Chapter 38: Astrid Nivaris

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Astrid Nivaris

Crimson Flames painted the night sky, staining the falling snow a deep, restless red.

Astrid Nivaris floated above the ruins of the northern wing, her long red hair dancing wildly in the heat of her own mana.

Theon stared up at her in silence, his heart hammering against his ribs. Lyra glanced between the two siblings, unable to believe what she was seeing unfold in front of her, her hands pressed tightly against her chest. Lazeria slowly stepped back, her breath catching in her throat. Fen rose to his feet, thunder crackling low through his fur, every muscle in his massive body coiled and ready. Ragnar’s expression darkened, the calm from moments ago replaced entirely by something colder.

"What is the meaning of this?" the emperor demanded, his voice cutting through the heat like a blade through silk.

The princess lowered her burning gaze to him, unmoved by the authority in his tone. "I’m done waiting." Her voice trembled, not with fear, but with something that had clearly been building inside her for far longer than tonight. "I’m done using schemes, whispers, and politics."

The flames around her surged higher, licking at the broken stone beneath her feet.

"Tonight, I’ll settle this myself."

Theon frowned, his pulse pounding in his ears. "Settle what?"

She looked at him then, and saw something raw beneath the fury, something that looked almost like grief. As if she had been carrying these words inside her chest for years, waiting for the moment she could finally set them free.

"You."

Silence fell over the ruins, heavy and absolute.

Ragnar took a step forward, his voice sharp with warning. "This is madness."

"No," she snapped back, her eyes blazing brighter still. "This is justice."

She drew a slow breath, and when she spoke again, her voice cracked just slightly beneath the flames. "Ever since I was a child, I was praised as the greatest talent of the empire. The strongest princess. The future of the royal family." Her voice softened for a moment, fragile in a way that felt almost unbearable to hear from someone wrapped in so much fire. "And then he was born."

Theon’s chest tightened painfully, guilt he had never earned pressing down on him all at once.

"At just two years old, he released a surge of mana that surpassed mine." The flames around her flickered violently, mirroring an anger she could no longer contain after years of holding it beneath the surface. "And everyone started looking at him instead. Every tutor. Every noble. Every soldier in the training yard who used to whisper my name."

Ragnar opened his mouth to speak, his jaw tight, but Theon raised a hand before he could.

"No need, Father."

The emperor paused, watching his son with something unreadable behind his tired eyes.

Theon looked up at his sister, his voice quieter now, almost gentle despite everything burning around them. "So that’s why you hate me?"

For a split second, pain flickered across her face, open and unguarded, the mask of a warrior slipping just enough to show the girl underneath it. Then it hardened again into something colder, and far more determined.

"I don’t hate you."

She extended her hand, and a crimson magic circle unfolded slowly in the air above her palm. Flames spiraled inward, condensing gradually into the shape of a blade until a beautiful, terrifying sword emerged fully formed from the fire itself, humming with heat that Theon could feel from several meters away.

The Ancient Phoenix Sword.

Heat rolled across the ruins in slow, heavy waves. She pointed the blade at him, her eyes never once leaving his.

"Draw your sword."

Theon’s hand moved instinctively toward his storage ring. He felt Nivareth resting quietly inside it, waiting, patient in a way that unsettled him. The Eternal Frostblade. For a moment, the vision from the frozen hall flashed through his mind uninvited, sharp and vivid. A silver haired king. A burning empire. A single swing that erased half the world in complete silence.

Theon’s fingers stopped, hovering just above the ring.

*If I draw out Nivareth here that catastrophe thst I saw in those visions could become this empire?*

He exhaled slowly, forcing the image away with effort, and reached instead into his storage ring for a different blade. The black sword he had taken from the shadow mage during the rescue of the elf children. Dark mana gathered around the steel, and then pale frost spread slowly across its edge, crystallizing the shadows into a silver blue sheen that seemed to breathe softly, alive in its own quiet way.

The blade had become a fusion of darkness and winter.

The princess narrowed her eyes at the sight of it, something like disappointment crossing her face. "You’re holding back."

"I’m trying not to destroy the palace," Theon answered evenly, though his voice betrayed just a hint of the fear coiling in his stomach.

The answer only seemed to irritate her further. Without warning, she vanished.

The air exploded.

She appeared above him, sword raised high, and Theon barely reacted in time to bring his blade up to meet hers. The impact shook the entire courtyard, sending a shockwave rippling through what remained of the walls, and his knees buckled beneath the sheer force of it.

*So heavy.*

She wasn’t just fast. She was overwhelmingly, terrifyingly strong, strong in a way that made him feel, exactly how young and small he still was.

With a fierce cry, she drove the sword downward, and the ground beneath Theon cracked and gave way entirely. He was smashed into the snow, the breath knocked from his lungs in one violent burst. He gritted his teeth and twisted his blade at the last possible moment, sliding the flame sword aside just enough to escape being cut in half. Using the opening, he kicked backward and scrambled clear of the crater, landing several meters away, chest heaving, sweat already freezing on his brow.

*This is the power of my eldest sister. She’s far beyond me.*

The princess attacked again without pause, without mercy. A slash from the left. A thrust from the right. A vertical strike falling from above like judgment itself. Theon blocked desperately, sparks and fire and frost exploding with every collision until his arms began to go numb from the strain, his grip trembling around the hilt.

Ragnar watched with narrowed eyes, his expression grim, his fists clenched at his sides though he made no move to intervene. "He can’t keep this up."

Ifrith, however, smiled faintly beside him, entirely unbothered. "Look closer."

Theon retreated another step, then another, Astrid pursued him relentlessly, every attack flowing seamlessly into the next like a storm that refused to break no matter how long it raged. But somewhere in the middle of that chaos, something inside him began to shift, quietly, almost without his notice. He started to see it. Her rhythm. The slight delay before each upward slash. The subtle shift of her shoulder just before a thrust. A pattern hidden quietly inside the storm, waiting for someone patient enough to find it.

*I can read her, but I still can’t win.*

His eyes sharpened, focus narrowing until nothing else in the world existed but the space between them.

"World Archive."

A pale screen flashed silently before him, visible only to his own eyes.

*Swordsmanship style detected.*

"Activate."

*Permission required. Temporary synchronization will occur.*

Theon took a slow breath, steadying the frantic beat of his heart. "Granted."

The world seemed to move slowly around him. Not time itself, but his own perception of it, stretching each second into something he could finally hold and study. The sound of the wind faded into nothing. The flames stretched into long, lazy trails of light drifting through the air.

His sister moved again. This time, Theon raised his sword with only one hand, calm where a moment ago he had been desperate.

The strike was deflected effortlessly, almost gently.

Her eyes widened in surprise, disbelief flashing across her face. She attacked again, and again, and again, but Theon moved with terrifying precision now, using the smallest possible motions, no wasted movement, no panic, only perfect, patient timing that seemed to come from somewhere far older than his own memories.

"What changed?" she whispered, breathless.

Theon did not answer. His eyes had turned pale and sharply focused, but unlike the awakening in the frozen hall, he remained fully himself, fully conscious of every choice he made, every breath he took.

She attacked from three angles in rapid succession, desperation finally creeping into her movements. He parried all three in a single flowing motion, as though his body had already known where each strike would land before she had even decided to throw it.

Ragnar’s eyes widened slightly, something unreadable passing behind them. Ifrith let out a low chuckle beside him. "Now that," he said softly, "is talent."

The princess leaped back, breathing harder now, sweat beading along her brow despite the fire surrounding her like armor. For once since the fight began, uncertainty crept into her expression, cracking the resolve she had carried into this battle.

Theon lowered his blade, then shifted his stance. One foot forward. One foot behind. The sword rested near his waist in perfect stillness. Absolute stillness. The snow around him stopped moving entirely, suspended in the air as though the world itself had paused to watch. Even the flames seemed to hesitate, curling inward instead of out.

The princess felt danger for a fleeting moment that night, real danger, and she attacked anyway, a full speed charge, flame erupting behind her like a pair of burning wings carrying her forward.

Theon disappeared.

A silver blue flash crossed the battlefield in absolute silence. He passed by her, and nothing more, no clash, no sound, nothing to mark that he had moved at all.

The princess landed and turned immediately, searching for a wound, for blood, for anything that would explain the strange quiet pressing against her skin.

There was nothing.

She smiled faintly despite herself, relief already forming on her lips. "So that was..." Ifrith chuckled as

Her body froze mid sentence. Her sword slipped from her fingers and struck the snow with a soft, final thud. Her legs stopped responding first, then her arms, and her eyes widened in genuine shock as her own body refused to obey her anymore, no matter how hard she tried to force it.

Theon stood behind her, breathing steadily despite the exhaustion pulling at every muscle in his body.

"I didn’t strike your vital points,"

he said quietly, no triumph in his voice, only tired honesty.

"I struck the muscles that control your movement. No matter how powerful you are you still have a mortal body. And that can be used against you"

The realization hit her all at once, spreading through her like the frost still creeping across the ruins. Paralysis, not death. A strange expression crossed her face, relief tangled painfully with exhaustion and something that looked almost like shame, and her body finally gave out, collapsing gently into the snow.

Theon stared down at her for a long moment, his chest aching in a way that had nothing to do with the fight. Then a violent tremor ran through his own body without warning, and his eyes widened as something began shaking loose deep inside him, something far more dangerous than the battle they had just fought.

A pulse of freezing mana exploded outward. The storage ring on his finger began to glow, faint at first, then brighter.

"No," Theon whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind picking up around him.

The ring burst open on its own. Nivareth emerged by itself, the Eternal Frostblade floating slowly into the air as though summoned by something far beyond Theon’s own will. The moment Theon’s hand closed around it, a storm of ice erupted around him, violent and sudden. Snow spiraled upward in a chaotic spiral, the temperature dropping instantly, and his hair began to glow with pale frost light that lit the ruins in an eerie, silver glow.

Deep inside his mind, a whisper echoed, cold and distant, and yet somehow familiar.

*Not yet.*

Theon’s breath caught in his throat. The sword’s power surged through him, filling every vein with ice, and the ruins around them began to freeze over completely. Ice crawled steadily across the ground, reaching hungrily toward the palace itself, as though the blade were trying to claim the entire empire in one silent, patient breath.

Ifrith’s expression changed instantly, alarm cutting through his usual calm. "Master, let go!"

Theon tried. He couldn’t. The sword was awakening, and it had no intention of listening to him, no matter how hard he pulled against it.

Ifrith appeared in front of him and seized the blade with both hands, desperation clear in every line of his body. The moment his skin touched Nivareth, frost exploded violently across his arm, and even the primordial demon, ancient and powerful beyond most things that walked the empire, grunted in genuine pain at the contact.

"Damn this thing."

Crimson flames roared from his body in response, fighting against the cold with everything he had, and with a furious shout, he forced the sword back into the storage space and sealed it shut by sheer force of will alone.

The storm vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only silence and settling snow behind.

Theon swayed on his feet, his legs suddenly unable to hold him. His vision blurred at the edges, colors bleeding together into gray. Then darkness took him completely, and he collapsed silently into the snow, the cold barely registering against his skin anymore.

Lyra and Lazeria stared in stunned silence, unable to move, unable to speak. Ragnar looked down at his unconscious son, something unreadable tightening across his face, then at the sealed storage ring resting quietly against Theon’s finger. The night sky above them had turned pale with frost, as though the whole world had been holding its breath along with them and had only now remembered how to exhale.

And deep within the sealed space, Nivareth whispered once more, soft and patient, waiting for a day that had not yet come, a day none of them could yet see.

"I’ll free you soon My queen."