Chapter 1357: Cold, Fire, Then Nothing

Thalvyr spread his arms and greedily absorbed the power inside. The pink orb began melting at the edges, streams of energy flowing through his blood-red scales and into his body as it steadily shrank.

Everyone watched him.

The first thing Thalvyr felt was warmth.

Gentle power spread from his chest and flowed through his flesh into his limbs. His tense muscles gradually relaxed, and the restless blood energy inside him settled considerably.

Thalvyr was almost confused.

Why did this suddenly feel so good?

Before he could figure it out, the warmth vanished.

A blast of extreme cold erupted from the energy core.

The bone-deep chill flooded his limbs, racing through his veins, bones, and organs. His body offered no resistance. Every stream of cold found the most agonizing place to settle.

Thalvyr lost feeling in his fingers first.

Then his arms, chest, and legs.

The ice energy didn’t destroy his body outright. It held every inch of flesh at the brink of freezing. The cold kept building, but never dulled his ability to feel the pain.

Thalvyr gritted his teeth. The pleasure had vanished from his face.

And the cold wasn’t the end of it.

As the last stream sank into his bones, another power ignited in his abdomen.

The fire had arrived.

Heat exploded outward from inside his body. His frozen flesh heated at a terrifying rate as cold and flame collided. Tiny bursts sounded around his organs.

One moment, Thalvyr was trapped in unbearable cold. The next, every inch of him was burning.

The intense heat continued consuming his stored energy.

Flames ate into his muscles, damaging the body he had only just rebuilt. His dragon scales bulged from within, and scorching white vapor sprayed through the gaps between them.

Ice and fire took turns ravaging his body.

Yet when the flames finally began to fade, Thalvyr remained standing.

The river of blood surrounding him went to work. More blood flowed over his scales and into his wounds, replacing the flesh that had burned away. Damaged structures closed little by little, and his injured organs regrew within the blood energy.

Thalvyr had just begun to relax when the sensation inside him changed again.

This time, there was no pain.

Because everything disappeared.

His energy stopped flowing.

His organs gave no response.

His hands, his feet, his torso—the sensation of having a body at all—began to fade.

Thalvyr tried to sense his surroundings, but his consciousness found only endless darkness.

No ocean.

No sky.

No enemies surrounding him.

Not even the body he had just rebuilt.

He drifted alone in the center of that darkness, unable to tell which way was which or whether time was still passing.

Back in reality, Golden Frost Skyfall struck the blood-red barrier.

Boom!

The first cold front and the golden tridents slammed into the blood shield together.

Its surface caved inward, sending crimson ripples across it. The river of blood below poured in more power, trying to disperse the impact across the shield.

The force pressed down on the sea, throwing up a circular wall of water several yards high.

The blood shield barely survived the first wave.

But Golden Frost Skyfall wasn’t over.

More golden tridents pierced the freezing tide and rained down. A second wave of cold crashed over the first, pinning the frozen blood against the shield before it could even break away.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The impacts came one after another.

The blood shield shook more violently with every strike. At first, only a hairline crack appeared at its center. Then a second crack spread inward from the edge and intersected with the first.

A third.

A fourth.

The fractures multiplied until they covered the entire barrier. The river of blood continued feeding it from below, but it could no longer keep up with the damage from Golden Frost Skyfall.

Another barrage of golden tridents descended.

Crash!

The blood shield shattered from the center.

Frozen blood exploded into fragments and scattered in every direction. With the last barrier gone, the freezing tide and golden tridents struck Thalvyr directly.

Golden light swallowed him.

The cold tore inward through his scales while golden tridents pierced his flesh from every direction. The body his river of blood had just repaired split open again. Before one wound could begin healing, the next attack ripped it wider.

Inside him, the powers left by the pink energy orb were still raging.

Ice.

Fire.

Darkness.

The wildly different energies erupted in turn while Namyanna’s Golden Frost Skyfall continued hammering him from the outside.

The damage inside and out reached its limit at the same moment.

Thalvyr’s body began to collapse.

His scales lost their bloody color. Muscle fibers tore apart, and the energy holding his body together rapidly broke down. The river of blood tried to continue repairing him, but it could only pour itself into wounds that kept growing larger.

The newly rebuilt body finally reached its breaking point.

Thalvyr had no choice but to abandon it.

A blood-red soul shot out of the shattered body. It evaded the golden tridents still falling from above and climbed higher into the sky.

"When I return, I’ll tear every last one of you to pieces!"

In his soul form, Thalvyr looked down at them coldly. His gaze passed over each face in turn, burning them all into his memory.

Then he noticed a woman staring back at him.

Elowen remained seated in her ice chair with her legs crossed, her eyes following his soul wherever it moved.

At first, Thalvyr assumed she was looking at something behind him. He deliberately drifted to the side.

Elowen’s gaze followed.

She was looking directly at him.

The realization infuriated Thalvyr. His blood-red soul surged outward, forming several twisted tentacles that lunged toward Elowen.

Elowen didn’t rise from her ice chair.

She watched Thalvyr approach with interest as an icy blue light appeared in her eyes. Cold gathered rapidly between them, forming a cage of ice in the sky.

Thalvyr had no time to change course and flew straight inside.

Pillars of ice closed in from every direction, trapping his soul at the center.

The others were still discussing how Thalvyr had abandoned his body when Marty noticed the ice cage overhead. By the time they followed his gaze, Elowen had already raised one slender hand and pointed at the crystalline prison.

The cage slowly descended at her gesture.

Thalvyr came down with it until he was suspended directly in front of her.

Elowen studied the trapped soul, then reached out, gripped the bars on either side, and gave the cage a gentle shake.

The entire cage swayed from side to side.

Thalvyr’s soul bounced around inside, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. Before he could steady himself, freezing energy surged from every side of the cage.

White frost spread across the surface of his soul.