Aneithra arrived not with a roar, but as a sudden, crushing wave of silence. Her cold magic swept over the glowing stone, snuffing out the fires instantly and encasing the surviving soldiers in thick, clear pillars of ice that held them motionless, unharmed but entirely trapped.
When she descended into the narrow stone pass, her wings flared wide to catch the rising updraft, snapping once like heavy canvas in a high gale before her claws hit the shattered basalt. The sheer weight of her arrival brought a breath-catching quiet to the valley.
Men who had been screaming, their iron spears raised toward the bleeding form of Pyronox, froze where they stood. The air grew so bitter that breath turned to thick frost on their lips, and the blood pooling in the crevices of the rock skittered into crimson ice.
