CHAPTER 71: The Judgment of Endless Winter
Caspian's face was a temple of absolute, unmoving calm. His expression remained entirely dull, showing no malice, no triumph, and no lingering humanity. The brilliant, luminous white-blue hair and his glowing sapphire eyes perfectly reflected the primordial torrent of power he had kept hidden away from the world. He took slow, gentle steps forward, his bare feet making no sound against the pulverized concrete, yet every stride caused the surrounding air to crystallize into delicate frost patterns.
"What... what is this overwhelming magical power?" Master Grey whispered, her voice cracking as her entire throat went dry. Her face was a grotesque mix of psychological shock and primal fear.
As Caspian continued his rhythmic, unhurried advance, a terrifying realization finally pierced through her madness. This is completely beyond me. This isn't a spell... it's a domain.
Instinctively, her body overrode her pride, and she took a frantic step backward, her single human eye darting around the ruined perimeter. She had to flee. She had to escape.
"Catastrophic Flames!" she shrieked, throwing her remaining mana into a final, desperate offensive.
A massive, towering fireball materialized in the space between them, roaring with a violent, scorched heat as it launched forward toward Caspian. She didn't expect it to kill him; she merely needed a screen, a momentary distraction to mask her retreat. The second the flames left her fingers, she turned on her heel and sprinted toward the edge of the courtyard.
Calmly, without breaking his stride, Caspian raised his right hand a mere fraction of an inch into the air.
Five ethereal ice blades, forged from absolute zero and glowing with a pure, dense light, materialized instantly in the space above him. With a casual, almost indifferent wave of his fingers, all five weapons flew forward. The dense, glowing blades of ice cut through the air with an eerie, frictionless hum, slicing directly through the center of the roaring fireball. The sheer, absolute cold radiating from the steel instantly dispersed the inferno, freezing the very embers into harmless particles of glitter before they could even scatter.
Master Grey was in a full, panicked sprint, her boots tearing up the dust as she neared the outer edge of the courtyard.
Thwack! Thwack!
Two ethereal ice blades suddenly rained down from the heavens, embedding themselves deeply into the stone precisely in front of her toes. The concussive shockwave stopped her dead in her tracks. If she hadn't possessed the split-second reaction to halt her momentum, she would have run directly into their path, and the jagged steel would have impaled her torso into the bedrock.
Stunned and hyperventilating, she spun around to scan for an alternate exit, but her vision never completed the turn.
An ice blade descended from above, moving at a velocity so absolute that not even the predictive algorithms of her Engram Eye could register its trajectory. It sliced through the air like a localized thunderbolt, stabbing cleanly through her right ankle and pinning her foot immovably to the earth.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Grey let out a desperate, echoing scream. The agonizing pain of the freezing steel shattering her bone and instantly frostbiting her nerves was entirely unbearable. Dark, hot crimson liquid began to flow from the wound, pooling rapidly on the frozen concrete around her boots.
"Aaagghhh... Aaagghhh..."
Her legs collapsed beneath her weight. Groaning in sheer agony, she dragged her pinned body downward, her fingers clawing at the dirt as she tried to crawl, pulling herself forward across the courtyard floor in a desperate, animalistic bid for survival. She stretched her right hand out once more to grab a piece of stable stone to pull herself further.
SHLUCK.
Another ethereal sword fell from the sky like a descending guillotine. A fresh spray of blood splattered across the stone as the blade stabbed directly through the center of her open palm, impaling her hand firmly to the ground.
"Aaaagghhhhhhhhhhh!"
She screamed out, her voice warping into a jagged screech as the psychological torment and physical suffering reached a threshold she had never experienced in her long life. But unknown to the fallen professor, her suffering had only just begun.
As she desperately scrambled, hyperventilating in the dirt, she raised her remaining free hand to grab the hilt of the ice sword in a futile, frantic attempt to wrench it free. Before her fingers could even wrap around the frosty leather, a fourth sword descended with mechanical precision. It stabbed directly through her left wrist, pinning her other arm immovably to the earth.
"Aaaaaaagggggghhhhhhh!"
Her agonizing shrieks echoed violently through the deafening silence of the courtyard, bouncing off the high academy walls. Professor Grey struggled and thrashed against the stone, her spine arching in a desperate attempt to break free, but the ethereal weapons didn't budge a single millimeter. The biting, absolute cold began to seep into her veins, freezing her blood from the inside out. Tears of pure terror and physical torment poured freely from her eyes, rolling down her dirt-streaked cheeks. With both of her hands and her foot pinned brutally to the ground, there was nothing left for the proud Enforcer to do but lay broken in a growing pool of her own blood.
A shivering, freezing air suddenly rushed across her face, carrying the scent of winter.
She slowly forced her tear-filled, swollen eyes open, only to see a long, imposing shadow looming directly over her face. Caspian stood before her, looking down at her writhing form. Her human eye widened in sheer horror as violent shivers of fright ran down her spine. She was entirely trapped, completely powerless, and stripped of every ounce of her formidable power.
Yet, even wrapped in this absolute despair, Master Grey's analytical mind couldn't comprehend the reality of the situation. What was this monstrous, overriding power that this commoner was displaying?
With a trembling, blood-flecked lip, she wheezed out a single question. "What... What are you...?"
Caspian's light blue, glowing eyes remained locked onto her face. He stared down at her with a profound, terrifying neutrality—the look of a god observing something far too insignificant to ever truly matter.
"I am Caspian Vane," he responded calmly. He paused for a few cold seconds, looking directly into the depth of her spinning, broken artifact. "I am the Grandmaster of Endless Winter."
Master Grey's single eye widened to its absolute limit, her features freezing into a mask of profound, historical terror. The revelation hit her like a physical blow. The boy she had mocked, the commoner she had dismissed as mere trash to be harvested, was actually one of the most powerful, legendary entities in all of magical history.
It was at that exact moment that every last ounce of pride, arrogance, and cold calculation she had possessed completely crumbled into dust. The great, genius professor of Althelgard was lowered to nothing more than a begging animal, weeping in the dirt as she began to frantically plead for her life.
"Please!" she screamed, her voice cracking as the ice began to reach her shoulders. "Mercy! Mercy!"
"Don't kill me! I beg of you!" she yelled, her eyes overflowing with pathetic tears. "I'll give you everything! Anything you want! You can take our research... you can become our leader! I'll give you whatever you desire, but please... I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"
Her frantic screams echoed through the quiet courtyard, reaching the ears of the paralyzed students and the silent watchers on the balcony.
Caspian's expression remained dull, his eyes entirely unfazed by her frantic pleas. The sheer lack of emotion on his face made him look infinitely more frightening than any roaring monster.
"Pitiful," he spoke, his voice a flat bar of iron. "Now, answer me this. How many of those children who begged you to let them go... how many of them pleaded and wept for mercy?"
Master Grey's frantic babbling caught in her throat.
"How many of them begged you for the exact same mercy you are asking of me right now?" Caspian asked, his tone dropping into a lower, darker frequency. "Did you heed their prayers before you took their lives for your petty advancement?"
Master Grey bit into her lower lip so hard it split, fresh blood mixing with the dirt on her chin. She had no words. She had no excuses, and she had no lies left to tell.
"How many of them cried out in the dark, wanting to give anything and everything just to see another sunrise, the exact same way you are doing right now?" Caspian's words were a heavy, suffocating weight. "Did you show them mercy?"
Caspian slowly sank down onto one knee, leaning forward until he was looking her dead in her terrified eyes.
Master Grey couldn't hold his gaze. The sheer weight of his presence was crushing her mind. "I... I just..."
A momentary flash of profound, rare anger twitched across Caspian's beautiful features.
SHLUCK.
A fifth and final ice blade descended from the sky, driving straight down into Master Grey's back. It passed cleanly through her torso, deliberately missing every vital organ by a fraction of a millimeter, before embedding itself into the bedrock beneath her chest.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
She let out a final, soul-tearing scream as the cold fully anchored her core to the earth.
"Pathetic," Caspian said, looking directly into her fading gaze. "As pathetic as you are, I must agree with one thing you said. Death is far too merciful for someone like you. You are to stay alive, trapped within this frozen shell, to relive every ounce of pain and suffering you have inflicted on the innocent. Remember this day, professor. The only reason your heart still beats, and the only reason you still draw breath, is because I said so."
Caspian rose smoothly to his feet, turning his back on her whimpering form without another thought.
He slowly looked around the devastated training ground. His sapphire gaze washed over his friends—Lyra, Casel, and Elisa—confirming they were completely safe, untouched by the residual frost. A faint, subtle sigh of relief escaped his chest. But as he looked closer, he couldn't help but notice the expressions painted clearly on their faces.
Shock. Fear. Utter disbelief.
He knew this consequence was entirely bound to happen the moment he released his constraints. A bitter weight settled in his chest. He only hoped that despite the monstrous truth they had just learned about his identity, they wouldn't treat him any differently than the ordinary boy they had befriended.
A heavy, exhausted sigh left his lips, a thick cloud of white smoke billowing into the night air.
"It seems... I am running out of time," he thought inwardly, his vision beginning to swimmingly waver as the backlash of his unsealed mana began to take its toll on his human vessels.
He slowly turned his head, casting a final glance toward the high observation balcony where Silas and the rest of the Grands stood shrouded in the darkness.
"The rest... is up to you guys," he communicated silently.
"Core Lock: Bind."
The brilliant, white-blue glow radiating from his hair instantly began to dim, fading back into its natural, ordinary hue. The deep, supernatural sapphire light within his eyes dulled away, returning to his standard, unreadable gaze. The sudden, absolute vacuum of his power caused his physical body to buckle under the weight of sheer, overwhelming exhaustion.
Caspian's knees gave out, and he collapsed heavily toward the stone floor. As his vision rapidly blurred into darkness, the final image that registered in his mind before he blacked out entirely was the frantic, tear-streaked figures of Lyra, Elisa, and Casel running toward him with their arms outstretched.