We pressed against the ice as if it were an accusation—thick, gleaming walls that sealed us into frozen columns. Dorsey had wrapped Wade in a coffin of her element; every gap filled, every escape choked. We could move our shoulders and our chins, nothing more. Safe from sight, not from fate. Felipe needed little more than a minute to find ways that did not require thawing.

  Then the ice betrayed itself. A web of fissures spidered outward; splinters winked like teeth. Berard slammed through, arms flailing, and hit the mud with a grunt. He scrambled up and flung a boulder so huge it swallowed the light on its way toward Felipe.

  Felipe answered in fire. The rock became a furnace at his touch; smoke curled, thick and metallic, filling my throat. I stumbled back to keep the smoke from blacking my lungs and watched him through the haze as hard spikes rained down around him. The Freshan troops surged like a single, furious organism—driven by the sight of their comrades crushed.

  Water exploded from the crater and Wade took form in its wake. Liquids have their tricks: where stone blocks, mud sometimes yields. He moved like a current given body.

  Flames whipped from Felipe in a blind, brutal arc. They found houses. They found people. Screams braided through the air as thatched roofs became skeletons. I felt something inside me fracture—anger, yes, and a cold, aching helplessness that sat behind my teeth.

  I ran. I don't know why, because people needed guidance or because I needed to do something that wasn't just standing and watching. "Run!" I shouted. "Run as far as you can, and dare to never go back to this kingdom!"

  They hesitated, gawking, and then stepped onto a burning bush as if curiosity could be a ladder. The sight made a hollow in my chest; the houses I had known, the crops I had tracked with childish pride—they all burned. There was nowhere to put the guilt.

  A voice, close and sardonic: "There you are, Polarman. Skymint was it?" Felipe breathed through my ear, his presence a hot weight.

  My boots left the ground.

  "They're frail little humans, you saw them," he said, and the iron-hot gloves that held my legs were steady as a vice. "They would have stayed alive and well, if it weren't for the prideful fruit masters to attack in my territory instead of talking peacefully with me."

  "They were ill in your claws," I managed, fighting down the panic that rose like bile. "Where are you bringing me?"

  "Tell me where Arie is," he demanded. "Before I smash your head on the Grizzly King's rock attack."

  "You can't—you'll never find her if you do, and she'll kill you if you do," I said, rasping, carried like a spear.

  I looked up at his face, at the rows of white teeth that glittered like implements. The fireplant seed burned in my pocket with a cold, absurd urgency: how could I shove it into his mouth when his gauntlets could cleave my hand?

  His chuckle was a shadow. “No… I think if I do kill you, she’ll finally come out. Whatever's inside her—that sleeping thing—I’ll draw it out.”

  The words fell small, but reverent. “That’s what I want. The monster she hides. The one even she doesn’t know exists.”

  And then—he dropped me.

  The world split open beneath me, gravity claiming me like a vengeful god. I didn’t scream. I simply closed my eyes and waited for the end.

  But something caught me—vines, winding around my torso like desperate arms. They yanked me sideways, away from the deadly collision of Berard’s rock and Felipe’s flames. The explosion roared behind me, scorching the air.

  “Are you stupid? We thought we lost you.” Luceran’s voice snapped like a whip. He folded his arms, his vines easing me down into the mud with reluctant care.

  My shoulders trembled. The shock left me hollow. Breath shallow. Words—gone. I failed. The realization stung more than the burns.

  “Fight harder!” King Callum’s voice thundered through the chaos, regal fury breaking against the battlefield like crashing waves.

  This was bad. The soldiers were dying.

  Wade lunged forward, a tidal wave erupting from his arms. The water hissed against the inferno as Felipe laughed—laughed—and the steam rose like ghosts choking the field.

  Then Felipe was upon him. His flaming gloves struck Wade’s chest with a sound that cracked through bone and sky. Fire spilled from the wound, flesh charred, spine seared, until Wade was nothing but burning ruin collapsing into the mud.

  One fruit master down.

  I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat. The sight was grotesque, real in a way that dreams could never be. His eyes—pleading. His mouth—frozen mid-breath. If only I had planted the fireseed sooner...

  “I am the Wolf King!” Felipe’s roar split through the carnage. “No human defies me. And I will burn the world to prove it.”

  Luceran’s quiet sob slipped through the smoke. His vines still bound me, trembling with his grief, before he suddenly flung me forward, toward King Callum and Berard. I hit the ground behind the few Freshan soldiers still standing, dazed. Why—why would he throw me there?

  The two kings stood before me, titans carved in opposing flame and stone. Neither noticed me.

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  “Callum, we should flee,” Berard muttered, his voice low but urgent. “Our men are dying. We can’t win this.”

  “Your Grizzlymen can endure,” Callum replied, eyes locked on Felipe. “We’ll use them as cover. We end this here, now. I swore to my sister I’d kill him, and even in death, I will not break that vow.”

  Berard hesitated. “You’ve lost reason. We couldn’t defeat him before, why now? And with an Aquamarinian noble dead, we’ll face their wrath as well.”

  I rose, the vines sliding from me like shed skin. “How can I help?” I asked, my voice barely carrying.

  No answer.

  They didn’t even turn.

  I waved my hands, desperate. Still nothing. Their eyes burned past me, focused on Felipe.

  A chill slid through me. Am I... dead?

  But Luceran’s vines had held me. That couldn’t be.

  I barely moved before Berard launched another barrage of stone toward the Wolf King. I rolled aside just as a firebolt struck where I’d been standing.

  The air screamed with heat.

  I ran back toward Luceran, heart hammering, half-expecting to find my corpse in the mud. But there was only dirt—dark, wet, and real.

  He looked at me, confusion etched across his face.

  This had to be an invisibility spell. And there was no doubt who it came from.

  Perhaps it was best I leaned into it, let myself remain unseen. No ice, no flash of magic. Her spell cost her sleep, and I couldn’t afford to waste that sacrifice.

  The soldiers pressed on beside King Callum, their skin mending as quickly as it split. I reached into my pocket; the fireplant seed was still there. Likely invisible too. I clenched it in my fist and sprinted toward Felipe.

  Invisible. Resistant to his flames. Invincible, almost. Please make him talk, provoke him, wound him, anything.

  I glanced toward the two kings. They were locked in their own rhythm of battle, too focused to distract Felipe.

  King Callum’s plants didn’t heal this time. Poison, then. He specialized in it. But poison meant little to a creature wrapped in fire.

  Berard’s rocks, on the other hand, found their mark. Each strike echoed like the heartbeat of the earth itself. I feared him more than the Wolf King—his attacks were unpredictable, unfeeling, and my invisibility wouldn’t shield me from the force of stone. One mistake and I’d be a corpse no one could find.

  I closed in on Felipe until I could feel the smoke of his breath rolling against my skin.

  He paused, then laughed, loud and cruel, like thunder mocking the storm.

  I hurled the seed toward his open mouth. His jaws clamped shut a heartbeat later. He didn’t even notice. Neither did I fully understand what would follow.

  I slipped aside, fleeing the clash of soldiers and flame. When I turned back, Felipe was choking—hands at his throat, a wet, gurgling sound rising from him. A plant burst from his mouth, its leaves glinting in the sunlight. The sight chilled me to the bone. It felt absurd, almost comical, as if death itself had staged a farce.

  Luceran raised his hands, and the plant thickened, responding to his will. He must have sensed it through his bond with the plant.

  Felipe couldn’t shift into flame again, not yet. Instead, he exhaled a torrent of fire. But the plant refused to burn, the seed was resistant, its will stubborn as life itself. Turns out, a fruit master’s weakness wasn’t power or magic. It was breath. Flesh. The human beneath the legend.

  Luceran’s gaze dropped to the mud, where my invisible footprints marred the surface. He smiled faintly. He knew. He summoned a bed of fireplant thorns, coiling them around Felipe’s legs, their movements serpentine. Berard raised a wall of rock around him, sealing him in. The Wolf King thrashed, a god caught in his own inferno, like a man buried alive beneath his own arrogance.

  “It’s over, Felipe. We have the advantage.” King Callum advanced, soldiers parting in his wake. “Where is my sister?”

  Felipe choked, biting down on the plant’s stem. When it refused to burn, he tore it free, roots slick and trembling as they left his throat. He threw it aside, almost striking me, though I stood just out of sight.

  “Perhaps,” he rasped, “you should ask the doves over there. Weren’t they yours, Mr. Windcore? You could have found her through them… but you were too busy hiding behind your warlock side.”

  King Callum snorted. “You’re not making any sense, Felipe. Stop making things up just so you can get away.”

  “What I said weren’t lies. I’ve heard them whispered in other kingdoms,” Felipe replied, grin slicing through the air like a blade. “If you kill me now, it’ll only confirm the rumors—that you secretly harbor an inner magic.”

  The Plant King glanced toward Berard, who merely shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, Callum.”

  “This is why I should’ve forged metal claws for my armor.” Felipe sank his fangs into the thorns constricting him, ripping them apart with a guttural snarl.

  Berard’s eyes widened. “Oh no… we should leave.”

  And then I felt it too—the tremor. The pounding from the north.

  The mud quaked as Wolfmen soldiers emerged, their armor jagged and glinting with metal spikes, forty strong at least. They carried axes as tall as their shoulders, the double edges gleaming like the promise of blood.

  Felipe’s grin widened. “Idiots! Princess Dorsey has called my reinforcements.” With a surge of flame, he shattered the thorned walls encasing him.

  Where’s Dorsey? My pulse crashed against my ribs. If his reinforcements had arrived, it meant only one thing—they’d already encountered the carriages. I needed to go. Now.

  “Capture them!” Felipe barked, pointing at the two kings.

  The soldiers charged. And so did I, but in the opposite direction. I couldn’t let them see me, couldn’t let them catch me. I sprinted toward the ocean, freezing the surface beneath my feet into slick ice floors. The water hissed and hardened, cold rippling through my veins. Getting wet would dim the invisibility; I had to stay dry, unseen.

  “Retreat!” King Callum’s voice boomed through the chaos.

  I didn’t look back. I just kept running, following the jagged edge of the mud and carving my path north. The soldiers thundered beside me on land, heading toward the Port of Glacia.

  Axes flew, black arcs against the dying sun. Berard raised a wall of stone to shield the Freshans, but the Wolfmen tore through it like beasts through bark. They were faster, taller, relentless. There were too few Grizzlymen left to hold the line.

  Felipe vanished in the haze of battle.

  I kept running. It felt endless, like trying to outrun time itself. The sun dipped lower, bleeding into the horizon. We passed through the charred remains of Snowdoom Forest, the air thick with ash and memory. The others clashed on the ice now, their roars echoing through the dusk.

  I stepped fully onto the frozen sheet, the sound of my feet swallowed by the wind. Here, my invisibility was absolute—no tracks, no shadow, no trace. I didn’t know where the Port of Glacia truly was, but if I kept north, the border would guide me.

  The wind brushed through my fur, cool and almost comforting. It felt like home, like the kind of cold I was made for. But it wasn’t home. My home was the Polarmen Islands, far from this chaos. And now, I was just surviving.

  At last, lights glimmered ahead. Ships.

  I pushed harder, legs burning, until I reached them. A wooden sign swayed near the docks, the painted letters faint but readable: Finnian Kingdom. A large ship towered behind it.

  I slipped past the line and climbed the stairway unnoticed. Inside, the room was warm, almost too warm. A table spread with seafood and fine dishes sat in the center, the scent of salt and butter filling the air. My hand hovered over a tuna sandwich when the door opened.

  A group of Polarmen entered, dressed in fine suits, laughter dripping from their lips. Glacian Polarmen. Privileged travelers who could roam wherever they pleased.

  And there I was an invisible ghost among them. Watching. Envious. Wondering if I’d made a mistake by not boarding a ship back to the Fresha Kingdom when I had the chance.

  Where did Ellie go?