The cave didn't stay a cave for long.
The crystalline walls shuddered, then fractured—not breaking, but becoming. The floor groaned beneath the three combatants as reality folded like wet parchment, the reflections shattering into a blinding white glare. For a heartbeat, there was nothing but weightlessness.
Then the cold hit.
The world reformed into a frozen wasteland, an endless expanse of white and blue stretching beneath a dead, colorless sky. Ice plains cracked and groaned underfoot, jagged spires of frozen crystal clawing upward like the ribs of some titanic corpse. The air burned the lungs with every breath, frost clinging instantly to armor, hair, and skin.
Page landed first, boots skidding across slick ice as she dropped into a low stance. Her breath steamed, each exhale sharp and controlled. Across from her, the monsters stood.
They were wrong.
Hideously wrong.
