Kieran moved first.
He crossed the distance between us in a second, blue flames trailing from his blade like a comet's tail. I raised a wall of ice instinctively and his sword sheared through it like paper. Superheated droplets sprayed across the throne room as he lunged for my heart.
I teleported. Another instinct. My body dissolved into snow and reformed twenty feet away, already casting. Spears of ice materialized in the air around me, dozens of them, each as long as a man and sharp enough to pierce dragon scale.
They launched.
Kieran's response was beautiful in its simplicity. He didn't dodge. He simply exhaled, and a wave of azure fire exploded outward from his body. My spears evaporated mid-flight, turning to steam that filled the room with thick fog.
But I could see through fog. This was my domain. I was already moving, skating across the ice floor at impossible speed, my hands weaving patterns that summoned a blizzard. Wind howled through the throne room, dropping the temperature to levels that should have frozen him solid.
Should have.
His flames burned brighter, creating a bubble of warmth around him. I watched ice form on his armor only to melt seconds later. He was a walking furnace, and my cold couldn't touch him.
"You're strong," I called out, and I meant it. "But strength alone won't save you here."
I thrust both hands toward the floor, and the entire throne room responded. The ice beneath Kieran's feet erupted upward in jagged pillars, trying to impale him from below, trap him from the sides, crush him from above. A killing box with no escape.
He planted his sword in the ground, and blue fire rushed down the blade into the ice itself.
The explosion knocked me backward. Chunks of superheated ice, contradictory as that sounded, flew in all directions. When the steam cleared, Kieran stood in a crater of melted ice, his flames condensing around his blade until the weapon glowed white-hot.
"Your turn," he said, and launched himself at me again.
What followed was the most intense fight of both my lives.
I threw everything at him. Blizzards that could freeze armies. Ice clones that matched my every move. Frozen chains that erupted from the walls. A summon spell that brought forth three Frost Wyrms, their roars shaking the tower's foundation. I even cracked open the floor and channeled the ancient magic that powered the entire dungeon, pulling on reserves of cold so deep and old they felt like touching the void between stars.
And Kieran met everything I had with those blue flames.
His fire didn't just melt ice. It consumed it. Devoured it like fuel. I realized with growing horror that my attacks were making him stronger. Every spell I cast, every construct I created, he burned through it and absorbed the energy somehow. His flames grew hotter, brighter, more intense.
I was feeding him. Like throwing gasoline on a bonfire.
"Impossible," I gasped, reforming after he'd shattered my ice clone for the third time. "What are you?"
"Someone who's been hunting you for three years," Kieran replied, and there was something in his voice. Not hatred. Something else. "Someone who needs this to end."
Three years? But I'd only been here for two months—
No. Wait. Glaciana had been here for three centuries. To him, I was the centuries-old monster. He didn't know about Sarah trapped inside.
He didn't know I wanted him to win.
Kieran raised his blade, and the blue flames coalesced into something I'd never seen before. Not fire anymore, but something denser. More real. A sphere of azure energy that pulsed with barely contained power.
"Azure Flame Art," he intoned. "Supernova Burst."
Oh. Oh no.
I threw up every defensive spell I had. Barriers of ice layered ten deep. Frozen time fields to slow the attack. Emergency shields pulled from the tower's core reserves. Everything.
The sphere hit my defenses, and the world turned blue.
The explosion was silent at first, so powerful it went beyond sound into pure pressure. I felt my ice barriers shatter one after another, each one buying me fractions of a second. The tower itself screamed, its structure cracking under the assault.
Then the flames reached me.
Pain. Incredible, searing pain. Not just physical but existential, like my very being was burning away. I heard myself scream, heard Glaciana scream, heard Sarah scream, heard the boundary between them dissolve in the heat.
I was dying. Actually, finally dying.
And mixed with the agony was a surge of wild, desperate hope. 'This is it. I'm going home. Back to my apartment, my life, my—'
Something went wrong.
I felt it the moment before everything ended. A wrongness. The system that governed the dungeon, that had kept me trapped and forced me to fight, suddenly stuttered. Like a computer program hitting an error it wasn't designed to handle.
[Critical error: Boss entity defeated but death protocols not engaging]
[Impossibility detected: Entity possesses dual nature]
[Glaciana: Boss entity - flagged for dungeon respawn]
[Sarah: Player entity - flagged for liberation]
[ERROR: Cannot process conflicting states]
[Initiating emergency resolution]
My body shattered.
Not metaphorically. I literally felt myself break apart, fragmenting like glass struck by a hammer. But instead of falling to pieces, each fragment flew away. Scattered. I was conscious in all of them simultaneously—a hundred pieces of myself shooting through walls, through floors, through the very thing of whatever kept this world together.
[Emergency resolution: Fragmenting entity across world zones]
[Mortality fragments distributed to prevent corruption]
[Five fragments of mortality anchored to five empire capitals]
[Entity status: Defeated but persistent]
[New classification: Immortal - Human]
Then the pain stopped.
I opened my eyes and immediately closed them against bright sunlight.
Sunlight. Real sunlight, warm on my skin.
I was lying on something soft. Grass? I opened my eyes more carefully this time, squinting against the glare. Blue sky stretched above me, dotted with actual clouds. Not ice. Not the eternal twilight of the tower.
Sky.
I sat up quickly, my heart pounding, and looked down at myself.
Human hands. Normal, slightly tanned skin. I was wearing simple clothes—a tunic and pants that felt rough against skin no longer accustomed to anything but frost. My hair, when I pulled it forward to check, was brown. Dark brown. My natural color.
"I'm human," I whispered, then louder: "I'm human!"
But something felt wrong. Not bad, just... strange. I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling my heartbeat. It was there, steady and strong. But underneath it, I could feel something else. Five somethings. Five points of warmth scattered across far distances, connected to me by threads I couldn't see but could definitely feel.
'Five fragments of mortality anchored to five empire capitals.'
I didn't fully understand what that meant, but I could feel them. Pieces of myself, or pieces of my death(?) distributed across the world. Like save points. Like respawn anchors.
A notification flickered in the corner of my vision. Not Glaciana's boss interface, but something new:
[Race: Human]
[Condition: Immortal (Conditional)]
[Mortality Fragments: 5/5]
[Current Location: Verdant Empire, Capital Outskirts]
[Note: Death will result in respawn at nearest mortality fragment. Destruction of all fragments will result in true death.]
I was immortal. Sort of. As long as those fragments existed, I couldn't truly die. I'd just respawn, like a player.
Like I'd turned the tables on the whole system.
A laugh bubbled up from my chest, slightly hysterical, but genuine. I'd done it. Not the way I'd planned, not cleanly, but I'd escaped. I was out of the tower. Human again. Free!
"Hey! You there!"
I turned to see a guard approaching, wearing livery I didn't recognize. We were on a hillside overlooking a massive city of white stone buildings, bustling streets, the smell of food and life and humanity.
"Are you alright, miss? You were unconscious when we found you."
I stood up, legs shaky but working. Everything worked.
"I'm fine," I said, my voice coming out scratchy. "I'm... I'm perfect. Where am I exactly?"
"The capital, Verdantis. Just outside the eastern gate." The guard looked concerned. "Do you need medical attention? Or—"
"No," I said quickly. "No, I'm good. Thank you."
I started walking toward the city, toward the noise and life and beautiful, chaotic humanity of it all. Behind me, somewhere far away, the Frozen Spire still stood. But Glaciana was gone, shattered into fragments.
And Sarah was free.
Sort of immortal, definitely confused, but finally, wonderfully free.
Now I just had to figure out what to do with a second life in a world that used to be a game.