Blackness. Cold, absolute darkness that seeped into his bones, extinguishing the last vestiges of the internal flame. This was it, then. The end. Not a final, fiery consumption, but a pathetic fizzle into frozen oblivion. He'd killed the ice-horror, spat defiance at the silent God-shard, but the Gauntlet always claimed its due. He felt consciousness shredding, thoughts unraveling into meaningless static...

  Then, warmth.

  Not the fierce, demanding heat of his own Ignis, nor the oppressive bake of the tunnel walls. This was a gentle, external warmth, focused and persistent, pressing against the icy numbness that had claimed his chest. Simultaneously, something else – a faint, clean scent like crushed herbs and distilled energy – touched his senses, cutting through the lingering stench of burned ichor and frost.

  With an immense effort that felt like pushing continents apart, Kael forced his eyelids open.

  His vision swam, distorted worse than before by weakness and the lingering effects of the cold. Crimson light wavered, blurred. But directly above him, haloed by this soft, golden radiance that contrasted sharply with the tunnel's ambient glow, was a face.

  A girl's face. Young, maybe sixteen or seventeen like him, framed by hair the colour of moonlight confined in a practical braid. Her features were sharp, patrician, holding an air of innate confidence that felt utterly alien in this hellhole. What locked Kael's attention, however, were her eyes. They were a startling, luminous silver, currently narrowed as they assessed him with unnerving intensity. She knelt beside him, one hand hovering inches above the ragged wound on his chest, the source of the gentle warmth. In her other hand, she held a small, intricately carved wooden bottle, uncorked, emanating the clean scent he'd registered.

  His first instinct wasn't gratitude, but a surge of pure, undiluted panic. Someone else. Someone who had found him helpless, dying. Someone who had seen the aftermath of the fight, seen the shattered ice-figure, the drained scorpion husks. What had she witnessed? How long had she been watching?

  He tried to scramble back, a surge of adrenaline momentarily overriding the profound weakness, but his limbs barely responded, protesting with flares of icy agony. He managed only a pathetic shuffle against the cooling scorpion carapace he still slumped against.

  The girl raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her expression shifting from detached assessment to mild, condescending surprise. "Easy," she said, her voice cool and clear. "Thrashing about will only reopen your wounds. Assuming that bizarre frostbite hasn't already killed you."

  She withdrew her warming hand, the gentle heat vanishing, leaving the deep chill in his chest feeling starker. The silver eyes swept over him again, lingering on the greyish-blue patches of frostbite still mottling his skin, the torn rags barely covering him, the general state of utter ruin. "Though frankly," she added, tilting her head slightly, "I'm surprised anything at all is left of you. That... thing... shredded those scorpions like dried leaves."

  Kael's mind raced, trying to process, trying to calculate through the fog of pain and weakness. She knew about the ice creature. Had she finished it off? Or just found the aftermath? How much did she understand about his power? The unnatural healing? The fire? Did she suspect the Rebirth Art? The questions hammered at him, demanding answers he couldn't voice.

  "Who...?" he managed, his voice a dry, grating rasp. He hadn't tried speaking since cauterizing his lungs, and the sound was barely human, lacking the resonance of expelled air. It seemed to cost him precious energy just to form the word.

  The girl blinked, a flicker of something – perhaps distaste, perhaps mere curiosity – crossing her features at the sound. "Does it matter?" she countered smoothly, corking the wooden bottle with a decisive click and tucking it back into a pouch on her belt. Her robes, though smudged with ash and bearing a few minor tears, were clearly of superior quality, embroidered with the symbol of a coiled serpent wreathed in flame – the insignia of the Serpent's Coil Sect, a rival, and generally more powerful, sect than the Verdant Lotus. ""I am Lianna Corvyn. I tracked the commotion. The energy released when that ice-thing died was… potent. I found you like this." She gestured vaguely at the carnage and Kael's battered form. "Fortunate the anomaly destroyed itself before you bled out or froze solid."

  Her explanation felt too neat, too dismissive. He had to assume she suspected something was wrong, different, about him, even if she didn't know what.

  "Why... help?" he rasped, forcing the words out, suspicion warring with a reluctant sliver of gratitude. The warmth from her hand had felt like it pushed back the worst of the encroaching cold, maybe enough for his own flame to avoid extinguishing completely.

  Lianna gave a small, elegant shrug, as if discussing trivialities. "My sect teaches efficiency. A potential asset, even a damaged one, is better than mere debris. Besides," she added, a glint of something sharp in her silver eyes, "navigating the deeper levels alone is inefficient. Two sets of eyes, even one pair as clearly deficient as yours, are better than one. "And frankly," she added, her sharp silver eyes lingering on the unnaturally knitting skin around the ice shard wound on his shoulder, "your... resilience... is unusual for someone caught in the crossfire. Perhaps the Gauntlet itself has altered you. Or perhaps you simply possess a stubborn peasant's tenacity."

  She wasn't helping out of kindness. She was assessing his potential utility, perhaps intrigued by his survival. It fit the arrogant cultivator mould perfectly. And the 'unusual resilience'... had she noticed how fast his wounds were trying to knit themselves back together despite the cold?

  He needed to control the narrative. Deflect. Obscure. He coughed, a dry, rattling sound, mimicking weakness – though little mimicry was needed. "Luck... creature was... weakened... from the scorpions..." he forced out, deliberately pitching his voice lower, raspier.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Lianna watched him, her expression unreadable. "Perhaps," she conceded, though her tone suggested she didn't entirely believe him. "Regardless. You survived. Barely." She stood up fluidly, dusting off her robes. "I applied a basic Frostbane poultice – explains the scent. And channeled a minor warming pulse. Crude, but it seems to have stabilized you somewhat. Don't expect more."

  She looked down at him, her silver eyes seeming to pierce right through his rags, his scars, his carefully constructed mask of pathetic weakness. "Get yourself functional. I intend to investigate the source of these ice anomalies. Having someone expendable nearby could prove useful as a distraction, if nothing else. Consider this a temporary alliance of convenience. Don't slow me down."

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned her back on him, moving towards the shattered remains of the ice-figure, presumably to search for spoils or clues, leaving Kael alone with his churning thoughts, his agonizing body, the faint scent of herbs, and a chilling mix of reluctant gratitude and profound suspicion towards the girl with the silver eyes.

  Kael watched her turn away, her back radiating dismissive confidence. He remained slumped against the scorpion corpse, the world tilting precariously around him. Expendable. Distraction. The words stung, predictable as they were coming from a core disciple of a rival sect, but they also offered a grim sort of cover. She didn't see him as a threat, merely a tool, perhaps slightly unusual but ultimately disposable. That underestimation could be his shield, at least for now.

  He gritted his teeth against the wave of dizziness and focused inward, assessing the damage the Frostbane poultice and warming pulse had counteracted. The creeping numbness had receded slightly from the edges. The icy agony was still intense, particularly where the shards remained embedded, but the desperate, life-extinguishing leeching sensation had lessened. His flame, though still pitifully weak, wasn't actively guttering out anymore. It had stabilized at a near-zero baseline, thanks to her intervention. He owed her his life, a debt that tasted like ash and bile in his mouth.

  But her help was clearly transactional. She wanted something – information about the ice creature, an advantage in navigating deeper, a meat shield. Fine. He could play that part. For now.

  With excruciating slowness, Kael began the torturous process of making himself "functional." First, the embedded ice shards. Ignoring the waves of nauseating pain and the risk of tearing fragile, half-frozen tissue, he gripped the shard protruding from his shoulder with numb fingers and pulled. It came free with a sickening crunch and a fresh burst of agony as a deep cold flared through the disturbed wound. Blackish, viscous fluid followed it, freezing almost instantly on contact with the air. The shard was tossed aside and it landed on the stone floor with a glassy tink. Kael immediately focused the faint warmth of his inner flame on the new wound, trying to stimulate the sluggish healing, fighting back the encroaching cold.

  He repeated the process for the shard in his side, then the one in his leg, each removal an exercise in controlled torture that left him gasping pulses of hot energy, sweat turning to frost on his brow. The wounds wept sluggishly, the Rebirth Art working at a fraction of its usual violent speed, hampered by the lingering systemic cold.

  His gaze fell upon the debris littering the floor. Shattered scorpion parts, fragments of black ice, scorched rock. Practicality warred with exhaustion. Moving without support on his badly injured leg would be nearly impossible, drastically slowing him down and likely infuriating Lianna further. His eyes settled on a large, relatively flat piece of the Cinder Scorpion's carapace near where he'd collapsed after the fight – thick, durable, unnervingly resilient. It was part of a leg segment, jagged on one end but smoother on the other.

  Grunting with effort, Kael dragged himself over to it. Ignoring the residual heat still radiating faintly from the chitinous material, he hefted it. It was heavier than it looked, but sturdy. Using a smaller, sharper shard of rock, he chipped away awkwardly at the jagged end, trying to fashion a crude handhold, his numb fingers fumbling. It wasn't elegant, wasn't efficient, but after a few moments of painful work, he had something that might pass for a makeshift crutch – a sturdy length of carapace he could wedge under his arm.

  He tested it, leaning his weight cautiously. The carapace held. It wasn't comfortable, scraping against his torn rags and bruised ribs, but it would allow him a modicum of mobility.

  While Kael was thus occupied, Lianna moved with practiced efficiency around the chamber. She examined the shattered ice-figure, nudging fragments with a booted foot, her silver eyes narrowed in concentration. Kael watched her covertly, noting her careful movements, the way she avoided direct contact with the frost-covered remains. She clearly recognized the danger. She poked at the exposed innards of the scorpion Kael had used as a ram, then studied the interaction point where the creature had exploded, seemingly cataloging the effects of the thermal shock. Occasionally, she retrieved small, dark crystals scattered from the ice-figure's destruction, inspecting them closely before tucking them into a separate pouch at her belt. Spoils of war, or perhaps dangerous samples?

  Finally, she straightened up, seemingly satisfied with her initial reconnaissance. She glanced back at Kael, who had just managed to remove the last shard and was leaning back against the wall, trying to subtly coax his essence into working faster on the sluggish healing.

  "Still alive then," she observed, her tone flat. "Marginally better. The poultice seems effective against residual freezing." She paused, her gaze sharp. "Though your recovery rate, even now, is... noteworthy."

  Kael kept his expression blank, focusing on regulating his Ignis intake, mimicking exhaustion and pain, which required little effort. "Gauntlet… changes things," he rasped, sticking to the vague explanation.

  Lianna didn't press, perhaps accepting the vague answer for now, or perhaps filing the observation away for later. "The residue these things leave behind," she gestured towards the dark crystals she'd collected, "is unlike anything recorded in the standard bestiaries. Pure, stable cryo-essence, almost inert until provoked by intense heat. Highly unnatural for the God-Wound."

  She started walking towards the passage leading further down, away from the ice wall. "The tracks – or rather, the frost trails – lead deeper. That's where we're going." She didn't wait to see if he followed, simply stating her intention as fact.

  Kael grit his teeth. He needed to recover. His flame was starving, barely maintaining equilibrium against the lingering cold damage. Moving now, especially deeper into potentially hostile territory, felt incredibly dangerous. But being left behind, alone and crippled in this state, was arguably worse. He needed her, for the moment, as much as she might find him a useful distraction. The transactional nature of their alliance cut both ways.

  Pushing himself painfully away from the wall, using a chunk of scorpion carapace as a makeshift crutch, Kael began to follow, his limp pronounced, every step sending jolts of pain through his half-frozen wounds. His inner flame pulsed weakly, a tiny ember fighting against a pervasive chill, demanding fuel he didn't have. He trailed behind Lianna Corvyn, like a wounded wolf tentatively following a creature it didn't trust, drawn onward by the barest necessity of survival and the faint hope of finding something – energy, safety, an opportunity – in the crimson darkness ahead.