Pavel stood like a monument. Against all odds, he remained upright — a torn body held aloft by sheer will. His figure, silhouetted against the snow stained with red, was something that transcended flesh and bone: he looked like a specter of the North, a statue raised by sheer obstinacy.
The silence surrounding him wasn't just reverence, but fear. Even those of the Empire who saw him as just another bear tamer felt something primal clawing at their spine. For those watching from the classroom, through the projection, the effect was devastating. Some were incredulous, others tried to rationalize, but most saw a cruel doubt begin to grow:
Was it truly the North that protected the world from the Empire's winged?
Or did the Empire survive only because the North had not yet decided to march?
The question didn't need to be spoken. It burned in the mind of every spectator.
Pavel, steady atop his wounded ursal, stared at Friedrich with the calm of someone who has nothing left to lose. His hoarse voice echoed across the plain, slicing through the frozen air like the cut of a blade:
"Think I'm not worthy of your blade, boy?"
He raised his bloodied halberd, his arm trembling, but the tip firm like a verdict.
"Very well… I'll show you and your little swallow something."
The provocation was clear, but there was no arrogance in his words. Only the certainty of a man who, even broken, could still teach fear.
Pavel raised his arm and tore through the wind with words that few could understand. The old northern tongue sounded like distant thunder, syllables vibrating with a forgotten power. In the classroom, the students only exchanged confused glances — but Lena and Hans knew. That was ancient magic.
The living runes in the air lit up with each word. Then, the explosion of light. A flash so intense it seemed a star had fallen from the sky and come to rest on the battlefield. The snow, once stained with blood, reflected the brightness like a sea of crystal. The eyes of the soldiers, even the enemies', narrowed under the weight of that almost sacred light.
And, little by little, the intensity of the light began to fade — not like something dying, but like the birth of a new sun.
From the radiance emerged the impossible.
The old man who had once wavered on the brink of death now stood tall, his armor gleaming as if freshly forged, every detail sparkling beneath the blood-stained snow. The blood that once streamed from him was gone, replaced by a silent and terrifying strength.
At his side, Stribog — the white-and-gold ursal — roared. The roar was not just sound; it was a wave that made the entire plain tremble. The wounds that had once marked him closed before the disbelieving eyes of the soldiers, muscles reknitting, flesh healing as if nature itself obeyed the command of that man. It was more than healing. It was resurrection in living flesh.
In the classroom, the impact was devastating.
Several students stood from their chairs without realizing it, breath caught, eyes wide. Some brought their hands to their mouths. To them, it wasn't just a spectacle of magic — it was an affront to the laws of war, a challenge to the rules of death.
Friedrich felt the ice close around his chest. For the first time in years, the wyvern pilot experienced true fear. His heart pounded, thudding in his throat like a war drum. With every passing second, the creature before him healed rapidly and unbelievably.
He couldn't wait. If he let that energy fully consolidate, there would be no battle — only massacre.
"Let's go…"
He whispered, the reins creaking in his gloved hands.
"Before it's too late."
Friedrich knew every curve of those thick wings, every scale that resembled basalt walls.
That creature had never sliced through the skies like the others of its kind — it only glided, in an archaic and graceless way. But on the ground, it was invincible.
Where others faltered under the cold and the weight of snow, the stone colossus moved as if it were part of the terrain itself, and every beat of its wings stirred whirlwinds of ice.
The ground shook with each step of the beast. The sound wasn't like the nimble gallop of wind wyverns or the deadly hiss of poison-breathers — it was the constant thunder of an avalanche, the deep rumble of boulders rolling down slopes. Each charge was accompanied by the crack of its armored plates, like rocks colliding mid-battle.
Friedrich, high in the saddle, felt his heart race. For the first time, fear burned in his throat. But he did not back down. If the North had awakened a monster of flesh and gold, he would answer with the stone titan the Empire had dared to underestimate.
And then, the colossus roared. It was not a beast's sound — it was the echo of an entire mountain collapsing.
The clash was like thunder crashing down upon the plain.
When the two colossal beasts collided, the world seemed to shudder. Paw against claw, muscle against stone.
Friedrich's claws — sharp as basalt blades — tore through Stribog's white paw, scattering crimson blood across the pristine snow. The Bear's roar echoed through the mountains, a mix of pain and fury. Yet his strength was brutal: his massive fingers closed around the wyvern's limb, and the stone armor cracked under the pressure, like rock crushed in a mine.
But the stone dragon's tail swung like a battering ram. The blow was devastating, sending Stribog sprawling to the side, dragging snow and ice as if a landslide had swallowed part of the plain. Pavel flew from the saddle, rolling across the ground, his halberd scraping the ice until it stopped several meters away.
Unlike Heinrich, Friedrich did not abandon his mount. He gave a sharp command, and the stone colossus retreated toward the wall surrounding the plain. The wyvern could not fly — but it could glide. And its unique advantage became clear: its enormous claws dug into the rock like spears, allowing the creature to climb the icy wall with the ease of a giant spider.
In the classroom, the students nearly rose from their seats, mouths agape, as the monster gained height. From above, Friedrich gave the order.
The wyvern tore out entire chunks of stone — pieces that could crush horses and men with a single impact — and hurled them at Pavel.
With each throw, the plain trembled. The old man raised his halberd, dodging, blocking, shattering the rocks into shards that swirled around him like a storm. Metal clashing against stone rang out like warped bells, each impact draining his strength.
Soon, the scene took on grotesque contours: the stone dragon spewing boulders like a living fortress, and the old man fighting alone against the weight of a mountain.
In the classroom, there was no longer reverent silence. Only a single word, spat with restrained fury:
"Coward."
Hans raised his voice before the chorus of insults toward Friedrich could take over the room.
"In battle… it's not always the strongest or the smartest who wins."
He paused, his eyes cold as steel.
"The one who wins is the most adaptable. If you think adapting is cowardice… I'm sorry to say: you won't live longer than Heinrich."
Silence fell like a stone.
Some students swallowed hard as they remembered the grotesque death of the poison wyvern pilot — the one who, in his arrogance, had made the mistakes his brother had learned not to repeat.
Hans continued, his tone sharp:
"He was "honorable" enough to leap from his wyvern and face a Northerner tamer in direct combat."
And then:
"And what did he gain from it?"
The professor paused bitterly.
"Nothing but getting his winged killed and becoming meat for the ice."
The words struck the students like blades. Lena, even with numb fingers and her head throbbing from drained mana, couldn't take her eyes off the projection. The crystal burned in her palm, but the need to see the end of that battle was greater than the pain.
On the other side of the illusion, Friedrich laughed. His smile was wide, almost hysterical. His wyvern tore chunks of stone from the wall and hurled them with the force of living catapults. Each impact echoed like thunder against Pavel's halberd, which blocked and deflected as much as he could.
The young pilot leaned forward in the saddle, eyes gleaming with cruel pleasure.
He loved watching the old man being crushed, little by little, like a rat cornered beneath a flood of boulders.
The groans escaping the Northerner's mouth, the dull thud of each blow...
It was like a macabre symphony — a melody Friedrich would listen to dozens of times before silencing it completely.
In his mind, he already foresaw the end: the barbarian's head caught in the jaws of his wyvern, crushed until the final breath. He could almost hear the imaginary sobbing, the plea for mercy, as the creature cracked the skull like an eggshell. That was what excited him. That was what drove him.
The white Bear roared and lunged forward, rising like a living wall to intercept the falling stone projectiles. Fragments ricocheted off his golden skin and the surrounding ice, but Stribog did not waver. He shielded Pavel like a sentinel, even with blood still fresh on his wounds.
Then something impossible happened.
Instead of retreating and waiting, the general of the North ran. Pavel charged straight toward the stone wall, and each step made the snow tremble as if it were fleeing beneath him. At the final instant, Stribog caught up to him. The ursal grabbed his own master's leg with its claws and, in a motion that combined brutality and blind trust, catapulted him upward.
The old man flew.
The halberd gleamed in his hand like a falling star, his body spinning through the air toward the stone wyvern.
In the classroom, a murmur spread:
"Madness…"
The feeling, however, was universal.
Friedrich smiled. A wide, perverse, genuine smile. To him, it was suicide. In the sky, between man and beast, there was only one truth: the advantage always belonged to the winged.
The stone wyvern launched into a gliding dive, its rigid wings opening like moving walls. It plunged straight at Pavel, ready to crush him in midair.
In the classroom, Lena squeezed the crystal until her fingers turned white. Her disbelief escaped in a whisper:
"He's stupid…"
But then, Stribog opened his mouth.
From the ground, the great bear unleashed a deep roar — a sound that transformed into an icy bolt.
It wasn't wind. It wasn't snow.
It was absolute ice: a concentrated beam, cutting across the battlefield like a spear fired from Stribog's jaws toward the enemy.
The truth struck everyone at once.
Lena gasped, understanding.
"No… it's not madness."
She murmured again, her voice breaking:
"He wanted this all along…"
The stone wyvern could glide, but it could not fly. There was nowhere to escape. The beam of energy rose like divine judgment, converging on the dragon and its rider. And beside it, Pavel — the suicidal moth — now looked like the reaper of his own death.
The collision was inevitable.
Friedrich screamed in despair, spitting blood and rage:
"Son of a bitch! You think I'm afraid? Then we die together!"
The wyvern dove in fury. The plasma struck Friedrich head-on, tearing away half his body in a grotesque flash — but not before the beast obeyed its master's final command. The jaws of the stone dragon closed around Pavel in midair.
The impact was devastating.
Man and beast plummeted together, smashing into the snow with a dull, thunderous crash. The ground shook. Shards of ice rose like splinters of glass.
Stribog roared, staggering, trying to advance toward his companion. But the great white Bear collapsed onto his side, breathing heavily, his back marked by the wounds of battle and drained of mana. His titanic strength, which moments before had crushed a wyvern, now faltered.
Silence hovered. There was no more poison, no stones, no screams. Only Pavel's weak breathing.
The general of the North lay bitten and pinned beneath the body of the stone wyvern, his body trapped in blood and pain. Even so, his blue eyes sought the sky with a gleam that was not defeat, but surrender. His lips trembled, spilling more red than words:
"Master… did you see? I… I won…"
The words were mirrored for everyone in Sigurd's hall, who now, stunned, were still trying to process what had happened.
What had seemed like words cast to the wind, in truth appeared addressed to someone — and that was soon confirmed when the giant, until then merely a decorative presence who had watched the battle without intervening, finally moved, striding toward the battlefield.
The great man knelt beside the old warrior. His enormous hand held Pavel's face, firm, refusing to let him go alone.
"Don't call me master, Pavel"
He continued, his voice breaking like never before:
"Call me friend."
A tear rolled down the old warrior's face. Amid the blood and a faint smile, he still tried to leave one last message:
"Friend… tell my daughter… tell her I'm sorry. Tell her that I… that I…"
His voice faded. His vivid eyes froze on the horizon.
The snow claimed him.
And there, in the frozen heart of the North, Pavel Morozov — the indomitable general, the madman who dared to face two winged beasts alone… and won — fell.