FROST
Chapter 89: Eleven Thrones, One Storm

Chapter 89: Eleven Thrones, One Storm

In the Crystal Chamber—more formally known as the Guardian Staff Chamber—an eerie stillness blanketed the air, dense and unmoving.

The chamber, carved entirely from a shimmering translucent mineral that pulsed faintly with stored ancestral mana, was designed to respond only to the touch of the Guardians.

This is the very same place Silvermist had infiltrated the very time she had broken Frost’s staff under Periwinkle’s manipulation.

Today, it remained lifeless. The very silence within hinted at imbalance—no arcane hum, no resonance, only the quiet echo of tension building between immortal beings.

The eleven Guardians sat in their designated crystalline thrones, each one shaped from the element they governed, though none felt the honor of their station today.

The Lunar King had summoned them urgently, but half an hour had already passed, and his seat at the head of the crescent-shaped table remained cold and vacant.

"Why on earth are we still sitting here, huh?!" Flash, the ever-volatile Lightning Guardian, exploded.

His voice cracked like thunder, bouncing off the curved chamber walls. Ash-gray hair sparked with erratic bursts of current, dancing like live wires across his head. His irises gleamed golden, alive with fury, crackling with the power of Adonis—the Thunder God whose legacy he inherited as his student.

He slammed both fists on the crystal table, a thunderous vibration rumbling through the chamber as if the very walls considered splitting in two.

Behind him, his staff—along with the others’—hovered mid-air in a suspended arc, blazing with untamed light. Each staff pulsed violently, sensing the chaos beyond the chamber walls, reacting to the rising mana pressure enveloping the Academy.

"They’re responding," muttered Rain, the Water Guardian, eyes narrowed as his aqua-bound staff trembled behind him. "The grounds are crying out..."

Yet none moved.

Some Guardians crossed their arms, others placed contemplative fingers at their lips, their eyes distant.

They waited, not out of obedience, but out of wariness—for the Lunar King did not summon them lightly, considering the situation, and his absence now seeded doubt among even the oldest of them.

At one end of the table, East sat motionless, his sharp, ever-calculating eyes not on Flash, but on Cloud—the still and solemn Mist Guardian, who stood with his arms behind his back at the opposite end.

It was a quiet but unmistakable signal: the siblings who often bore the brunt of leadership in the King’s absence were weighing each word, each movement, before letting action lead them astray.

Zephyr, who had only recently risen from hibernation following the arena calamity, leaned back in his chair with an exhausted groan.

His form was regal but drained, his usually vibrant wings now dulled with a whisper of wind. "Can I go back to my chamber now? No? Thought so..." he muttered, pulling the collar of his robe higher like a man still adjusting to the living world.

Beside him, Cay—the Red Sands Guardian—snapped his fingers, a flicker of crimson spark dancing at his fingertip, his scarlet eyes narrowing. "One more word."

"So what?!" Flash growled again, throwing a hand toward the center of the table, where a map of the Academy flickered with erratic sigils. "We’re really going to sit here while everything outside collapses?! Frost had gone missing, Silvermist is breaking apart, the Professors are either corrupted or simply traitors—what the hell are we waiting for?!"

Silence again.

Then finally, East spoke, his voice low, almost uncertain—an uncharacteristic falter that drew every Guardian’s attention like a needle snapping in the dark.

"We have to trust Frost on this," he said, as if trying to convince himself more than the others.

His gaze remained steady, but his hands curled slightly against the armrest of his crystal seat. "Honestly... it was a good thing he vanished into his chamber before the Professors breached the inner seal. We can still fabricate a cover. Say he was sent to the Human Realm—to stabilize the collapsing seasonal gates while Silvermist is under containment."

A few heads turned, skepticism. The room pulsed again, this time not from magic, but from withheld disbelief.

Then came Coast’s voice—sharper than Zephyr’s wind cutting across jagged cliffside. "And you honestly think the Professors would buy that kind of stupidity?" he spat, rising from his chair with a scoff.

His long coat rippled behind him like waves crashing inland. "You think the people who infiltrated an inner Guardian seal will be fooled by an excuse that sounds like it came from a first-year apprentice?"

East didn’t blink. "It’s the best we’ve got."

Coast turned fully to him now, mouth twisted in disbelief. "Look. Normally, I don’t question your logic. You’re cold, unpredictable, calculating—sometimes stupid— a smug pain in my ass—but you make sense."

He lifted one hand dramatically, placing it over his heart as if wounded beyond measure.

"But I have just three words."

East’s eyes narrowed. "What is it?"

Coast didn’t hesitate. "What. The. Fuck."

A beat of stunned silence.

East lurched half out of his seat, hand twitching toward the table as though about to launch his entire chair across the room. "Say that again, Coast—"

"I’ll say it three times if you keep peddling this garbage," Coast snapped, eyes gleaming like seawater in a storm. "The Academy is falling apart, and you want to play diplomat with liars?"

"Because if we don’t hold the illusion," East growled, fully rising now, "we lose control."

"Newsflash," Coast snapped, "we already did."

Tension cracked through the chamber like thunder. The Guardians’ staffs buzzed again behind them, the energy in the room threatening to ignite—not from spells, but from tempers that hadn’t been this close to the edge in centuries.

Before East could hurl the crystalline chair across the chamber and straight into Coast’s smug, unbothered face, a loud ahem echoed across the glossy room.

All heads snapped toward the middle seat, where Fall raised a delicate hand, a teacup somehow already in his grip. Where he got the tea, no one knew. Why he was sipping it in the middle of a brewing civil war? It’s a probably already taken as a myth.

"If we’re throwing chairs now, may I kindly request no one damages the east wing pillar again?" He said sweetly. "Last time we let Flash break something, half the chamber lost gravity. Zephyr floated into the training dome mid-yoga."

Zephyr, still slouched with a fur throw he got out of nowhere dramatically draped over his shoulders, lazily pointed a finger. "And my back still hasn’t recovered from that. Mid-pose, Fall. Mid. Pose."

"Alright, alright, let’s not turn this into another group therapy session," growled Cay, who had now stood up, arms crossed like she was babysitting twelve oversized, elemental toddlers. "East has a point. As much as it tastes like lies marinated in desperation, saying Frost went to the Human Realm is better than nothing."

"It still is nothing," Coast muttered.

"I heard that," Cay snapped his head to him.

"Good."

The tension was beginning to rise again, Flash gripping the table like it owed him his nonexistent Guardian salary, when a sudden gust of cold wind whipped through the chamber, scattering a few stray papers and making Zephyr yelp as his fur flew off like a startled bird.

The crystal walls trembled—not in fear, but in recognition.

Then, without warning, the double arched doors at the far end of the chamber creaked open.

And there he stood.

The Lunar King.

Draped in ethereal robes that shimmered like starlight kissed by winter frost, the Lunar King strode into the chamber with the silence of falling snow and the weight of an entire cosmos behind his eyes. His long silver hair flowed down his back, not quite white, not quite grey—more like the color of a moonbeam refracted through mist. His skin, pale but radiant, bore no blemish or wrinkle, and his eyes—those infamous, star-laced irises—seemed to know exactly which Guardian was about to misbehave before they even dared to breathe.

He looked no older than someone in their early twenties—graceful, timeless, and ethereal in the way only divine rulers could be.

Except...

As soon as his gaze swept across the room and landed on Flash cracking his knuckles, Zephyr barely holding his fur in place, and Coast muttering in the corner like a salty gremlin, something... shifted.

A vein throbbed—just faintly—on his temple.

The glow in his cheekbones dimmed by a fraction.

And ever so subtly, the sharpness of his jawline softened into something older, wearier.

Every time he stepped into the same chamber as his children, the passage of time seemed to mock him. It was a running theory among the staff that the king aged ten years emotionally for every minute spent with the Guardians. Now, physically, he seemed to have fast-forwarded a decade, transitioning gracefully—but noticeably—into his thirties as though the very air had decided: You are now tired.

Still, his voice remained as ageless as the moon itself—chilling, calm, and carved from lunar crystal.

"You may now rise," he said coolly, though no one had even thought of sitting straighter until that exact moment.

Solace delicately put down her tea as though her soul had just been judged.

Flash straightened like a snapped rod, his thunder temporarily silenced.

Zephyr scrambled with his fur, clinging to it like a lifeline.

And Coast?

Coast just leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and muttered under his breath with perfect comedic timing, "Great. Here comes the moon dad. With extra wrinkles this time."

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