The Void-Ice ca up.
But this ti it was not as edge enhancent just for a few utilization, surface manipulation.
As itself... the complete void inheritance.
The elent the Cosmic Dragon had been holding at his very soul since the day he had been born and had been trying to reach him since the mont seven years and ten years ago when his parents had been murdered.
He took a single deep breath in.
And that simple breath froze the cathedral hollow’s air for a six-foot radius around his suspended body in a perfect sphere of absolute zero.
Phei paused and then he... let it out.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM.
A cold wave erupted outward from him in a single discrete radial pulse as if an atomic bomb had just went off — pale at first, then darker, then black-and-white, the color of an elent that had stopped pretending to be one or the other and had rembered that it was both, older than rcy, older than regret, older than the very concept of warmth.
Everything within fifty feet of his suspended body crystallized instantly.
Everything within a hundred feet froze solid.
And then everything within two hundred feet — every Titan, every primordial tree, every blade of moss-grass, every airborne particle of cathedral hollow dust, every flying insect that had not had ti to flee, every distant unseen bird in the canopy, every small rodent in the moss, every crawling thing that had dared remain — halted in place in the precise geotry it had occupied at the instant of the wave’s arrival, frozen mid-motion, frozen mid-life, frozen mid-flight, their tiny existences preserved in perfect, rciless black-white ice.
That was just a single wave from his breath... nothing else.
Then—
Black-white ice erupted from Phei in a vast outward cascade and buried the wave-frozen world in its own shroud.
The ten Titans beca ten towering black-white ice sculptures, their patient teeth and coordinated cruelty locked forever in eternal, mocking stillness.
The frost-discs beca ice.
Trees followed suit, becoming towering black-white spires that clawed at the sky like the frozen bones of dead gods while the moss-grass below the tree spikes beca a forest of short thorny ice-daggers standing firm in earth that had beco ice.
Every flying insect beca a small black-white bead suspended in the air at the height of its last wingbeat, distant birds in the canopy beca black-white ornant with its wings half-spread in eternal flight.
The unfortunate... small animals that had defied the cathedral hollow’s pre-training warning and remained within range had been turned, in the sa instant, into the sa black-white ice.
That was fate of the weak and helpless...
Eira on the other hand—
Eira had fled.
Her frost-disc had departed the mont the cold wave had reached the cathedral hollow’s ten-foot radius around Phei’s chest, and the small crystalline figure of his fairy had not been seen running from anything in the mortal realm since the day she had arrived in it — but she had run from this.
The black-white had not caught her nor had it been trying to catch her.
The Void-Ice elent had recognized her as the bondholder it had no quarrel with, and had let her go.
The cathedral hollow, as far as the eye could see, hand beco complete black-white ice land.
Phei breathed in.
His Dragon’s Regeneration — the passive regeneration that Eira had dared to sever — answered in the sa instant the Void-Ice answered, the cut un-cutting itself in a single patient bloom of pale frost across his ruined chest.
His chest closed.
His eyes cleared... the blood drained from his eye-sockets and his vision returned with the surgical clarity of a vessel that had been waiting two hours and forty-four minutes to see properly again.
His ears reford while the blood drained from his ear-canals and his hearing returned in the small patient cosmic correction of a body that had been waiting just as long to hear.
Phei’s broken jaw reseated itself along both hinges, his ribs folded back into their proper curves. His severed tongue finished compiling. His shattered teeth re-grew along their roots, internal bleeding beneath his diaphragm reversed direction and the pool retreated to nothing.
The frostbite at his fingertips withdrew. His broken right shin re-knit along the diagonal fault, the bone-end retreating back through the torn fabric of his trouser leg and disappearing into the closed flesh.
Every inch of ti was hearing in speed so fast it was hard to follow!
He was, in the space of a single breath, whole.
He was more than whole even.
Phei... was godly.
Pristine clean... in the young seventeen-year-old glory of a Cosmic Dragon standing at the center of a black-white ice cathedral hollow in nothing but the tattered remains of his ruined training tunic, his hair dark and unmatted.
His athyst eyes lambent against the new geotry of the world, his bare chest unblemished, his bare arms the long sloping muscle-and-bone of a body whose cosmic register had finally been permitted to express what it was.
The chains broke first.
They cracked along their crystalline lengths, the patient teeth that had built them no longer capable of containing what they had been built to hold, and they shattered — four ice-chains becoming four cascades of pale fragnts that fell from his wrists and his ankle and his throat and dispersed into the black-white air of the new cathedral hollow.
He landed softly.
The small impact of his bare foot against the frozen stone beca the executioner’s sword that served the heads of the sinners.
Every ice-sculpture within fifty yards — Titans, trees, suspended insects, distant birds, moss-grass, small frozen rodents — fell.
Not shattering outward or exploding.
Everything was falling... all the black-white form crumbling at once into a slow unhurried cascade of fine black-white powder that drifted down through the cathedral hollow’s still air and settled across the broken stone in a long patient blanket.
Nothing remained but the wet cold powder of the Void-Ice elent that turned into cold wind that broke light.
And then —
The cold rose again.
The sa wave cold that had erupted from Phei’s chest now lifted from the black-white iced ground and climbed back into the cathedral hollow’s air and spread, the new geotry of his elent burying the entire place in a cold freezing night that overruled the afternoon and stoned the beloved embrace of the sun.
The cathedral hollow went dark.
Black-white... cold... sovereign.
Phei stood at the center of it in his ruined training tunic, his hair dark, his athyst eyes lambent against the new geotry of the world, his breath erging as visible white vapor in the frozen air, his bare chest unblemished and quiet and whole.
The full scope of his Void-Ice Elent had awakened.
The Cosmic Dragon’s Void-Ice Elent.
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