Chapter 34: Gate of Eternal Frost

Chapter 34: Chapter 34: Gate of Eternal Frost

The crimson storm exploded across the ancient hall.

Theon staggered back in shock as Lyra’s body rose slowly into the air. Flames tore from her like a volcano splitting open, spiraling around her in a massive sphere of burning red light. The heat alone was enough to push the assassins several steps backward, their boots scraping against the frozen stone.

The ancient runes carved into the walls flared to life, glowing red one after another. The Eternal Core pulsed violently, and deep inside the burning sphere, Lyra’s body began to change.

Her silver hair unraveled into flowing rivers of blood-red flame. A glowing sigil bloomed across her back, spreading over her shoulders like wings made of molten light. The temperature in the hall climbed so high the air itself began to shimmer, warping the shapes of everyone standing near her.

Theon’s eyes widened. "No," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "Not again."

The flames split apart like curtains being torn aside, and a woman stepped out of the sphere. Tall. Elegant. Impossible to look away from. Her crimson hair moved like something alive, and her eyes burned with a power that felt older than the hall itself. Every step she took left small sparks dancing across the frozen floor, hissing as they melted the frost beneath her feet.

The Primordial Flame Empress had awakened again.

Theon took an instinctive step back, his heart hammering. "You’re not getting me this time."

The Flame Empress blinked once, as if surprised by his words, and then her expression melted into a bright, radiant smile. A heartbeat later, she vanished.

Theon’s breath caught. "What—"

She appeared directly in front of him and threw her arms around him before he could even raise a hand. "THERE YOU ARE!"

He had no time to react. She peppered his cheeks with kisses, over and over, left, right, left again, as though she had spent years waiting for exactly this moment and refused to waste another second of it.

"My adorable little brother! My precious little brother! I missed you so much!"

Theon struggled uselessly against her grip. "W-Wait! Stop! This is not the time for this!"

"Your cheeks are still so soft!"

"IFRITH, HELP ME!"

The Flame Lord demon looked away, entirely unbothered by his master’s suffering. "I suddenly find myself in support of chaos."

The assassins stood frozen in stunned silence. Raven stared even harder than the rest of them. For several long seconds, the mighty Archduke of the empire simply blinked, once, then twice, clearly struggling to make sense of the scene unfolding in front of him.

Then he finally spoke, his voice flat with disbelief. "What exactly is happening right now?"

One of the assassins raised a cautious hand. "My lord, it appears to be a young woman aggressively loving her brother."

Raven looked at him without expression. "I can see that."

Theon was still trying to twist free. "Get her off me!"

The Flame Empress only hugged him tighter. "No."

"This is kidnapping!"

"This is affection."

"That is not the same thing!"

Lazeria pressed a hand over her mouth, trying and failing to smother her laughter despite the danger still hanging thick in the air. Even Fen looked lost, tilting his enormous head as though trying, and failing, to understand what he was witnessing.

Then something shifted in Raven’s expression. His eyes locked onto the glowing sigil across the Flame Empress’s back, and recognition flickered across his face. Whatever amusement he’d felt a moment ago drained away instantly.

His voice turned cold as steel. "Primordial Flame Empress."

The hall went still.

The Flame Empress stopped kissing Theon mid-motion. Slowly, she turned her head toward Raven, and the temperature in the room spiked without warning. Crimson fire erupted around her body, forcing the assassins to stumble back again. Even the ancient frost clinging to the walls began to hiss and melt.

Her eyes were no longer playful. They burned with fury.

She vanished again, and this time she reappeared directly in front of Raven. Her hand shot out and closed around his throat, lifting him off the ground with terrifying, effortless ease. The assassins drew their weapons on instinct, but the heat rolling off her body forced them to keep their distance.

Her voice echoed like burning steel scraping against stone. "Give me the shard."

Raven looked straight into her blazing eyes, and to everyone’s surprise, he smiled.

Theon frowned. Why wasn’t he afraid?

The Flame Empress tightened her grip around his throat. "Give it to me," she said again, slower this time, "or you die where you stand."

Raven raised his hand without any urgency at all. The Crimson Frostheart glowed faintly in his palm. Then, with whatever strength he had left, he hurled it across the hall. Not toward her. Not toward the floor. Straight toward the gate.

The crystal cut through the air and landed precisely in front of the frozen entrance.

The Flame Empress dropped him at once, letting him fall in a heap. "You have no idea what you’ve just done." She turned away from him without another glance. "I will deal with you later."

Theon stared at the crystal lying near the gate, and something cold clicked into place in his mind.

*Wait. Why throw it there of all places? Why use that much force? Why not simply let it drop at his feet?*

Raven had aimed. Deliberately.

Theon’s stomach dropped. *No.*

The Flame Empress was already walking toward the crystal, unhurried, confident.

"Come back!" Theon shouted, his voice cracking with urgency.

She waved a hand at him without turning around. "Nothing in this world can harm me anymore."

Theon’s pulse pounded painfully in his ears. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. Raven was far too calm for a man who had just lost his prize without a fight.

He took a step forward, panic rising in his chest. "COME BACK, LYRA!"

The Flame Empress ignored him completely and crossed the invisible boundary just before the gate.

Everything changed in an instant.

The temperature of the entire hall crashed downward so fast that frost formed on the walls in seconds. Crimson fire turned pale and thin. Ice exploded outward from the floor and climbed rapidly up the Flame Empress’s feet. Her confident expression cracked as her flames flickered and turned a sickly blue-white.

Theon’s blood ran cold.

Raven rose slowly to his feet and laughed. Not loudly. Not wildly. It was the quiet, satisfied laugh of a man watching his trap close exactly as he had planned it.

"You may be powerful, Flame Empress," he said, brushing dust from his sleeve, "but your element is still fire."

The ice climbed higher, past her knees, reaching for her waist.

"And tell me," he continued, "what is the greatest enemy of fire?"

The frost reached her waist.

"Ice (water)."

The Flame Empress finally looked back over her shoulder, and for once since she had awakened, real shock crossed her face. Her body was freezing, and not with any ordinary ice. This was ancient, merciless cold, and the fire around her crackled weaker and weaker as it was consumed inch by inch.

Theon stepped forward, horror rising in his throat like bile. "What did you do?!"

Raven’s smile faded into something colder. "Are you truly this naive, boy?"

Theon glared at him, his hands shaking. "What do you mean?"

Raven pointed toward the gate without hesitation. "There is a curse laid upon that entrance." The ice had already reached the Flame Empress’s shoulders. "Anyone who is not the chosen one is turned into eternal ice the moment they draw near it."

Theon froze as the truth hit him like a physical blow. "That is why you never went near it yourself."

Raven nodded slowly, almost proudly. "I suspected the legend was true. I simply needed proof."

Theon’s disbelief twisted rapidly into rage. "You used her as your test subject?"

Raven’s eyes hardened without a trace of guilt. "I came here to take the Nivareth, but to do that, I had to test whether that gate would kill one who is not meant to touch it. And now I know."

The Flame Empress struggled weakly against the ice, but the frost only spread faster, climbing steadily toward her throat.

Theon’s chest tightened until it hurt to breathe. He looked at her, really looked at her this time, and saw not some ancient, terrifying power, but Lyra. His sister. Buried beneath a winter that did not care who she was or what she meant to him.

And for the first time since stepping into that hall, real panic finally reached him.

"Lyra!"

Theon moved before he could even think.

The Flame Empress was almost completely sealed in ice now. Crimson fire flickered weakly beneath the frozen shell, like a dying star trapped under a glacier, still burning, still fighting, but fading with every passing second.

Raven watched in silence, making no move to stop what was coming.

Theon’s hands trembled at his sides. This was his sister. Not some spirit. Not some ancient being wearing her face for its own purposes. Lyra. And she was freezing to death right in front of him while he stood there doing nothing.

He broke into a sprint toward the gate.

A wall of crimson fire rose suddenly in front of him, blocking his path.

Ifrith.

"Master, contain yourself!"

Theon’s eyes blazed with fury. "Move."

"You are not the chosen!" Ifrith spread his hands wide, and a barrier of demonic flame erupted across the floor between them. "If you enter that curse, you may never come back to us!"

Theon did not slow down for even a moment. Blue mana exploded around his body, and with a single swing of his arm, he shattered the barrier completely. The impact cracked outward like a peal of thunder rolling through the hall.

Ifrith’s eyes widened in disbelief.

Theon struck again without hesitation. A wave of raw force slammed into the Flame Lord demon and sent him crashing hard into a stone pillar. The entire hall shook from the impact, dust raining down from the ceiling.

Lazeria gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Even Raven, who had planned every step of this, looked genuinely caught off guard.

Theon did not care what any of them thought. He walked straight toward the gate, and the ancient frost surged up to meet him instantly. Ice crawled up his boots, then his legs, then across his chest. The cold was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Not winter. Not ordinary magic. It felt like the world itself was trying to erase him from existence, one breath at a time.

Theon gritted his teeth and kept walking anyway.

"Master!" Ifrith’s voice cracked with desperation.

The ice reached his neck. Light began pouring out from beneath his skin. His vision blurred at the edges, and for one terrible heartbeat, he was certain Raven had been right about him all along.

Then, a crack.

A thin fracture split across the ice covering his arm. Another followed. Then another, spreading faster with each passing second.

The entire frozen shell shattered outward all at once.

A shockwave of pale blue energy swept through the hall, and every flame in the chamber was snuffed out in an instant. Every assassin was thrown backward off their feet. The Gate of Eternal Ice blazed brighter than it ever had before.

Theon slowly opened his eyes. They were no longer their usual blue. They now glowed with a deep, celestial shade of ice blue, and thin threads of pale frost lightning crackled across his skin, racing along the floor beneath his boots.

The temperature in the hall shifted once more. Not colder this time. Calmer. As though the ancient winter itself had finally recognized him and chosen to stop fighting.

Raven stared in open disbelief. "No. It cannot be."

The Azure Frostheart rose slowly into the air. The Crimson Frostheart tore itself free from the floor where it had landed. Both crystals floated before the gate, spinning slowly in opposite directions as the ancient sockets carved into the frozen door began to glow, one blue, one crimson.

The shards slammed into place with a sound like breaking glass.

The gate trembled. Stone groaned deep within its foundations. Ice cracked apart in long jagged lines. Then, slowly, impossibly, the colossal door began to open.

A blast of ancient cold swept through the chamber, colder than anything before it. The assassins stumbled backward in fear. Lazeria shielded her face against the biting wind. Fen stood perfectly still, thunder crackling softly around his massive frame as though even he understood the weight of this moment.

Theon stood at the center of the storm, his celestial ice-blue eyes fixed on the widening gate. Beyond it stretched a vast, frozen hall unlike anything he had ever seen. Gigantic icicles hung from the ceiling like spears built to impale giants. The floor was covered in black-silver frost, the kind that did not reflect light but swallowed it whole, drinking in every flicker of brightness around it.

Ancient pillars rose into darkness far above, and at the very center of the hall stood a sword, buried inside a massive block of eternal ice. The ice surrounding it looked nothing like the rest of the hall. Denser. Darker. Almost alive, as if it were breathing.

Raven’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes widened with something close to awe, something he had clearly never expected to feel.

"NIVARETH." His voice trembled, just once, betraying him. "The Eternal Frostblade."

Silence swallowed the hall whole.

Theon felt something pull gently at his chest, and it was not mana, and it was not force. It was a call, deep and ancient and strangely familiar, like a memory that was not quite his own but somehow still belonged to him.

The sword was calling him.

He took a step forward.

Behind him, Raven whispered, almost to himself, "Impossible."

Theon did not answer. The frozen hall stretched out before him like the heart of a world that had been waiting a very long time for someone to finally walk through its gates, and at its center waited the blade that had once belonged to the very first Divine Frost Demon to reach the Primordial Realm.

The Eternal Frostblade.

Theon crossed the threshold. The gate groaned wider behind him. The ancient hall stirred and awakened around him, as though it had been holding its breath for centuries.

Then a voice called to Theon, "Save me."