The air in the collapsing hall of the "Garden of Sleeping Stones" stopped trembling. It froze. Not metaphorically. The molecules slowed their rush, sound died, yielding to a hum emanating from Hajime Saime himself.
"Savagery must know its place," his voice was quieter than a whisper, but each word fell like an ice block into a bottomless well.
"Covenant: Breath of the Frozen Flow."
Behind him, from the azure of the evening shadows and his own, inscrutable will, the Third rose. A massive, cumbersome giant of blue-black ice and obsidian inclusions. Its wings were slabs of permafrost, and from its slowly yawning maw came not smoke, but the very concept of zero. The absolute absence of heat and motion. It did not attack Seiya's Ice Colossus. It simply began to breathe.
And the world obeyed.
The space between the two icy titans changed. It didn't frost over—it became frost. The air crystallized, forming complex, deadly lattices. This was not an attack; it was a declaration. A zone of absolute zero control. Here, only sanctioned "Scars"—laws established by the very essence of Saime's authority—had the right to exist. Everything else was an illegal intrusion. Anarchy subject to sterilization.
Seiya's Ice Colossus halted. Its perfect, crystalline form, radiating the power of permafrost, began to lose clarity. Not melting under pressure, but crumbling like a sandcastle under the wind of oblivion. Its existence, its wild, natural eternity, was being contested by something older and more impersonal—a system, a law, a cold intellect that considered it an error.
Seiya felt this as physical pain, sharper than any wound. The connection, a thin, trembling thread between his panic and the Colossus's fury, stretched to its limit and then began to snap. With each severed particle, not only strength but also a piece of his own fragile will left him. He was losing himself. The sensation was akin to having pages torn from the book of his soul, leaving white, bleeding margins.
The survival instinct inherited from his father kicked in before thought. He didn't just try to hold the Colossus. He yanked it into himself. Not as a recalled guest, but as devoured prey. He drew in not the form, but the very principle. The essence of absolute freezing. The quintessence of eternal ice.
And something that had never happened before, occurred.
The assimilated ability did not tear him apart from within. It did not resist. It wove itself into the fabric of his being, like a second nature, a new instinct. The cold pierced him to the bone, but it did not burn—it soothed. The chaotic swarm of Echo inside quieted for a moment, suppressed by this new, monolithic block of order.
He looked at his right hand, still gripping the hilt of his father's katana. And saw how, with a quiet, crystalline chime, frost began to spread from his fingers. Not just a pattern on the skin. A structural change. His skin became momentarily transparent like ice, revealing glowing veins of cold light from within. Ice crystals coiled around the hilt, flowed onto the scabbard, and when he, driven by pure reflex, drew the blade, it was already different.
Perfect, transparent ice, resembling diamond, grew from the steel, hardening it a thousandfold without adding a gram of weight. The katana glowed with an inner, polar light. He wasn't holding a weapon. He was holding an icicle chipped from the heart of a glacier.
Hajime Saime, who had been observing this with the dispassionate curiosity of a scientist, allowed an emotion to settle on his face for the first time. A slight, almost imperceptible movement of the eyebrows. Not fear, not anger. A deep, soul-chilling surprise, quickly replaced by cold, ruthless determination.
"Assimilation of active properties," he uttered, his voice acquiring a metallic, analytical tone. "Not inheritance of a Scar. Absorption of its operational principle. This is not an anomaly. This is an evolutionary leap. A threat to the very paradigm."
Ceremonies were over. He set aside the game of a scientist. Now before him was a phenomenon requiring immediate neutralization.
From the folds of his pristine white yukata, with a movement so refined it seemed part of a dance, a weapon slipped out. Nunchaku. But not ordinary ones. Two sticks: one of white, flawless jade, cold and smooth as the surface of a frozen lake; the other of wood so dark it absorbed light, the color of a starless night. They were connected by a short, gleaming silver chain, its links covered with microscopic runes of order. Every movement Saime made with this weapon was lethally beautiful, geometrically flawless, and utterly soulless.
They didn't confer. There was no challenge. The boiling point had simply been passed.
Seiya moved first. His body, guided by rage, fear, and a new, icy instinct, exploded from its spot.
Crack.
A dry, quiet sound, it came later. About 0.002 seconds after Seiya vanished from point A. The observing instructors hidden in the viewing logs of the "Garden" recorded only a gap in perception: the boy is here—the boy is gone. And between the points, over twenty meters, hung a clear visual trail—a distorted, trembling silhouette, and a conical vapor trail from condensed, inside-out humid air from the shockwave. Stones in his path weren't swept away—they exploded from within, unable to withstand the monstrous pressure differential.
This wasn't just a dash. It was a statement. Of natural force, ignorant of its own limits.
Hajime met him. His jade-black nunchaku became a blurred gray disc before him. The first strike of the ice katana came down with the force of an avalanche.
C-R-A-A-A-C-H!
The sound was not metallic, but like shattering crystal of all creation. Ice, diamond-hard, met jade, reinforced with the Scar of indestructibility. Nothing broke. But the space around them howled.
Their fight was unthinkable for a low-level Majutsushi's eye. For observers, it was a flicker: a flash of blue light here, an explosion of frost there, billowing mists and roars that shook the ancient stone.
Each of Seiya's blows left behind not just destruction. Trails. Walls, floor, fragments of menhirs became covered in bizarre, instantly growing ice gardens. Flowers of ice with razor-petal blades, spirals of permafrost, sharp as needles, stalactites. His rage crystallized, making the battlefield beautiful and deadly.
Hajime parried with unflappable, frightening precision. His style was the economy of movement made flesh. He didn't waste energy on extravagance. Every block, every dodge was the minimally necessary. But now, after every contact with the ice katana, his flawless weapon bore a web of micro-cracks and fast-hardening ice. He didn't lag in calculation speed, but he faced an element where calculation had limited power.
And then Seiya, in a frantic surge, did something beyond tactics. With a roar mixing all his pain, fear, and new, icy power, he raised the katana and described a wide, crushing arc, putting into the strike not only the strength of his body but all the might of the assimilated Echo of Eternity. The air before the blade whitened, frozen solid.
Hajime parried with a cross of his nunchaku. But it wasn't a block. It was an attempt to hold back a falling mountain.
D-ZY-N'-CRUNCH!
The jade and black wood, instantly encrusted with monstrously hard ice, were knocked from his hands with a deafening crack. They flew off, clanging, and embedded themselves in a distant wall, leaving craters in the stone.
Hajime retreated. Just a step. But that step spoke louder than any words. His flawless form, his inviolable aura of superiority, had cracked. On his face, pale as moonlight, there was no anger or humiliation. There was a cold, swift reassessment. He looked at Seiya no longer as a specimen or a threat. He looked at him as a natural disaster. A tsunami. An eruption. Something that couldn't be defeated in a fair duel, but could and should be stopped with superior, systemic force.
Later, already almost unconscious from exhaustion and the foreign power overflowing within him, Seiya, trying to reach the elusive opponent, struck blindly. A horizontal, sweeping arc of the ice katana through the empty space where Saime's silhouette had been a second ago.
He missed.
But the air did not forgive him for this.
The shockwave, concentrated and amplified by the cryogenic field around the blade, burst outward. An invisible sickle of absolute cold and pressure swept through the hall.
At a distance of fifteen meters stood three ancient menhirs—ritual stones of the "Garden," each as tall as a two-story house and thick enough for two and a half arm spans. Age—over a thousand years. They were saturated with protective Scars, making them harder than granite.
The air sickle touched them.
There was no explosion. There was a sound like a giant sheet of paper being slowly torn. And then—a quiet grinding.
All three menhirs, exactly at the same height, were bisected. The upper parts, perfectly polished underneath, slid down with a faint hiss and collapsed, raising clouds of dust. The cuts were mirror-smooth, covered in the finest, sparkling frost. This wasn't cutting. It was instantaneous and absolute freezing followed by the destruction of molecular bonds.
In the viewing booth reserved for first-class instructors, one of the observers, Haruki Jin, known as the "Monk," whistled. His Kokurō, "Wheel of Misfortune," allowed him to sense and, to an almost boundless degree, redirect luck and potential disasters within his zone of influence. He didn't see just a strike. He saw a wave of onrushing destruction, concentrated into a line.
"Hm," he uttered, rubbing his chin covered in gray stubble. "Interesting. That much impulse... would be more than enough to shatter several rocks, maybe more. The boy, unknowingly, is aiming far higher than the roof. I wonder where that arrow will truly land when he releases the bowstring for real?"
In the heat of battle, Seiya, now almost out of control, used his newfound speed again. A brief, furious dash—and he was behind Hajime, the ice katana already raised for a strike from behind. But Saime seemed to foresee this too. He didn't turn. He simply allowed the blow to pass through his suddenly intangible, blurred silhouette, as if through a stream of icy mist. His technique allowed him to momentarily become the embodiment of the water element itself—invulnerable, but also incapable of attacking. It was a survival tactic, a retreat unthinkable for him a minute ago.
And it was at that moment that a storm burst into the hall.
The doors swung open with a crash, unable to withstand the pressure. In front, with a face wearing a familiar, dangerous smirk but with cold fire burning in his eyes, walked Reiden Kagetori. Behind him—a group of third and second-class instructors, their faces tense.
"Now, now, children," Kagetori's voice rang out, overriding the hum of residual energy. "The game of tag is over. Time to go to your corners."
The pressure subsided. Seiya, trembling all over, almost dropped the katana. The ice on the blade cracked and fell away, revealing ordinary steel. His knees buckled. Hajime Saime, having regained solid form, slowly straightened up. He didn't even try to pick up his weapon. His gaze, heavy and inexorable, slid from Seiya to Reiden, then to Director Fujibayashi, who had entered behind him.
"The phenomenon is recorded," Saime uttered, his voice smooth as a blade and cold as interstellar void. "It exceeds acceptable boundaries, beyond any academic classification. 'Tenran' will bear full responsibility for the consequences of this anomaly's existence and spread. Henceforth, this is not a matter of training, but of magical community security."
He didn't bow. Simply turned and walked towards the exit, his white yukata unstained by dust or blood. His classmates, Tenshio and Miyuki, silently followed, picking up his nunchaku on the way. They left not defeated, but as a receding storm, postponing its strike for later.
When they disappeared, several second-class instructors, their faces flushed with indignation, stepped towards Seiya.
"Fujisaki! This is an outrage! You violated all training rules, endangered..."
They didn't finish. Their words stuck in their throats.
Reiden Kagetori didn't say a word. He didn't even look at them. He simply turned his head in their direction, and his golden eyes, usually full of mockery, were now empty and heavy as lead ingots. There was no threat in them. There was something worse—an absolute, indifferent certainty that if they uttered another word, he would simply erase them from his field of vision. And they, experienced masters, felt it. Their anger turned to icy terror, then to hurried, silent retreat. They turned and left, trying not to look at anyone.
In the emptied, ruined hall, only their own remained. Akira silently approached Seiya and stood beside him, his presence a quiet shield. Kaede analyzed the destruction, her mind already working on the consequences. Ryūnosuke breathed heavily, clenching his fists, but his gaze was fixed not on Seiya, but on the exit where the Tokyoites had vanished.
Seiya stood, looking at his hands. On the back of his right palm, next to the "All-Seeing Eye" mark, a new, barely visible pattern was now emerging—a stylized snowflake inscribed in a circle. A second mark. Inside, he felt a foreign, icy calm and monstrous strength that now belonged to him. In his green eyes, full of horror at what he had done and endured, something new splashed—a shadow of strange, uninvited pride. He had crossed a line. And he no longer knew the world on the other side.
Meanwhile, in a remote, eastern part of the "Garden of Sleeping Stones," where the ruins were especially thick and ancient Scars on the stones sang a quiet, forgotten song, Ryūnosuke Morohashi found what he was looking for.
Tenshio Hakuro stood with his back to him, at the edge of a cliff, gazing at the crimson sunset sky. His gray uniform was impeccable, his posture—both collected and relaxed. He knew he would be found.
Ryūnosuke stopped ten meters away, his shadow falling on the stones between them.
"So, bastard..." his voice was low, hoarse with restrained fury. "Ready?"
Tenshio slowly turned. His steel eyes were empty and cold. There was no challenge in them. No contempt. Only a machine ready for work.
"Circumstances have changed, Morohashi-san," he said evenly. "A duel does not fit current operational parameters."
"Parameters?" Ryūnosuke bared his teeth, the metal Scars under his skin stirring, gleaming with a dull, leaden light. "I'm gonna scatter your parameters across the rocks right now."