Frostveil had never seen a celebration quite like this one.
The gates opened long before Jax and the Vixens reached the city.
People lined the streets.
Merchants.
Children.
Miners.
Hunters.
Families.
Everyone had heard the rumors.
The cave had been cleared.
Not partially.
Not to the fiftieth floor.
Completely.
Guild Master Billy Stonehorn met them personally at the gates.
His weathered face held none of the skepticism from their first meeting.
Only respect.
He stepped forward.
Then looked beyond Jax.
Toward the distant mountain.
"...Is it over?"
Jax nodded once.
"It won't trouble Frostveil again."
Billy released a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
For several moments...
He simply stared at the mountain.
"My grandfather helped build this city."
His voice was quiet.
"My father expanded the mines."
He smiled sadly.
"And all this time..."
His eyes drifted back toward Jax.
"...we were living above that."
No one answered.
There was nothing to say.
Billy finally laughed.
"A mountain of miners."
"And none of us ever realized we were the ones being watched."
The guild hall erupted into cheers that evening.
Stories spread faster than ale.
Not about Jax's strength.
About what had been hiding beneath Frostveil for centuries.
Even Billy struggled to believe it.
"The Frost Giants..."
He shook his head.
"They weren't rulers."
"They were wardens."
The realization silenced the room.
Everything suddenly made sense.
Why parties rarely returned.
Why monsters grew more violent deeper within the cave.
Why the Frost Giants had never left the lower floors.
They hadn't been protecting treasure.
They had been protecting the world.
Billy looked across the hall.
"If you hadn't come..."
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
Everyone understood.
Before leaving Frostveil, Jax completed one final piece of business.
The dimensional gate.
Workers assembled inside an abandoned warehouse Billy had purchased on the guild's behalf.
Within hours, the first gateway linked Frostveil directly to Solmere.
The first merchant stepped through.
Then another.
Then twenty more.
Billy watched wagons begin unloading fresh fruit that had been harvested hundreds of miles away that same morning.
He laughed.
"I spent thirty years trying to improve trade routes."
He looked at Jax.
"You solved it before lunch."
Jax smiled.
"There are still fourteen more towns I'd like to connect."
Billy nearly choked on his drink.
...
By sunset...
Jax and the Vixens stepped through the Solmere gate.
They didn't stop.
Another short walk carried them into the Crystalshire portal.
Minutes later...
They entered Eldrich's laboratory.
The scientist looked up absentmindedly.
"Oh."
"You're back."
"I assume everything worked?"
Jax placed a crystal the size of a human head onto the table.
The laboratory temperature dropped instantly.
Frost spread across the workbench.
Every experiment in the room froze solid.
Eldrich blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He slowly stood.
"...Jax."
His voice had become unusually calm.
"What..."
"...is..."
"...that?"
Jax scratched his cheek.
"I was hoping you'd tell me."
Eldrich approached like a priest approaching a holy relic.
He reached toward it.
Stopped.
Reached again.
Stopped again.
"...May I?"
Jax nodded.
The moment Eldrich touched the crystal...
His eyes went wide.
"No."
He whispered.
"No..."
He looked again.
"...No."
Jax frowned.
"Good no?"
Eldrich laughed.
Then started laughing harder.
Then he began pacing.
"No one is going to believe this."
He pointed at the crystal.
"This isn't a Frost Crystal."
"It creates Frost Crystals."
Silence.
The Vixens looked at one another.
Jax raised an eyebrow.
"...Explain."
"It grows them."
Eldrich was practically vibrating.
"Not metaphorically."
"Literally."
He pointed toward a tiny shard already beginning to form near its base.
"Given enough mana..."
"It will continue producing crystals forever."
Jax's smile slowly grew.
"Refrigeration."
Eldrich nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes!"
"Freezers."
"YES!"
"Air conditioning."
"YES!"
"Ice production."
"YES!"
"Food preservation."
"Medicine."
"Cold storage."
"Climate-controlled warehouses."
Each idea came faster than the last.
Eldrich was already sketching blueprints before Jax finished speaking.
"This..."
He stared reverently at the crystal.
"...changes everything."
Jax folded his arms.
"I thought it might."
The scientist laughed.
"You continue bringing me problems..."
He looked back at the crystal.
"...that somehow become entire industries."
Outside...
Crystalshire continued as it always had.
Inside the laboratory...
The future had just become considerably colder.