The existence of the Khaos Gate made the decision simple for the Dark Avatar.
Failure no longer carried finality. Even if this body were destroyed, his soul could retreat through the Gate and return to his true body intact. That certainty stripped hesitation from his mind and left only resolve.
His decisiveness stirred the two Nephilim beside him.
To them, Ery displayed an unyielding resolve-one born of devotion to love one, a determination that would not waver even in the face of death.
Jinkan was visibly moved.
"I will help you," she said, her voice firm.
As she spoke, she deliberately t Eeshoo's gaze, her expression openly challenging-making it clear that she would enter the gate whether he join or not.
That finally forced Eeshoo to release a deep, frustrated sigh.
"I will do it," he said after a pause. "But you... you had better not enter. It's too dangerous for you."
At first glance, his words sounded like sincere concern for her safety.
Jinkan, however, bristled.
The final challenge within the Frozen Throne scaled brutally with the number of participants. Every additional person increased its difficulty exponentially, amplifying the domain's hostility and divine suppression.
"You think I'll be a burden, don't you?" Jinkan snapped. "I won't"
The argunt that followed was filled with restrained emotion and unresolved history. Their words collided again and again until Eeshoo finally yielded.
Still, he did not fully concede.
"If you enter," he said coldly, "you follow my lead. No improvisation."
As the only one among them who had completed the Fla Throne Trial, his authority carried undeniable weight.
"Let's go."
The massive gate groaned as ancient chanisms awakened. Frost cracked along its surface as it slowly opened, revealing a vast chamber swallowed by darkness.
The mont they advanced inside, blue icy flas ignited one by one along the walls, like ancient torches responding to intruders. The cold intensified instantly, pressing down with an authority far heavier than anything they had faced before.
Then the darkness receded enough for them to see.
At the far end of the chamber stood a colossal female goddess of ice, her form towering at least ten tis larger than any statue they had encountered earlier. Her expression was serene, rciless, and utterly divine.
But what truly shocked Ery-
Were the hundreds of human figures frozen into ice sculptures across the chamber.
Their faces were preserved in their final monts-terror, despair, pleading, resignation-each one locked forever beneath crystal-clear ice.
Before the three of them could move, the gate behind them slamd shut.
Runes erupted across the surface, and the frozen statues began to glow. And then-
A spectral figure appeared before the throne.
The temperature of the chamber plumted in an instant, plunging far beyond mortal cold. Frost blood across the air itself, and even thought seed to slow.
This was not a full manifestation, but a partial soul projection-yet its presence eclipsed everything within the chamber.
She was Shiva, Goddess of Ice.
Her form was tall and statuesque, sculpted from translucent, crystalline ice that shimred with inner starlight. Long, flowing hair cascaded down her back like frozen silk, each strand refracting pale blue and violet hues.
Jagged crystal spires hovered behind her like a fractured halo, slowly rotating, shedding fine motes of frozen light that dissolved before touching the ground.
Whispers followed her ergence.
Ancient, layered voices echoed through the chamber, crawling along the walls, threading through the ice, and seeping directly into the mind.
"You ca for the Frozen Throne challenge... are you worthy?"
Eeshoo stepped forward at once, raising his voice toward the towering spectral goddess.
"Divine Goddess," he said firmly, "we do not seek the challenge. We ca to seek answer."
From the frozen statues watching in silence.
"Complete the challenge... and you shall find what you seek."
Her words shattered into motion.
The frozen floor convulsed as hundreds of ice elentals manifested at once, their ergence accompanied by a shriek of crystallizing air. Armored sentinels rose first-tall, bladed figures forged from layered froststeel-but they were quickly followed by far greater threats. From the depths of the ice, massive ice golems assembled themselves piece by piece, glaciers grinding together to form towering bodies. Their limbs were thick as pillars, their movents slow but inexorable, each step sending tremors through the chamber as the surrounding cold fed directly into their cores, continuously reinforcing them. The mont the horde stabilized, Eeshoo unleashed himself.
Flas erupted from his back as radiant wings spread wide, their span filling the upper half of the chamber as his form ascended [Angelic Descent]. Sun fire wrapped around his body in layered halos, his presence alone forcing the surrounding frost to recoil. With practiced precision, dozens spirit weapons materialized behind him-blazing constructs of fire-law authority-hovering in perfect formation before launching forward in devastating arcs. Wherever they struck, ice detonated into steam and shards, entire clusters of elentals
erased in incandescent explosions.
Jinkan moved in tandem, already bracing for the inevitable counterpressure. Three high-grade artifacts enabled simultaneously. A crystalline heat lattice unfolded around her like a living frawork, radiating controlled warmth that pushed back the suffocating cold. Over it, layered defensive paraters locked into place-runic shields that bent space just enough to redirect incoming force without collapsing. Beneath it all, a stabilizing core artifact pulsed steadily, feeding energy into the system to prevent catastrophic overload.
anwhile, Ery's Dark Avatar vanished.
Space twisted violently as he blinked from statue to statue, partial distortions
tearing open and sealing behind him in rapid succession. His task was singular- check every frozen figure, every trapped soul, every preserved challenger.
His divine sense flared to its limit.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Hundreds of ice sculptures.
Looking for Klea.
As the battle dragged on, the number of ice elentals did not diminish- instead, it multiplied. Each one that shattered reford monts later, while new shapes clawed their way out of the frozen ground and walls. The pressure
within the chamber increased exponentially.
The domain pressed back.
Jinkan felt it first.
This was not a matter of temperature alone. Shiva's authority did not rely
freeze-it rejected.
"This place.. it's affecting my artifacts!!" she said through clenched teeth,
forcing power into collapsing formations,
With every passing mont, their aura slowly overridden by an older, purer ice principle that recognized no foreign constructs as valid.
One by one, her artifacts began to fail- Defensive paraters broken as their
runes lost cohesion, refusing to respond as if the domain itself had declared
them invalid.
Her words carried regret-not fear, but realization.
This battlefield was never ant to be conquered through tools.
The cold surged inward.
Eeshoo reacted instantly.
Recognizing that containnt had failed and that prolonged engagent would
end in annihilation, he invoked his final recourse. Ancient runes ignited above the battlefield as a massive summoning formation unfolded in the air, its lines burning bright against the encroaching frost. His chant resonated with primal
fire-law authority, forcing the chamber to answer.
Reality split.
A towering spectral figure erged, its muscles burning like molten tal
beneath a shell of living fla. Horns curved from its skull, and every movent scorched the ice beneath it into steaming ruin.
Ifrit.
An Acon of fla-equal in origin to Shiva herself-summoned through the
legacy Eeshoo had claid upon conquering the Fire Throne.
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