FROST
Chapter 86: The Seal Between Us

Chapter 86: The Seal Between Us

Everything was dark — not the kind of darkness that simply lacked light, but the kind that devoured it. It was thick, oppressive, like a suffocating mist that coiled around the bones and whispered forgotten things. There was no sense of time here. No gravity. No warmth. Just endless cold that seeped into the soul.

The silence was absolute, a silence so complete it roared inside the mind.

Shattered fragments of what once might have been memories floated like debris in the vast emptiness — flickers of snow-covered mountains, soft laughter, a woman’s voice calling his name — all swallowed by the void before they could form. The space felt ancient, like it had existed before creation itself.

And in the center of it all, untouched by ground or sky, he remained.

Frost.

Suspended in midair, his body hung motionless as if asleep... or something far worse. The once-lustrous strands of his silver-white hair, once radiant like moonlight on fresh snow, were slowly being devoured by creeping streaks of black.

They spread like ink spilled into clear water, coiling through the pale threads in slow, sinister tendrils.

Now, the length of his hair drifted around him, weightless and untamed, like he was trapped underwater.

Each blackening strand moved with an eerie grace, brushing gently against his hollow cheeks — a ghost of a caress in a place where no wind dared to stir. The silver was vanishing, consumed by the darkness, leaving behind nothing but shadows.

The frost that once crowned his presence — the shimmer of snowflakes, the glint of silver — was gone. Replaced by a numbing stillness that even the cold could not claim.

Then, slowly... his eyes opened.

Where once there were lashes like winter-kissed silver, now they were pitch black — inky and heavy, casting shadows across his sunken features. And his eyes...

They were no longer the oceanic blue that once mirrored glaciers and twilight skies. No. They were black.

Not empty in color — empty in meaning. No light. No reflection. No recognition.

Only a void.

They stared into nothingness, and nothing stared back. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. His chest rose with a shallow, slow breath — the only sign he was even alive.

But even that seemed uncertain. Here, in this abyss where neither time nor fate dared tread, Frost was lost — not merely in space, but in soul.

Everything around him was a formless void, a suffocating stillness where even echoes dared not linger. No stars. No horizon. No sense of self. Just cold... endless cold, inside and out.

He had been slowly consumed by darkness — not the kind that lurks in shadows, but the kind that seeps in through cracks in the heart. The same darkness he once believed he could master, twist into obedience, contain beneath his will. He was wrong.

He had forgotten something critical — that he was now a Guardian. A creature reborn through divine mana, forged to be void of such corruptions. And yet... he welcomed it. Invited it.

Embraced it.

Because to save her, he had to.

That fragile soul who looked up at the world with quiet awe and carried storms in her blood without ever realizing it.

The one whose tears fractured him more than any blade could. The one he told himself was merely a ward, a charge under his watch. And yet, even here, in a place devoid of warmth or meaning, she tethered him.

She was the only light left in the dark.

The darkness coiled tighter around him, pressing against his chest like a weightless chain — and yet, his heart fluttered. Fluttered... and ached.

Ache so deep it stirred something primal in the pit of his being.

Then it came.

A voice.

Soft, cracking through the silence like a warm breath on frozen glass.

"Frost... come back to me."

The words barely registered at first, little more than wind against a glacier. But the sound... oh, the sound. It wasn’t the voice of a goddess or a queen. It wasn’t thunderous or commanding.

It was hers — fragile, familiar, frayed with worry — and it pulled.

His fingers twitched. His eyes, hollow and dulled, wobbled with a flicker of life. Slowly, painfully, his gaze moved from left to right, trying — needing — to find the source of that voice. The voice that knew his name. The voice that still believed he could come back.

And for the first time in a long time... he wanted to.

Somewhere on the other side, Silvermist stood — before the sealed chamber—once a place of silence and cold discipline, now transformed into something wild and feral.

Thick, jagged ice coated the walls and floors like a beast protecting its slumber. The entrance itself was layered in so many sheets of frost that even the light from the crystal sconces barely touched its surface.

The air was biting cold, thin, and heavy with mana. It was like standing before a tomb—and worse, knowing the one inside might still be alive.

Tears began to blur Silvermist’s vision as she stared at the frozen door. Her breath fogged in front of her lips, but she made no move to wipe her tears. Her voice cracked like thin ice under pressure.

"H-How did all of you wait for this long...?" she whispered, the question thrown into the frozen air, but it pierced the men behind her all the same.

Cloud flinched, and East’s throat bobbed with a hard swallow. They didn’t speak.

Because what could they say? They were the very ones who insisted she be kept away from him. The very ones who ordered the severance—fearing what could happen if she got too close. And now... now they stood in that consequence.

Behind them, Ezekiel took a step forward, his voice a hesitant balm in the thick tension.

"He’s been like this since the incident in the arena..." he admitted softly, eyes darting from the frost-bitten door to Silvermist’s trembling form. "We didn’t think it would grow this unstable. Not this fast."

Her fists clenched, trembling at her sides. Frosts began to bloom from the soles of her feet. It crawled outward, creeping like vines on a frozen trellis. Crystalline ice etched itself along the floor and the walls, cold mist spiraling upward, searching—reaching—toward the door.

"I told all of you," she murmured, her voice low and hollow, "I told all of you we needed to see each other. I-I could have helped."

The mist thickened around her like a living thing. It licked at East’s boots and curled around Cloud’s ankles, enough to make them step back instinctively. This was no passive reaction—Silvermist’s aura was awakening.

Within the sealed chamber, something stirred.

Frost’s own mana—once silent, once buried—shivered to life. As though her voice, her sorrow, had pulled it from the depths. It leaked through the cracks in the ice like a signal flare, a gentle pulse of energy snaking toward her in the mist, answering a call that no one else could hear.

From beside East and Cloud, Sebastian remained silent. But his knuckles were white where he gripped his own arm. West, standing just behind him, watched Silvermist with a quiet, unreadable expression—though his gaze lingered on her longer than most.

"You were right," Cloud whispered, eyes wide as he watched the mana threads spiral in the air, glimmering like starlight before vanishing into frost. "Their mana does grow stronger when they’re near each other..."

East didn’t respond.

He didn’t need to. He knew this. Had always known. He and West once experienced something similar—a near-collapse of their own mana cores due to unregulated magical resonance. But they were lucky. Their energies had been stable enough to survive through sheer compatibility of a purified Guardian and the living embodiment of the darkness extracted from him.

But Silvermist and Frost?

No. They were volatile. Both haunted by something too large for their vessels. Both fighting shadows they had no names for. Both breaking at the seams.

And putting them together in this state...

It wouldn’t just be dangerous.It might be catastrophic.

Everyone looked at Silvermist as she stepped forward, weary, yet they wanted to see how both of their magics would react in such a distance.

The frost surged beneath Silvermist’s feet like a wave answering its moon. The ice mists around her waist lifted, swirling as if her very breath stirred the chamber’s soul. With one trembling hand, she reached out toward the door—her fingers just short of touching the jagged frost-covered seal.

She didn’t shout. She didn’t scream. Instead, her voice, steady yet cracking under the weight of everything unsaid, slipped through the cold like a prayer whispered against a coffin.

"Frost..." Her forehead lowered against the frozen door, the cold biting her skin. "Frost, it’s me."

The words were soft, but the mana that carried them was not. Her call sank into the seal like blood into snow, sinking deep, reverberating through the frozen layers like a bell tolling in the deep.

"I don’t know if you’re asleep, or... or buried under whatever this is, but I’m here," her voice cracked, and so did the mist around her, curling in anguish. "You locked yourself away thinking it would save me, d-didn’t you? I-I didn’t want you to do that," her lips quivered. "I-I just want you to be here with me... j-just like you promised. W-We can fight through this together, s-so please, don’t do this alone. You have me, don’t you? Rely on me, too... as your apprentice."

Behind her, West swallowed and looked away. He didn’t expect hearing those words from Silvermist to her master would make his chest ache so bad, he wanted to leave, but then he had to be there.

The ice beneath her hand began to glow faintly, pulsing—not cracking, but responding.

"Just come back to me," she whispered again. "We’ll figure it out together, okay?" Her next words came out like a vow. "I’m not leaving. Not until you open this door."

Her lips then curled into a half-pout, half-smirk, tracing random shapes on the ice. "And uhm... something tragic is happening out here, too, just so you know. The professors are starting to ask where you’ve been, and guess what? They all noticed you’ve been ghosting me like a cursed ex. Do you know how emotionally damaging that is for my reputation? It’s humiliating, Frost. I mean, I’m your apprentice, not a plant you water once a month!"

She folded her arms with a sigh. "So, in case you’re planning on continuing this ice-cube silent treatment, I’m just saying—I might be forced to use force. Violently. With flair."

East, who had been silently observing, nearly choked on his breath. "Silvermist—!"

She snapped her head toward him with a glare sharp enough to cut icicles, blinking to dry the misting tears in her eyes. "What? Let me be unhinged in peace!"

East was just about to speak when the air shifted—subtle, like the faint rustle of unseen fabric brushing against their skin, but enough to set every nerve on edge. A pulse. A tremor in the mana field.

Cloud’s eyes narrowed. He reacted instantly, his fingers slicing through the air as he cast a multi-layered concealment seal around the group. In a flash, he teleported them a safe distance away—high on the suspended arc of one of the ruined rafters, overlooking the frost-laced chamber where Frost had sealed himself away.

The corridor beyond flickered unnaturally, like reality was hesitating.

Mana.

Unfamiliar, cloaked in silence. No signature. No pulse.

Whoever was coming had deliberately buried their presence, but they weren’t just sneaking in—they were infiltrating. And despite the concealment, the ambient pressure of their presence pressed heavily on the space.

"They’re concealing their mana," Cloud whispered, eyes glowing faintly as he strained to identify the intruders. "I can’t read them..."

But East could. His gaze sharpened, posture rigid as a blade drawn too fast. A glint of recognition flashed in his eyes—not from what he sensed, but how it moved. A ripple in the air, too clean, too calculated.

Only Arcane mages could move like that.

His eyes dropped to the sealed chamber. Frost had locked himself within one of the most protected, hidden locations in the entire Academy—beneath its oldest, unrecorded levels. A place only the Guardians and the Lunar King had access to. A place meant to be untouchable.

And yet, someone had stepped through the door West once tried to open, the same door that had resisted all force unless handled by the most specialized mages.

Forbidden spells had clearly been used to bypass the security just what West had used. The seal flickered unnaturally for a moment, like it was being strained to remain intact.

And then... they stepped through.

East’s breath hitched. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache.

Professors.

Professors who should not be here.

Yet here they were, robes brushing the frost-covered floor, stepping boldly into a sacred chamber using an illegal Arcane bypass spell.

Rebellion.

He had suspected it. Quiet whispers. Meetings held too long after curfew. But not all of them. Not all of the professors.

His eyes flicked to Cloud, whose face was carefully blank—but his hands twitched at his sides, barely restraining a defensive response.

"They really used a forbidden threshold spell," Cloud murmured. "That’s... not even allowed by the King."

East didn’t answer right away. He was staring at Professor Cedric, who stood among them, eyes gleaming cold.

"So, the Winter Guardian had actually being corrupted after all," Professor Bramble Thornwright scoffed, "now I understand why they had tried to keep everything hidden. The source of misfortune is just right underneath the Academy after all."

Silvermist’s breath hitched behind Cloud. By the sound of how Professor Bramble said it, it seems as though something worse is already coming after Frost.

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