The trek toward the Apex of Qivittoq lead the party into the Gorge of Frozen Whispers, a narrow pass where the mountain itself seems to breathe Miasma. Blocking the path is a Rank S+ Glacier-Crab, a creature the size of a siege tower, its shell made of hyper-dense sky-ice and Aether-mutated chitin.
Oba Zimbila stands back, his presence alone suppressing the minor monsters of the gorge, but he remains still. He is the reserve—the "Nuclear Option." This fight belongs to the Unchained.
Kaelen and Tari move in a practiced, silent symmetry.
The Anchor (Kaelen): The Orc charges head-on, his lead club glowing not with Aether, but with the friction of his sheer physical power. He slams the club into the Crab's massive front pincer.
The Result: The shockwave cracks the ice underfoot. Because Kaelen has no Aether signature, the Crab's magical sensors (which detect Mana or Qi) find him "invisible." It lashes out blindly with its secondary claws.
The Gale (Tari): Tari uses Kaelen's massive back as a springboard. He leaps twenty feet into the air, his staff spinning. He doesn't strike the shell; he goes for the joints.
Technique: "Rhythm of the Cracked Bell." Tari vibrates his staff at a frequency that matches the sky-ice of the Crab's leg joints.
The Result: The leg doesn't break—it shatters into crystals. The 20-ton beast lurches to the left, exposing its soft underbelly.
The Finisher:Madara (the Aziza) provides the opening. She emits a high-pitched sonic scream that temporarily paralyzes the Crab's internal Orgon-organ. Kaelen slides under the beast, bracing his feet against the gorge floor, and drives his lead club upward into the exposed thorax with a roar that echoes like a falling mountain.
Five hundred yards above, perched on a jagged ice spire, Thrain Iron-Grip watches through the crystalline lens of his S-Grade Sniper-Staff.
Thrain is a master of the "Mana Culture." To him, the Unchained are an interesting variable, but Oba Zimbila is the prize. He isn't interested in the Crab; he's waiting for Zimbila to move.
"Look at them," Thrain whispers into his comm-link, his red beard frosted with rime. "The Orc hits like a tectonic plate, and the Monkey moves like a leaf in a hurricane. But they're fighting a shadow. They don't see the real hunter."
Beside him sits a Miasma-Tracking Drone, a small, silent orb of magistone that masks its own heat signature. It is feeding live data into Thrain's goggles, calculating the Prismatic White frequency of Zimbila's wings.
"The Demon King is conserving energy," Thrain notes, his finger hovering over the trigger of the sniper-staff. "He's preparing for the Song. That's when his Aura will be at its peak—and its most vulnerable."
He reaches into a lead-lined pouch and pulls out the L× Spectrum-Bleeder Shank. Instead of using it as a dagger, he has fitted it into a Rail-Sling—a specialized Dwarven launcher designed to fire the Null-Glass blade at supersonic speeds.
"One shot to the Primal Orgon," Thrain mumbles, calibrating the "Where/Who" runes on his launcher. "A god's heart for a King's ransom. Let's see how your 'Song' sounds when your soul is bleeding into the snow."
Just as the Glacier-Crab collapses, dead, Nyra's cat-ears twitch. She doesn't see Thrain, but she feels the "Void" of the Null-Glass weapon—a terrifying absence of Aether in the sky above.
"Get down!" Nyra screams, lunging for Madara.
Thrain pulls the trigger. The Null-Glass shank doesn't make a sound. There is no flash of light, no whistle of air. There is only a sudden, terrifying rip in the atmosphere as the blade streaks toward Oba Zimbila's back.