Kent threw his scythe aside.

Not dropped it.

Threw it.

The weapon spun end over end through the air, silver distortions snapping and fading as it embedded itself blade-first into the frozen ground a dozen meters away. Space snapped back into place around it with a protesting whine, like reality exhaling after holding its breath too long.

That alone told me how serious this was.

Kent stepped forward, boots crunching against ice, and raised his hands.

Open palms.

No weapon.

No theatrics.

Just intent.

He didn't look at the golem. Not at first. He looked at me.

Really looked.

Blood streaked his face. One sleeve hung in tatters, shoulder still leaking despite my earlier healing. His breathing was uneven, the subtle tremor in his hands impossible to miss if you knew him well enough.

Which, unfortunately, I did.

"This is it," he said quietly.

The battlefield raged around us, ice pillars forming and collapsing, the golem's massive chest splitting as another titanic sword began to form, but for a moment, it felt like the world had narrowed down to just the two of us.

"I'm serious," Kent continued. "After this, I'm done. No tricks. No emergency jumps. I'll be completely useless."

I didn't argue.

I didn't joke.

I just nodded.

Because if Kent was saying that, then this attack wasn't just risky.

It was suicide-adjacent.

"Two seconds," he added. "Maybe less."

"That's plenty," I said.

Then I turned away from him.

Not because I didn't trust him, but because if I kept looking, I'd start thinking about after. And after was a luxury we didn't have.

I focused inward.

Soulflames answered immediately.

Purple fire erupted around my hands, violent and eager, twisting upward and inward as I forced it into shape. Not a wild inferno this time. Not a raging storm.

Compression.

Again.

And again.

I folded the flames in on themselves, crushing their chaotic hunger down into something tighter. Denser. More controlled. The fire screamed as I forced it into a blade-like form, its edges blurring as heat distorted the air around it.

That wasn't enough.

So I added Death.

Black mana seeped into the purple fire, not extinguishing it, not fighting it, but corrupting it. The flames darkened, thickened, their light bending inward rather than radiating outward. Where soulflames burned existence, Death was the end itself.

Together, they became something wrong.

Something heavy.

The sword solidified.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

The compressed fire gained mass, resistance, weight. When I shifted my grip, the blade resisted like forged steel, no, heavier. Like I was holding a slab of reality itself.

The temperature spiked.

I felt it through my skin first.

Then through the soles of my boots.

One hundred degrees.

The frost at my feet hissed and retreated.

Five hundred.

Ice cracked violently, spiderwebbing outward.

One thousand.

The ground softened, darkened, and began to sag.

Five thousand.

Stone bubbled.

Ten thousand.

The earth beneath me boiled.

The frozen terrain evaporated into vapor, the soil itself screaming as it transitioned straight from solid to gas. A crater formed around my boots, molten rock glowing briefly before flashing away into nothingness.

I didn't move.

I couldn't afford to.

The blade's color shifted as the temperature climbed, purple deepening, black seeping through, until it became a sickly pinkish-black hue that hurt to look at directly. Light warped around it. Sound thinned near it.

The air smelled like ozone, ash, and something older.

Something final.

Behind me, the golem moved.

I felt it more than heard it, the colossal pull of mana, the pressure of dualflow energy gathering as it prepared another strike. A sword of ice larger than the previous one began to form above its head, shadows stretching across the battlefield as it blocked out what little sky we could see.

It was as if it knew this was our last attack, and the golem was preparing for it.

It was almost ready.

But so was Kent.

I sensed the shift before I saw it, the moment his attack finished charging. The air around him dropped from cold to nothing. Not freezing.

Absent.

Heat didn't flee.

It ceased.

Kent's breath crystallized mid-exhale, hanging in the air as a fragile sculpture of frost. The moisture on his skin froze solid. Even the blood dripping from his shoulder stopped mid-fall, suspended like a red bead in glass.

He lowered his hands slightly.

And whispered.

"Absolute Zero."

His voice didn't echo.

Sound didn't travel.

"Freeze," he added, tone flat, exhausted, vicious. "And go to hell, you overgrown glacier."

Then he pushed forward.

Silver light erupted from his palms, not blinding, not explosive, but absolute. It expanded outward in a perfect wave, washing over the battlefield faster than thought.

The golem froze.

Not metaphorically.

Everything froze.

The giant ice sword above its head halted mid-formation, its edges unfinished, particles of ice suspended in place. The storm of mana around it stopped flowing. Dualflow energy locked in rigid patterns, frozen mid-circuit like lightning trapped in amber.

Light itself stalled.

Reflections on the golem's surface stopped shifting.

Shadows locked in place.

The wind died.

The battlefield became a still image.

Kent staggered.

He dropped to one knee, gasping, the color draining from his face as the silver light faded from his hands. Frost crept up his arms, crawling toward his chest, and I felt his mana collapse inward like a dying star.

He looked back at me over his shoulder.

"You've got, " he coughed, blood speckling the molten ground, "two seconds. At most."

I smiled.

Not a kind smile.

Not a relieved one.

A sharp, feral grin.

"Yeah," I said, adjusting my grip on the sword of fire and death. "That'll do."

I stepped forward.

The frozen world resisted me.

Every movement felt like pushing against solidified time, my muscles screaming as I forced myself through the immobilized air. The blade hummed violently in my hands, eager, furious, its heat clawing at the boundaries of Kent's Absolute Zero.

One step.

The ground shattered beneath my foot, the frozen earth unable to reconcile my presence with the stopped state around it.

Two steps.

Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the sword as heat and death pressed against frozen reality, threatening to tear it apart.

The golem loomed before me.

Perfectly still.

Perfectly helpless.

I raised the blade.

The pinkish-black fire pulsed, the temperature climbing even higher, reality screaming in protest as Death mana flooded every inch of the weapon.

I swung.

And the frozen world began to break—

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