The creature glided. No footfalls, no scrabble of claws, just an utterly silent, preternaturally smooth advance across the carnage-strewn floor, leaving trails of impossible frost in its wake. Its crystalline eyes, multiple cold points of light, remained fixed on Kael, radiating an intensity that bypassed vision and heat sense alike, feeling like needles of ice piercing straight into his core. The jagged ice-claws on its forelimbs dripped freezing mist that coiled sluggishly in the ambient heat before dissipating.Faster than it looks. Far faster.

  Kael's calculated assessment screamed retreat. Every instinct honed by the Gauntlet’s brutal lessons urged him to turn and flee. He wasn't equipped for this – an enemy wielding unnatural cold, clearly powerful enough to dismantle multiple Cinder Scorpions. His internal flame, though stable, was nowhere near strong enough to brute-force a victory against such an unknown.

  He didn't hesitate. Pivoting on his good leg, ignoring the searing protest from the barely healed puncture wound on his thigh, Kael turned to sprint back the way he came, hoping to put distance and perhaps a tunnel bend between himself and the glacial horror. He pushed off, legs pumping, forcing his battered body into motion.

  He barely made it five steps.

  A wave of numbing cold washed over him from behind, far faster than any physical pursuit. It wasn't a blast like the Cinder Valve's heat; it was a targeted emanation, a focused wave of utter cold that struck the tunnel floor directly in front of him. The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. The rough, heat-pitted stone shattered soundlessly, not exploding, but crystallizing under the intense chill and then cracking into a thousand sharp fragments. Simultaneously, a barricade of jagged black ice erupted from the floor, stretching from wall to wall, sealing the tunnel, gleaming menacingly in the ambient crimson light. The frost radiating from it leeched the warmth from the air, making Kael's heat-attuned senses recoil violently.

  He skidded to a halt barely a foot from the glistening, impossibly cold barrier, the sudden chill raising gooseflesh even on his unnaturally resilient skin. Trapped. The creature hadn’t even needed to chase him down; it had simply cut off his escape with contemptuous ease.

  He spun around, heart hammering against his ribs. The ice-figure had stopped its glide about ten feet away, its posture unchanged, still coiled, radiating that intense, predatory cold. It seemed to be observing him, its crystalline eyes clicking faintly as they tracked his movement.

  There was no escape. The path back was sealed by a wall of energy-leeching ice. The path forward led only to this glacial monstrosity that had clearly designated him as prey. Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up from his gut, but the icy clarity gifted by his altered breathing slammed down on it. Panic was a luxury afforded to those with options. He had none.

  Fight or die. The situation was simple, stark, and unavoidable.

  Kael shifted his stance, bringing his less injured arm forward slightly, willing his flame to circulate, driving back the insidious chill creeping into his limbs from the ice wall behind him. He focused his heat sense entirely on the creature, trying to discern any weakness, any flicker in its icy aura. It felt… solid. Complete. A being seemingly antithetical to the very nature of the God-Wound, yet perfectly adapted to hunt within it.

  The ice-figure tilted its head, a subtle, insect-like movement. Then, without warning, it thrust one of its ice-clawed limbs forward. It didn’t lunge. Instead, a volley of razor-sharp shards of black ice, glistening with trapped cold, erupted from its extended claw and shot towards Kael like supernatural shrapnel.

  Instinct screamed at Kael to use his fire, to blast the incoming shards with heat. But the memory of how easily the creature’s cold had shattered the superheated rock floor gave him pause. What if his fire merely fueled the ice, or was simply snuffed out? There was no time for complex calculations. He opted for raw resilience.

  He crossed his arms before his face and chest, focusing the Rebirth Art's power, willing his quasi-metallic skin to harden further. The volley of black ice shards arrived a heartbeat later, striking him with brutal, percussive force.

  It wasn't like being hit by rock or even the scorpion's stinger. Each shard carried an intense, leeching cold that bit deeper than the physical impact. Several shattered against his hardened forearms, leaving spiderwebs of frost that instantly sucked the warmth from the surface, making the newly-formed scars ache with a frigid agony. Three shards, sharper or faster than the rest, punched through his defense. One embedded itself deep in his already injured shoulder, sending waves of numbness down his arm, fighting against the internal fire. Another pierced his side, narrowly missing anything vital but spreading a frosty bloom beneath his skin that felt like death itself encroaching. The third struck his leg, near the scorpion sting, and the sudden, biting freeze combined with the lingering venomous heat created a horrific internal conflict that made him cry out, staggering back.

  The cold was wrong. It didn't just inflict pain; it actively fought both his essence and vitality. Where the shards embedded, the Rebirth Art's normally violent, rapid healing slowed to a crawl, hampered by the encroaching freeze. Frost spread like a disease from the wound sites, tightening his skin, stiffening his muscles, making movement sluggish and agonizing.

  The ice-figure didn't pause to admire its handiwork. While Kael was still reeling, processing the alien sensation of freezing damage, it glided forward again, closing the distance with terrifying speed. Its ice-claws lashed out, not in wild slashes, but precise, economical strikes aimed at his already wounded limbs, at his head, at his chest.

  Kael lurched back, desperately trying to parry with his good arm, his movements made sluggish by the freezing wounds. He deflected one claw with a jarring impact that numbed his hand, but another swept under his guard, carving a deep, frosty gash across his ribs. The cold seared deeper than any flame burn, locking up the muscles beneath. He tried to retaliate, launching a clumsy pulse of heat from his palm, but the creature simply flowed around it, the focused chill emanating from its body seeming to warp and dissipate the fiery energy before it could connect. His fire felt pitifully weak against this opponent.

  He was being driven back towards the ice wall that blocked his escape. The creature herded him relentlessly, its crystalline eyes emotionless, its attacks fluid and precise. Kael deflected another blow, stumbling over a piece of rubble – a shattered scorpion leg. He landed hard on his back, the impact jarring his already fractured state, sending shards of agony through him.

  The ice-figure loomed over him, its shadow unnaturally dark as it absorbed the ambient crimson light. It raised both clawed forelimbs for a final, decisive strike. Kael stared up, trapped, battered, freezing from the inside out. Brute force had failed. Resilience was being overcome. His fire was ineffective.

  Think! An icy – pun not intended! – clarity drilled into his mind, overriding the rising panic. Don’t fight its strength. Use the environment. Use the contrast.

  His eyes darted around the chamber, past the impassive glacial horror above him. The scattered corpses. The patches of intense residual heat on the walls where scorpion ichor had burned. The shimmering condensation where the creature’s frost met the tunnel’s innate heat. Fire and Ice. Predator and prey.

  An idea sparked, desperate and incredibly risky, born from the chaotic scene of the battle that had occurred before he arrived. He looked at the scorpion corpse nearest to him – cracked open, half-eaten, but still radiating a significant pocket of deep, internal heat palpable even to his senses. Then he looked at the ice-figure poised above him.

  As the ice-claws began their descent, Kael didn’t try to block or launch a futile blast of fire at the creature. Instead, with a surge of desperate will, he pulled. Not at the creature’s cold aura, but at the lingering, concentrated heat signature within the dead Cinder Scorpion lying mere feet away.

  It wasn’t like absorbing from the crystals or the living scorpion. This was drawing on residual, undirected heat, but there was a lot of it concentrated in one place. He ripped the energy towards himself, not bothering to filter or control it, simply yanking the thermal potential across the space between them.

  Simultaneously, using the last vestiges of his strength, he kicked and rolled sideways, scrabbling away from the point of impact as the ice-claws slammed down where his chest had been, shattering the stone floor and spraying ice fragments.

  The heat he pulled from the scorpion corpse didn't enter him directly. He wasn't trying to refuel. He redirected it, shaping the raw thermal energy with instinct and desperation into a focused wave, aiming it straight at the base of the ice-figure as it recovered from its missed strike.

  The wave of raw, scavenged heat struck the ice-figure's base with the audible HISS of water hitting a forge. It wasn't fire, not exactly, but a focused blast of pure thermal energy, stolen from the scorpion's core. Where it impacted the creature's unnaturally smooth, gliding underside and lower limbs, the black ice didn't just melt, it sublimated violently. Plumes of dense white vapour exploded outwards, thick and choking, momentarily obscuring the creature’s lower half. A high-pitched sound, like stressed crystal shattering under immense pressure, tore through the chamber, echoing painfully off the walls.

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  For the first time since appearing, the ice-figure reacted with something other than cold indifference. It jerked back, its fluid movement disrupted, stumbling slightly as the intense heat attacked the point where its icy form met the superheated floor. The focused chill radiating from it flickered erratically, its hostile pressure momentarily losing focus. Frost spreading from its base instantly evaporated, revealing the scorched stone beneath.

  Kael scrambled further away, pushing himself up on shaking arms, ignoring the flare of agony from his punctured shoulder and side. Did it work? Had he actually hurt it? The steam cloud was already thinning, revealing the damage. The ice at the creature’s base was visibly cracked and fissured, no longer seamlessly smooth. Small rivulets of dark, oily liquid – which were most definitely not water – dripped from the thermal stress points, freezing again almost instantly as they hit the floor, forming tiny, brittle stalagmites. It wasn't crippled, not by a long shot, but it was damaged, its connection to the ground seemingly compromised. More importantly, it was furious.

  The multiple crystalline lenses that served as its eyes fixed on Kael with a new, burning intensity – a cold fire that promised utter annihilation. The ambient temperature in the chamber plummeted further, the very air growing painfully sharp and brittle against Kael’s skin. The frost spreading from the intact sections of its body pulsed outwards aggressively, racing across the floor towards him.

  It raised its forelimbs again, but instead of launching shards or striking directly, it slammed them down onto the stone floor in front of it. Waves of intense cold pulsed into the ground, radiating outwards. The floor beneath Kael’s feet bucked and cracked, jagged spikes of black ice erupting upwards, attempting to impale him from below.

  You are absolutely right. Telekinesis is too much for Tier 1. Let's rewind from the ice-spike attack and rebuild the desperation and the physical solution.

  He threw himself backward, rolling frantically as ice spikes burst through the stone where he'd been kneeling, narrowly avoiding being skewered. He landed near the scattered remains of another scorpion, the heat radiating from its cooling husk a faint, almost negligible comfort against the encroaching chill that was rapidly overwhelming his internal fire. He scrambled back further, breathing ragged bursts of hot energy, pain coming from multiple freezing wounds.

  The frost spreading from the embedded shards wasn't just numbing anymore; it felt like his very flesh was vitrifying, turning brittle. The Rebirth Art fought valiantly, pumping heat to the affected areas, trying to mend tissue, but it was like trying to thaw a glacier with a candle. The sheer, energy-leeching wrongness of the cold was actively suppressing the healing, turning the normally violent regeneration into a sluggish, agonizing crawl that drained his Ignis reserves at an alarming rate. His shoulder felt stiff and almost unresponsive, the muscles in his punctured leg threatened to lock up entirely, and the gash on his ribs sent jolts of icy agony with every desperate breath of fire.

  He tried to push himself up, and his injured leg buckled, sending him sprawling again. He could feel his strength failing, the potent energy from the Ignis crystal dwindling rapidly under the combined assault of the cold, the ongoing healing effort, and his own panicked exertions. His flame felt weak, sputtering, dangerously close to being extinguished by the encroaching frost.

  The ice-figure glided closer, its crystalline eyes impassive, seeming to register his fading heat signature with cold satisfaction. It paused, tilting its head, perhaps deciding on the most efficient way to finish him. Despair, cold and absolute, washed over Kael, threatening to drown the icy clarity his altered breathing usually provided. He was dying. Beaten by an enemy he couldn't harm, couldn't outrun, couldn't even properly comprehend. He was going to end up like the scorpions – shattered, frozen, possibly half-eaten. Another nameless failure consumed by the Gauntlet.

  ...So fades the Ember... Weak vessel... Poor investment...

  A faint, almost static-laced whisper brushed against his consciousness. The God-shard, its voice incredibly weak, devoid of guidance, merely offering a final, detached observation before fading back into utter silence. Even the parasite saw no path forward.

  No. The whisper, weak as it was, paradoxically ignited a final, defiant spark in Kael's core. Weak? Poor investment? He wouldn’t just fade. He wouldn’t give this icy thing the satisfaction. He wouldn’t give the God-shard the last word. If he was going to die, he’d die clawing, fighting, taking something with him, or at least die trying to make this glacial horror feel something other than cold contempt.

  His gaze, blurred by pain and proximity to the ice creature’s aura, swept the chamber one last time. Heat and cold. Fire and ice. The contrast. His eyes locked onto the largest scorpion corpse nearby – the butchered one, its ripped-open carapace exposing still-glowing innards radiating intense heat. And the ice-figure... in its slow, confident advance, it had positioned itself almost directly between Kael and that hulking, heat-radiating corpse.

  An idea exploded in his mind, utterly insane, born of absolute desperation and spite. Forget finesse. Forget trying to redirect energy he barely possessed. Brute force. Physical force.

  He needed to move that carcass. Not with will, but with muscle. Muscle he barely had, crippled by cold and exhaustion. But he had the Rebirth Art. He had pain. He had fuel, even if it burned him out.

  With a silent scream of exertion that resonated only within his own skull, Kael did something unprecedented. He didn’t just circulate his remaining Ignis; he forced it, violently, out of his core, away from healing the frostbite, away from sustaining his resilience, and rammed it directly into the protesting muscles of his back, shoulders, and legs.

  It felt like being simultaneously electrocuted and set on fire from the inside. Muscles screamed as they were unnaturally supercharged, threatening to tear under the strain. The drain on his inner flame was catastrophic – it visibly dimmed in his internal perception, sputtering on the verge of oblivion. The pain was beyond description, eclipsing even the freezing agony, but raw, impossible strength flooded his limbs for a fleeting moment.

  Ignoring the ice-figure beginning to raise its claws for the kill, Kael surged forward in a low, desperate lunge, slamming his shoulder and back into the side of the massive Cinder Scorpion corpse. His bones groaned, threatening to shatter under the combination of the impact and the internal power surge.

  The carcass was immense, fused partially to the rock by cooled ichor, easily weighing several hundred pounds. For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened. Kael strained, pouring the last dregs of his temporary strength into the shove, feeling muscles shredding, his vision blacking out at the edges.

  Then, with a hideous grating, tearing sound, the scorpion carcass moved. It broke free from the floor, scraping heavily across the stone, propelled by Kael's agony-fueled, strength-infused shove… directly towards the ice-figure barely two feet away.

  The ice-creature reacted instantly, sensing the massive shift in heat and mass, its head snapping towards the oncoming carcass. Its claws, meant for Kael, redirected instinctively towards the immediate threat.

  But it was too late. The superheated bulk of the dead scorpion slammed into the ice-figure with the force of a battering ram.

  The impact was not a clean crack, but a sickening sound – a horrific grinding and splintering as superheated Cinderwood and obsidian met unnaturally solidified frost. The ice-figure, despite its unnatural resilience, was staggered, knocked back half a step by the sheer, unexpected physical force combined with the thermal shock. Black ice spiderwebbed violently across its torso where the hottest parts of the carcass connected. Its focused cold aura flickered wildly, destabilized by the sudden, massive influx of contradictory energy.

  It tried to bring its ice-claws up, perhaps to shatter the offending corpse or impale Kael through it, but its movements were sluggish, hampered by the thermal stress. Simultaneously, Kael, his muscles screaming from the backlash of the forced Ignis surge, felt the last of his temporary strength abandon him. He collapsed against the still-hot carapace of the scorpion he'd just moved, his vision swimming, every nerve ending alight with protesting agony. The rebound from shoving the heavy corpse combined with the near-total depletion of his internal flame left him weaker than he'd ever been, even before gaining the Art.

  He could feel the frost spreading rapidly from his wounds now, unchecked by the guttering flame within. His limbs felt heavy, numb, unresponsive. Darkness crowded the edges of his vision, threatening to swallow him whole. Is this it? Did it even work?

  Then he saw it. Where the Cinder Scorpion's exposed, still-glowing innards made direct contact with the ice-figure's damaged torso, a catastrophic reaction was occurring. The intense heat wasn't just melting the black ice; it was causing a violent, localized sublimation, creating immense internal pressure within the creature's structure. Steam and darker, oily vapors hissed violently from the widening cracks. The high-pitched whine of stressed crystal intensified, reaching an unbearable crescendo.

  The ice-figure spasmed, its limbs flailing erratically. It seemed to be trying to push the corpse away, or perhaps tear itself free, but its movements were jerky, uncoordinated. Its cold aura pulsed weakly, almost extinguished by the chaotic energy release. Its crystalline eyes flickered rapidly, losing focus.

  With a final, deafening CRACK-HISS, like a frozen volcano erupting, the ice-figure's torso exploded outwards. Shards of black ice, some trailing oily black smoke, flew in all directions. Several pelted Kael and the scorpion carapace, stinging but lacking the penetrating cold of before. The creature’s upper body toppled backward, hitting the floor with a heavy thud, its internal light extinguished instantly. Its lower half remained fused to the scorpion corpse for a moment, rapidly cracking and disintegrating under the relentless heat, dissolving into clouds of dissipating black vapour and leaving behind only a faint, chilling residue and scattered dark crystals on the scorched stone.

  Silence descended once more, broken only by the hiss of the scorpion's heat interacting with the last remnants of unnatural cold, and Kael’s own barely perceptible cycling of faint, flickering Ignis.

  He had done it. Against all odds, fueled by sheer spite and a suicidal surge of power, he had killed the glacial horror.

  But the victory, like everything else is this accursed Gauntlet, was not without cost. He lay slumped against the cooling scorpion, unable to move. The frostbite from the embedded shards had spread deep, turning patches of his skin a horrifying greyish-blue. His internal flame was barely a flicker, insufficient to fight the cold, insufficient to heal the damage, insufficient even to keep the demanding hunger of the Rebirth Art at bay for long. He could feel his consciousness fading, the darkness creeping in.

  He had won the fight, but he was dying. The cold was claiming him, his own power utterly spent. His eyelids felt impossibly heavy. With a final, ragged intake of fading energy, Kael succumbed to the encroaching blackness.