakenings, judged thousands of talents. But this this was no mere mana technique.
When the crescent marks had bloomed in Azriel's eyes, Edward felt it an undercurrent beneath reality itself. It was not mana, yet it flowed like mana. Stronger. Denser. Purer. An essence that did not obey the rules of the world, but instead seemed to erase them.
What was that energy?
Edward's gaze lingered on his son, on the faint smear of blood by his eye, on the quiet amusement that lingered in his smirk. His mind churned with a question he had never once dared to ask of anyone else:
Did he just… annihilate mana itself?
The thought was madness. Impossible. Even for him. Yet he had seen it. The shard had not shattered it had ceased, unmade by a force that should not exist.
And that force had flowed through the veins of his son.
My blood… my son… his eyes are the key.
He could dismiss the crescents. He could dismiss the trick as illusion. But not the energy. No, the energy was real. Too real.
It was power beyond comprehension. And it was staring back at him with a smile.
For the first time in decades, the Frost Monarch asked himself a question he hated:
What have I brought into this world?