FROST
Chapter 69: Reversed Blight

Chapter 69: Reversed Blight

"How are we supposed to hide that, East?" Sebastian grimaced, pointing in exasperation at the streak of shimmering silver that now crowned Silvermist’s head, running through both of her brows and eyelashes.

The once-blazing spread had stopped, yes—but the color still gleamed like moonlight on fresh snow.

East said nothing at first, lips tightening into a line that looked one sigh away from collapse. He leaned against the edge of an old iron table, arms crossed, eyes dimmed with guilt.

In choosing to hide Silvermist’s condition—along with Ezekiel and West’s reckless attempt to save her—he knew full well the consequences. They were keeping secrets from the gods. Again.

"And don’t forget Levi," Sebastian added with a scoff. "That ticking time bomb just decided to insert himself into the equation like he owns it."

East rubbed his temples. "Believe me, I haven’t forgotten."

Deep within the layers of the West Wing, where sunlight never dared reach and mana-silencing sigils had long faded into the stone, East had repurposed what used to be his childhood laboratory.

The air was kicking with old magic and the scent of burnt parchment. Vials coated in dust still lined the walls, their contents fossilized. There were glowing symbols on the floor that flickered faintly whenever anyone stepped too close, as though waking from a century-long sleep.

In the center of the vast chamber—its ceiling domed and painted with ancient constellations from forgotten skies which do not belong to the Guardian realm, a sky of a different dimension—Silvermist now floated inside a translucent orb, no thicker than a soap bubble.

The orb shimmered faintly every time her body twitched or her fingers stirred, but it held her in place, unmoving and untouched.

"I-Is she okay?" Levi asked, voice cracking as if afraid speaking too loudly would shatter whatever fragile reality they were standing in.

His eyes darted anxiously between West and Ezekiel, both now sprawled unconscious on an old bed carved from stone and wrapped in half-decayed moss, a relic from a time even East preferred not to remember.

Their breathing was steady, thanks to East’s quick efforts to restore their mana and close the wounds they’d earned from their reckless heroism—.

East didn’t answer right away.

He stood stiffly, his shoulders rigid, jaw tight, and lips twitching as if biting back a thousand thoughts that demanded to be spoken. His eyes didn’t move from the floor—but his mind hadn’t known peace since they left the Barren.

Silvermist had been so close to saying something—spilling the truth, unraveling whatever twisted path she had walked to end up here, collapsed and half-cursed. She almost admitted what had been happening to her... what she had done. What she had become.

East could feel it—whatever she carried wasn’t just sickness or exhaustion. It was truly a blight.

A rare, almost mythical condition where an apprentice, through means no one dared teach, acquires a fragment of forbidden magic strong enough to poison their bond with their master. That corruption, once shared, doesn’t just damage—it reverses the flow. Instead of guidance, there’s rot. Instead of balance, chaos.

That’s what happened to Frost.

Unlike East, who had sensed the residue of forbidden magic the moment it clung to West and rejected it with a forceful purge, Frost had done the unthinkable—he welcomed it. He absorbed it. Willingly. As if he wanted it.

And maybe he did.

East suspected this wasn’t an accident at all. No, this was part of Frost’s plan all along. To take in Silvermist’s unstable magic while giving her his own in return, tethering her to him more deeply than any apprentice-master bond ever allowed.

That’s why her hair had turned silver—gleaming, bright, and otherworldly—while his was slowly bleeding into black.

This wasn’t just a blight. It was a reversed one.

Frost wasn’t just being corrupted. He was consuming her magic, and in doing so, rewriting the flow of mana between them. Silvermist was turning into the Winter apprentice a Winter Guardian should have, little by little, while Frost grew darker and East had no idea what will happen next.

"Don’t worry, she’s not in pain," East finally murmured, almost to himself. "She’s... just suspended. I’m only preventing her mana to grow further, her consciousness gently lulled during the process. This isn’t like what the gods did to Frost and I—it’s non-invasive. Just containment."

Levi frowned. "And how long do you expect her to stay in that bubble?"

East stared at the orb, watching the girl inside with a heaviness in his chest. "As long as it takes," he said. "Until I find a way to stop the corruption from spreading, or at least... make it invisible."

East’s eyes flicked to the side the moment he heard the soft rustling of fabric—West was waking up.

The boy’s lashes fluttered weakly, brows furrowing as though waking from a dream he didn’t like. His eyes, a bit dazed at first, snapped wide open as if he remembered something urgent—someone urgent. He sat up in a rush, almost slipping off the stone bed that had been abandoned long before any of them were born.

His gaze darted wildly around the chamber until it landed on her—Silvermist, still encased in the translucent orb, her body limp and motionless. Only then did West’s tense shoulders relax by a fraction. He exhaled sharply, placing a shaky hand to his chest before throwing his legs over the side of the bed and standing up.

He winced, wobbling slightly, not used to the sudden lightness in his limbs after East’s healing spell and mana restoration. Still, he didn’t hesitate to cross the room and step beside East, his eyes never leaving Silvermist.

"H-How is she?" West whispered, voice low and uncertain, though he spared a side-glance at Ezekiel, who remained unconscious and dramatically sprawled on a nearby cushion like some tragic prince from a fantasy painting.

East didn’t answer right away. His eyes narrowed at Silvermist’s form, reading the flickers of mana that still pulsed faintly from her—quiet, dim, but still unstable. Like a storm trying to stay asleep.

"She’ll be fine," East said at last, arms folded. "As long as she doesn’t use that thing again—whatever that forbidden magic is. Until we figure out where it’s coming from, she’s not allowed to cast even a single spark."

West’s shoulders tensed again. "But it’s not spreading anymore, right? That means she’s stable... for now?"

"Stable?" East scoffed. "She’s one dramatic sneeze away from lighting this entire wing on fire."

West didn’t laugh because of course, he is not a laugher. He turned back to Silvermist, eyes shadowed. "We’ll find out what it is... eventually."

"Good," East muttered. Then, after a beat, West spoke again—this time sounding like he was asking for a death wish.

"So... how do we hide the hair?"

East visibly froze. "Ahh?"

"Well, you can see that," West pointed. "Her hair looks like she dipped it in starlight. That’s not exactly ’lay low and heal quietly’ material. What if someone sees her? Levi almost cried when he saw her. You want the Guardians to scream next and call you a traitor just like what you called us earlier?"

East groaned like someone just handed him a two-hundred-year-old tax report. "I simply said law-breaker-piece-of-shits. Different thing."

West grimaced. "Not when I made it sound better."

With the weight of the universe clearly on his shoulders, East dragged a hand down his face and muttered, "I’ll talk to Fall."

West blinked. "How is Master Fall gonna help? By throwing leaves like daggers and smells like pumpkin spice all year round?"

"You’ve been very noisy since we left the barren, aren’t you?" East groaned. "Fall is the only Guardian who can manipulate hues and colors," he snapped. "Unless you know another ancient being who can make hair go from celestial silver to ’perfectly normal apprentice brown.’"

West blinked again. "You’re going to ask for help?"

"I hate it already," East hissed, pacing. "He’ll never let me hear the end of it. Last time I asked him for a spell tweak, he sent me a bouquet of orange leaves and a poem titled "The Frost Who Couldn’t Blend In." He even signed it in gold ink!"

West coughed, failing to hide a snort. "Sounds poetic."

"I should’ve buried him under his own orchard."

But despite the whining, East was already marching to the side of the chamber, muttering under his breath about pride, drama queens, and the general absurdity of needing to call in the Guardian of Autumn just to dye a girl’s hair.

West followed with a chuckle. "You sure you’re not secretly best friends?"

"If he’s my best friend," East growled, "I’m quitting as a Grandmaster and seriously considering living with the Celestial goats. At least they don’t recite autumn-themed haikus in battle."

He was mid-snap, fingers poised to vanish into thin air in the most dramatic fashion possible, when he paused and turned back with a casual flick of his robe, looking very much like a warlock about to drop some inconvenient news.

"Besides," he said dryly, "I called for backup to help get Silvermist changed. You know, so she doesn’t look like a goddess trapped in a mana-bubble wearing soot-stained robes from last week."

Before either West or Levi could ask who he meant by "backup" or where he found fashion-forward mages willing to assist with unconscious magical girls, East snapped his fingers and vanished in a swirl of snowflakes and judgmental energy.

Seconds later, heavy footsteps echoed from the corridor outside.

The chamber door slammed open with all the elegance of a brick hitting a gong. In burst Mila, red-faced and wide-eyed, like she just sprinted from the upper tower using only panic and caffeine.

"IS SHE OKAY?!" Mila shrieked, nearly tripping over the threshold as she slapped both hands over her mouth—too late—her voice already bouncing off the walls and probably waking up ancient spirits.

Silvermist remained unbothered inside the orb.

Right behind her, in sharp contrast, was Adeline—the very picture of calm apathy. She strolled in like she was arriving at a mildly disappointing tea party, arms folded, expression unreadable, her eyes locked on the figure of Silvermist floating inside the bubble.

For a solid moment, she said nothing. Just stared.

Then, after a small huff, Adeline turned her head and looked directly at Levi—who had somehow found the exact spot between West and the wall and was quietly contemplating the stone tiles like they held life’s answers.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"...Well," she muttered. "We’ll be damned."

Levi straightened, obviously panicking but trying not to show it.

"And this," Adeline added, with a perfectly timed glance between West, Levi, and the glowing orb of doom, "is awkward."

Mila, still winded from her dramatic entrance, gave a nervous laugh. "Wait, what is awkward? Is she turning into a glowing goddess or a death fae or—?"

Adeline waved her off and walked toward Silvermist’s orb like someone inspecting a magical artifact she was definitely going to blame someone else for later. "She looks like she accidentally merged with a shooting star. Why is her hair like that? And why is she glowing like my mother’s cursed tea kettle?"

West rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks flushed. "It’s a long story."

Adeline arched a brow. "Everything with you lot is a long story."

Levi finally spoke, but very quietly, like he hoped his words might just dissolve before they were heard. "Technically, it’s East’s fault."

Adeline’s eyes locked onto him like lasers. "Of course it is."

And somewhere in the distance, a faint whoosh echoed in the air—East probably sneezing from the sudden wave of justified slander.

Mila squinted between them. "Sooo... are we helping her change, or are we just standing here throwing blame and pretending this is normal?"

The three looked at each other.

And unanimously sighed.

They were definitely going to pretend this was normal.

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