We stopped at the exact same time.

No warning.

No signal.

Just instinct slamming into us like a wall.

My mana flared violently, Death and Life reacting in sharp, ugly harmony, and before I could even open my mouth, Kent's hand clamped down on my shoulder.

"Move," he said.

We vanished.

The world snapped sideways, my stomach lagging half a heartbeat behind my body, and then we reappeared a dozen meters away in a spray of displaced air and dirt.

A fraction of a second later, the place we had been standing ceased to exist.

The ground collapsed.

Not cracked.

Not split.

Collapsed.

A deafening boom tore through the forest as the earth caved inward, forming a massive crater that swallowed trees whole. Jagged ice spikes erupted upward from the impact point, spearing into the sky like frozen teeth. Frost raced across the ground in every direction, flash-freezing soil, roots, rocks, everything into a dead, glassy wasteland.

The temperature plummeted so fast my lungs burned when I inhaled.

Kent and I stared.

Neither of us spoke.

The banter died instantly.

No jokes.

No snide comments.

No sarcastic observations about how this was "probably fine."

Because it wasn't.

My breath came out in white plumes. Actual frost clung to my eyelashes. My skin prickled as something heavy rolled through the air, pressure, not physical, but existential.

Dualflow energy.

I felt it before I fully understood it. Ice-blue energy poured through the clearing like a tide, thick enough to see, to feel. It warped the air, bent light, drowned out everything else. Mana didn't stand a chance against it.

Dualflow didn't mingle.

It overwrote.

"What…" Kent breathed. His voice fogged instantly. "What the hell is that?"

I swallowed. Hard.

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm pretty sure it just tried to erase us."

The trees ahead creaked.

Then shattered.

Something stepped forward.

It emerged from the frozen haze slowly, deliberately, as if it knew the impact of its own reveal and was enjoying the moment.

Ice formed its body, layered, jagged, impossibly dense, each limb reinforced with glowing veins of ice-blue Dualflow energy that pulsed like a second circulatory system.

A golem.

But calling it that felt like calling a mountain a rock.

It stood easily three stories tall. Its shoulders were broad slabs of glacial ice, its torso a compact mass of frozen plates fused together by energy that hummed like a living storm. Its head was angular and featureless, save for two burning points of blue light where eyes should have been.

Every step it took froze the ground anew.

The forest retreated from it. Branches snapped under the cold. Leaves shattered. Even sound seemed to dull in its presence, swallowed by the cold, oppressive weight of its aura.

My blood turned to ice.

Not metaphorically.

Actually.

My limbs felt heavy. Slow. Like my body was trying to remember how movement worked in subzero temperatures.

"That's…" Kent started, then stopped.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "That's bad."

Dualflow energy rolled off the thing in waves, so dense it made my teeth ache. Mana...my mana, shrank back instinctively, like it knew it was hopelessly outmatched.

Dualflow was hundreds of times stronger than mana.

Hundred.

This wasn't a monster meant to be fought.

It was meant to be endured.

Or avoided.

Or prayed to.

The golem's head tilted slightly.

The ice-blue glow intensified.

I felt something lock onto us.

"Oh," I muttered. "It definitely sees us."

Kent flexed his fingers, frost cracking off his gloves. "On the bright side…"

I glanced at him.

He grimaced. "…We didn't get hit."

"That is the lowest possible bar," I said.

The golem raised one massive arm. Ice condensed around it instantly, spiraling outward, compressing, shaping itself into a spear the size of a tree trunk.

The temperature dropped again.

My breath hitched.

I leaned slightly toward Kent. "So. Running or dying?"

He didn't even hesitate.

"Running," he said. Then, after a beat, "Preferably very fast."

"Good. Because I left my 'fight a god-made ice titan' gear back at home."

The spear finished forming.

The ground beneath our feet began to frost over again.

I smiled thinly.

"Alright," I said. "Round three."

And the monster moved.

Kent's hand slammed onto my shoulder again.

"Hold on."

The world broke.

Not shattered—skipped.

Reality folded like bad paper and we were gone, reappearing more than a hundred meters away in the same instant the ice spear screamed past where our heads had been. The sound came late, a thunderclap chasing us after the fact.

We didn't stop.

Kent didn't count.

Neither did I.

Teleport.Snap.Teleport.Snap.

The forest ceased to exist as a place and became a smear of frozen afterimages. Trees blurred into black streaks. The ground flashed beneath us in broken frames. Each jump ripped the breath out of my lungs, my organs lagging a fraction of a second behind my bones.

One hundred meters.

Two hundred.

Five.

A kilometer.

The cold followed us.

No matter how far we jumped, the air arrived already frozen, already heavy with that ice-blue Dualflow pressure. It was like trying to outrun winter itself.

Kent's grip tightened every time.

I felt it in his shoulder through my sleeve—strain, sweat instantly icing over, mana burning hot and fast inside him.

Teleport.Teleport.Teleport.

My sense of direction dissolved. Up and down became suggestions. My stomach twisted violently, my vision stuttering as reality struggled to keep up with us.

"How—far—" I managed between jumps.

"Don't—know," Kent ground out. "Keep—moving."

Another jump.

Another.

Another.

By the time he faltered, I could feel it before he said anything.

His mana hiccupped.

Just once.

But that was enough.

We reappeared mid-stride—and Kent stopped.

Not by choice.

We slammed to a halt as a wall of ice erupted in front of us with a sound like the world cracking open.

The ground screamed.

Ice surged upward in a single, violent motion, racing skyward faster than thought. It wasn't a wall so much as a continent rising on end—jagged, sheer, impossibly tall. Frost exploded outward, rolling over us in a wave that froze the air in my lungs solid for half a second.

I staggered back, boots skidding across suddenly glass-slick ground.

I tilted my head up.

And up.

And up.

The wall didn't end.

It vanished into cloud cover that hadn't been there a moment ago, a sheer vertical cliff of blue-white ice reinforced with glowing veins of Dualflow energy that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat.

Taller than skyscrapers.

Wider than cities.

Unclimbable.

Unbreakable.

Final.

Kent's breathing was ragged now, each exhale fogging violently. Frost clung to his hair, his lashes, the edge of his jaw. His mana flared weakly once… then guttered.

He didn't reach for me again.

Slowly—too slowly—he turned.

His face was grim in a way I hadn't seen before. Not fear exactly. Something colder. Heavier.

Acceptance.

"That's… about ten miles," he said quietly.

I stared at him.

"…What?"

"My limit," he clarified. "Instant jumps. That many, that fast." He swallowed. "I can't do another."

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