The icy blade conjured by the stranger looked like a mirror of death; in its reflective luster, Shimoro saw his own image: a trembling boy, powerless and helpless. Death drew near to kiss his brow, and he felt the chill of the metal caress his skin, which was a shade less than white. He closed his eyes, a silent scream trapped in his throat.
"Clang!"
It wasn't the sound of his flesh tearing, but a resonant metallic ring, as if a flintstone had struck a mountain of diamonds.
Shimoro slowly opened his eyes to find a wall of jagged ice, filled with defensive protrusions, erupting from the ground like a sacred shield.
"In my village, we teach children that strangers knock on doors first... not necks."
Shimoro turned in astonishment. This wasn't the grandmother who scolded him over breadcrumbs. Kaina stood with a lithe stature he had never known in her; her eyes gleamed with the biting blue cold of a harsh winter, and steam rose from her palms, held open with iron steadiness.
The stranger took a step back, looking at the ice wall with mocking appreciation. "Solid Shape? In a forgotten village inhabited by woodcutters? It seems I underestimated the children's 'nanny'."
Kaina shouted in an indisputable tone: "Shimoro! Behind me! And do not leave my shadow no matter what happens!"
Shimoro crawled across the snow, hiding behind her back, which seemed to him at that moment sturdier than fortress walls. He whispered in a faltering voice: "Grandma... he... he has a crystal like mine..."
Kaina did not turn, but her jaw tightened firmly. "Be quiet and keep your head down. This is no longer just a scolding."
The man brushed the dust off his black coat, and a dark aura began to rise from beneath his feet, turning the pure white snow into a bleak, charcoal color. "I don't like wasting my time with those whose expiration date has passed. Hand over the boy, and I will grant you a cold death you won't even feel."
Kaina replied with absolute silence. She pressed her palms together and then drew them apart, and a bow of pure ice formed between her hands. With a swift movement, she unleashed a barrage of crystalline arrows that sliced through the air with a sharp whistle.
But the stranger moved like a shadow that light could not catch. He leaned his body with terrifying fluidity, letting the arrows pass millimeters from his coat. When an arrow drew near his eye, he caught it with his bare hand and crushed it as if it were cheap glass.
"Your techniques remind me of ancient books, old woman... boring and predictable."
In the blink of an eye, he vanished from his spot.
Kaina screamed with her combat intuition: "Behind me!"
She spun around to raise a thick shield, but the man's kick was faster. "Bam!" The ice shattered into flying shards, and Kaina was sent hurtling backward for meters, leaving deep furrows in the snow before slamming into the trunk of an oak tree.
"Grandma!" Shimoro screamed and tried to run, but a long shadow blocked the light from him.
The stranger stood before him, his eyes as empty as a bottomless well. He extended his long hand, gripped Shimoro's neck, and lifted him off the ground until the boy's breath faded.
"And now..." the stranger said, staring into Shimoro's tearful face, "let's see if this body carries gold... or just dust."
Kaina tried to stand, blood dripping from her forehead. "Leave him... you monster!"
The stranger pointed his free hand toward her, and from it erupted black ice, like frozen tar, crawling with lightning speed to bind Kaina's limbs to the tree, completely freezing her movement.
The world began to darken in Shimoro's eyes. The man's fingers pressed against his throat, and in that moment of suffocation, Shimoro felt the crystal in his pocket pulse violently... one pulse, two, then an explosion in his blood.
It wasn't fear he felt now, but an ancient frost boiling in his veins.
Suddenly, Shimoro's eyes snapped open, but the white in them had vanished, replaced by a terrifying celestial blue glow. The man's arm, which was gripping his neck, began to be covered by a layer of pristine white ice that started to consume the stranger's "black ice."
"What?!" the man marveled, feeling a chill pierce through his glove and reach his bones.
A voice emerged from the depths of Shimoro, a voice with a majestic resonance that did not sound like a child's: "I... said... LET ME GO!"
"BOOOOOOM!"
A wave of white snowy energy exploded like a bomb of raw frost. The stranger retreated back, through the snow as he shieldedwith his hands his face from the shards that cut through tree branches like swords.
Shimoro fell to his knees, gasping like someone returned from the dead. The storm ceased abruptly, and a circle of clear ice remained surrounding him, glistening under the weak sunlight. The crystal fell from his pocket; it pulsed with a faint light before going dark.
The stranger stood up and looked at his torn sleeve and his hand,He wiped the crust of ice from his arm and looked at Shimoro with a gaze that mixed greed with astonishment.
"That power... These types..." he whispered in a deep tone, "So, the crystal was right. The lineage has not been severed yet."
Kaina tried to speak, but her breath was taken away by the horror of what she had seen.
The stranger retreated a few steps as the black mist began to coil around his body once more.
"I was going to kill you and be rid of this burden," the stranger said with a wicked smile, "but killing you now would be like picking unripened fruit. I want to see to which hell this power will take you."
He looked at the collapsed Shimoro and said: "My name is Vargas. Remember this name, for it will visit you in every nightmare. I will let you live today... as my gift to fate."
Vargas faded away like black smoke in the wind, leaving behind a silence punctured only by Shimoro's exhausted moans.
Shimoro fell unconscious. Kaina rushed toward him after her black shackles had melted, cradling his head in her lap, whispering bitterly: "The ice within you has awakened, Shimoro... and from this day on, Tatsuma is no longer a safe place for you."
She carried the young boy and walked toward the village..
End of Chapter Two