Ti passed differently inside the Lighthouse.
Outside, the White Frost continued its endless violence, pressing, scraping, erasing the world. But inside the broken stone shell, Sebastian's fire had carved out sothing fragile but real: a pocket of warmth. It wasn't comfortable, but it was safe.
Faelorn had regained enough strength to sit upright against the inner wall, his breathing steadier now that the worst of the exposure had been burned away. Lune stayed close to him and Yarvik, checking the dwarf's condition more than once, even though there was nothing to be done beyond what had already been done. Yarvik lay unconscious, wrapped in makeshift cloth and layered warmth, his severed arm carefully bound and sealed.
He was alive, that alone felt like a miracle in a place like this.
Lune stared at him for a long mont before finally speaking, her voice quieter than usual.
"He lost his arm…" she said, as if saying it softly might make it less real. "Just like that."
Sebastian, who had been sitting a short distance away with his fla controlled into a steady burn, didn't look up imdiately. When he did, his expression was calm. "It was better than doing nothing, be glad that you didn't get frostbitten as well, it is a miracle." he said simply.
Lune frowned slightly, conflicted, but she didn't argue. There wasn't much room for argunt here, not in this situation.
Faelorn exhaled slowly, dragging himself into a more stable position before speaking. His voice was rough, but steadier than before. "Thank you again, Seb."
Sebastian shook his head almost imdiately.
"I didn't do much," he replied. "If anything, I brought you here in the first place. That's on . Walking into random suspicious portals… I should've known better."
A faint, humorless breath escaped him.
"…I understand why Geralt hates portals now."
Faelorn gave a tired, almost sympathetic look at that.
"It was not your fault," he said firmly. "I was going to convince you to take us through that portal anyway. It seed like a way out. A fast and clean one."
His jaw tightened slightly.
"But it was too good to be true."
Then Faelorn spoke again, more carefully this ti.
"So… we really are…" he hesitated, searching for words that didn't want to exist in any language. "You said this is a dead world. Destroyed by the White Frost."
Sebastian nodded once.
"The White Frost," he confird. "Sa thing from the prophecy. If there's any truth to the stories, this is what it looks like when it wins sowhere."
Faelorn stared at him for a mont, as if trying to reconcile myth with reality.
"…We were inside a cabin when we arrived," he said finally. "Barely. Buried under snow. We dug out thinking it was just a storm. Then we tried to light a fire."
His lips tightened into sothing bitter.
"No fire would take. Not even embers. Years in the wilds and I couldn't even manage that. I thought I was losing my mind."
Lune's voice followed quietly, almost fragile now.
"We thought you were dead," she admitted. "Or that the portal had thrown you sowhere else. So we went out anyway. If we stayed, we would have frozen inside that place."
Her eyes lowered.
"It was horrible… I thought we were going to die out there."
Faelorn nodded once.
"Then we saw your fire. At first I thought it was another structure. Maybe survivors. I even hoped they were humans. Anyone would've been better than nothing at that point."
His gaze lifted toward Sebastian.
"But the light… it wasn't natural. It kept growing. Burning through the storm. That's when I realized it had to be you."
Sebastian let out a slow breath and finally leaned back slightly against the stone.
"We're alive," he said simply. "That's what matters right now."
His eyes shifted toward the base of the lighthouse.
"There's a path under this lighthouse. My dallion's still going crazy, there's magic here. Strong magic. If that mage used a portal to get in, there has to be another way out sowhere."
Lune straightened slightly at that, hope flickering back into her voice despite everything.
"Please find it," she said. "We might be safe from the Frost because of you, but we can't stay here. Not long. We'll starve. We'll dry out. There's nothing here."
Sebastian didn't deny it.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Nothing's alive here."
He pushed himself to his feet, fla tightening around him again in response to the movent. The warmth in the room deepened slightly as he prepared to leave.
"Stay here," he added, glancing back at them. "I'll check what's beneath this place. I'll keep the fire stable and don't move unless I tell you to."
He paused at the edge of the opening leading downward.
"I won't be long."
.
.
.
.
The descent beneath the lighthouse did not feel like entering ruins so much as it felt like walking deeper into sothing that had been buried on purpose because stone steps gave way to fractured ramps, and those in turn collapsed into slanted corridors where ice had crept in through every crack. The deeper Sebastian went, the less the place resembled anything like an interior of a lighthouse.
And yet… there were signs of a passage created by soone.
Footprints frozen into old dust. Scrape marks along the walls. Broken stone displaced in patterns. Soone had co through here recently enough that the White Frost hadn't yet claid their traces completely. That alone was weird.
His dallion grew more restless with every step.
At first it was a faint vibration against his chest. Then a constant tremor.
By the ti he reached the lower chamber, it was almost unbearable.
The chamber itself opened suddenly, it was vast in a way that made no architectural sense deep beneath a lighthouse. The ceiling disappeared into frost-darkened height, and the walls were half-consud by ice.
And at its center there was a portal.
Not dormant like the one before or broken, this one was Active.
A swirling distortion of shifting light.
Sebastian stopped at the edge of the chamber and let out a slow breath.
"Well…" he muttered under his breath, almost amused despite himself. "How convenient."
His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the structure, taking in the stable looking portal.
"I actually found it."
For a brief mont, there was only the hum of the portal responding to his presence.
Then suddenly a pressure shifted in the air. The frost along the walls began to move, crawling inward.
A distorted, layered sound followed, chanical and magical, stripped of personality and yet undeniably aware.
"Intruder detected."
Sebastian's expression changed imdiately.
"…Of course," he exhaled. "I had to jinx it."
The frost beneath the portal cracked outward in a widening circle.
Stone groaned and then it rose. Ice erupted upward, assembling itself into a big shape, an elenta born from ice magic and ancient defensive protocol with a core that pulsed with the sa pale glow as the portal behind it.
The chamber temperature dropped again, violently this ti.
The elenta moved.
One step forward and the ground beneath it froze solid in its wake.
The voice returned, deeper now, resonating through the stone itself.
"Counterasure activated... Combat mode."
Sebastian slowly exhaled through his nose.
Then his hand grabbed his sword.
Silver slid free with a clean, familiar whisper and fla gathered along his entire arm.
"Yeah," he said quietly, rolling his shoulder once as he adjusted his stance against the freezing pressure pushing in from all sides. "I figured I would fight so sort of ice demon in this hellish world..."
His eyes locked onto the elenta as it raised its arm.
"…Let's get this over with."
/-\\
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