In that moment, a primitive wave of savage fury exploded inside him. A hysterical, discordant laugh tore from his throat — "Hahaha!" — the sound of a man who had finally cut the last thread connecting him to his own sanity, drowning in a twisted ecstasy of pain and power.
Suddenly, the system's crystal display lit up, and Kily's voice resonated with cold mechanical precision:
[System Alert]: Severe cognitive deterioration detected…[Auto-Response]: "Existence Shield" activated. Halting further neural deterioration.[Status]: Understanding enhanced via reverse feedback from the Frost Parasite.
The world cracked around him. The stone walls dissolved into a haze of memories. He saw his father — Naz — standing with an aura of settled authority.
"Listen carefully, son," his father's voice echoed from the past. "The air, the earth — every atom is woven from invisible threads. When they gather tightly, they become solid. When they spread apart, they become liquid. And when they scatter into the void, they become gas."
Above Naz's palm, a glowing three-dimensional cube appeared, moving at his command. Spheres danced inside it — clinging together, then scattering, then shattering into a chaotic swarm.
"Here," his father continued, eyes reflecting the light of ancient knowledge, "is where the Loom comes in. It is the divine art of weaving reality itself. To compress, to strip away, to reshape molecules according to your vision alone… but only within the limits of this programmed world."
The memory shattered like glass — sending Ice crashing back into the grim reality of the room.
A terrifying silence fell.
Ice whispered softly:
"I see it now. The Loom… it's the blueprint of everything. Is this your doing, System?"
He raised his hands and clenched them until his knuckles went white, staring at them with frightening focus.
Then a scream of madness broke free:
"Free Weaving! My imagination is no longer bound! Hahaha!"
In a flash, the chains that had evaporated moments ago returned — materializing from nothing, coiling around him as two massive ghostly hands erupted from his back within a crimson halo.
He screamed a command that shook the foundations of the room:
"Whip of Laws!"
Ice wrapped the chains around his forearms as Zis watched with a mask of indifference and boredom, waiting for the inevitable failure.
But then the chains began to evolve.
They pulsed with a glowing golden aura, generating flashes of shimmering red light that dragged behind them a pocket of absolute nothing — transforming the air from frozen to burning in a fraction of a second.
Ice stood above the chair, his pupils contracted to pinpoints — the focused gaze of a snake about to strike.
The chains underwent a surreal transformation. The metallic grey peeled away like old skin, revealing a vibrant glacial blue. A network of dark energy wove through the links — turning the edges into a bottomless void. The chains launched forward, seizing Zis in a grip that had no intention of releasing.
Zeus let out a dry, mocking laugh:
"Heh… hehe…"
But the chains defied the laws of nature. They floated in the air like conscious serpents, coiling in defiance of gravity, glowing with violent crimson. A war between elements erupted along the metal — blue frost crashing against hellfire in a spectacle that defied the color spectrum. The flames didn't melt the ice. The ice didn't extinguish the flames. They existed in a paradoxical dance — a whirlpool of destruction around Zeus's neck.
The chains finally locked into a hideous jagged formation — a cage of primal agony. Along the razor-thin edges of the ice, tongues of flame roared as if feeding from the very essence of nothingness.
Ice's voice dropped to a hollow, terrifying whisper:
"Loom: absolute stillness… Dragon's breath."
The echo of the dragon's laugh resonated in his mind:
"Yes! We can do this!"
Ice's voice dropped further — until it was so cold the air itself seemed to crystallize inside his lungs.