Phei pressed the tip of the Void dagger into Anderson's sternum — just deep enough to part the skin and let a single bead of blood well up, black and steaming in the arctic air.
He left it there for a long, deliberate heartbeat… then another… then a third, watching the bead freeze solid mid-fall before it could drip.
The absence-cold radiated inward like liquid night, numbing nerves only to reignite them in white-hot frostbite agony seconds later. Anderson's chest heaved in shallow, panicked bursts, each breath dragging razor shards of ice through his lungs.
Only then did Phei withdraw the blade with a slow, wet, sucking sound — prolonging the pull so the frozen flesh clung and tore in thin, crystalline threads.
Anderson's body convulsed like a dying fish on a hook, spine arching so violently the few intact vertebrae ground audibly.
