The walk resumed, but the feeling from before did not return with it. The almost light conversation, Xue Lian’s strangely polite insults, and Damon’s inconvenient observations seemed to belong to an earlier, less dangerous moment, as if the rift had split something invisible between them. Now, every step through the snow carried a silent tension. The frozen world looked the same to the eye, but it no longer seemed empty. It felt watched. Attentive. Like a trap breathing slowly.

Damon walked a few steps behind Xue Lian, trying not to think about the creature’s words.

The fragment walks beside you.

He hated that kind of statement for one very simple reason: no one ever said things like that in normal situations. Normal people said things like "the road is dangerous" or "do not touch that." Ancient entities and monsters stitched together from dead voices said "the fragment walks beside you," then left everyone involved with enough existential problems for an entire lifetime.

The worst part was that the phrase made sense in a way he did not want to admit. Ever since he had awakened in that place, Damon had felt something inside him reacting to the environment. Not like a technique, nor like borrowed energy. It was more intimate than that. Deeper. As if part of his existence had been written with ink too ancient to belong to him, and that world was merely revealing the letters beneath the ice.

Xue Lian did not look back. She continued forward with the same careful elegance as before, but Damon could already perceive the price of each movement. The skin near her right wrist remained cracked, crystallized in small lines slowly climbing beneath the sleeve of her white hanfu. The ice on her neck had also advanced a little farther, forming a translucent layer along the side of her jaw. If she felt pain, she did not show it. That did not make the situation better. It made it worse.

"You are getting slower," Damon said, breaking the silence after long minutes.

"I am dying," Xue Lian replied, without changing her pace. "That normally harms performance."

"You use that answer too often."

"It continues to be useful."

"Useful does not mean reassuring."

"I was not trained to reassure people."

"That is shocking."

She turned her face just enough to cast him a sideways glance. For a moment, it almost seemed as if she would smile, but the expression disappeared before it could fully be born. "You should use less sarcasm when facing phenomena capable of devouring your soul."

"That is exactly when sarcasm becomes most necessary."

"That is a suicidal belief."

"I have several."

"I noticed."

The brief exchange did not dissolve the tension, but it made the air a little less suffocating. Damon realized Xue Lian had done it on purpose or, at the very least, allowed it to happen. The woman was difficult to decipher, but not insensitive. She hid concern behind dryness, fear behind analysis, and pain behind humor so dry it could probably be used to preserve corpses in winter.

They advanced through an area where the snow was beginning to harden, almost becoming glass. With each step, Damon saw his own distorted reflection on the frozen surface. Long white hair reaching the base of his back, skin far too pale, eyes colder than they should be. It took him a few seconds to recognize his own image. That was not exactly the Damon he knew. Or perhaps it was the Damon he was becoming, which was an even less pleasant possibility.

"Is this appearance permanent?" he asked, touching a strand of his own hair.

Xue Lian observed him briefly. "Probably."

"You did not even try to pretend there was uncertainty."

"Pretending uncertainty wastes time."

"My hair turned white and grew dramatically while I was in a coma. This requires some kind of mourning ceremony."

"Hair grows."

"Not like this."

"Children complain about small things."

Damon pointed at her with an offended expression. "You know that when someone calls an adult a child repeatedly, it loses its charm very quickly."

"It was not charm."

"Then it was an insult."

"It was accuracy."

"You are awful."

"I am accurate."

"That is exactly what awful people say."

This time, Xue Lian truly laughed. Not for long, but the sound crossed the snow like something unexpectedly alive. Damon realized he liked that sound, which was inconvenient, considering she could still kill him with two fingers and perhaps one bad-tempered thought. Even so, there was something comforting about hearing laughter in that dead world. It was a small violation of that place’s rules.

The laughter ended when the fortress on the horizon seemed to suddenly draw closer. Not physically, perhaps. Space there did not obey common concepts very well. Even so, the black towers became sharper, the suspended arches more visible, the walls more detailed. Damon saw frozen banners hanging from impossibly tall structures, but there was no fabric in them. They were made of dark ice, trapped in the shapes of wind. Ancient symbols were carved across their surfaces, changing whenever he tried to observe them directly.

"Was that place yours?" Damon asked.

Xue Lian kept looking ahead. "It was."

The simple answer carried a strange weight.

"Was it your fortress?"

"It was my palace, my prison, my temple, and my unfinished tomb. It depends on who was telling the story."

"You have a worrying talent for turning simple answers into tragedies."

"And you have a worrying talent for making comments on the edge of death."

"It is a family gift."

She looked at him again. "You speak of your family too lightly."

Damon took a while to answer. The question had not been direct, but it struck something sensitive. The voices from the rift still echoed somewhere in his mind, trying to use dead memories as hooks. He did not want to offer that thing more material. At the same time, hiding everything from Xue Lian felt useless. She saw too much.

"I speak lightly because the alternative is too heavy," he finally replied.

Xue Lian did not mock him. She made no comment. She only nodded, and that small gesture seemed more respectful than any elaborate condolence. Damon silently thanked her for not pressing further. There was something strange about that woman: she was brutally direct with cosmic matters, yet careful with human pain when it truly mattered. Perhaps because she knew that territory far too well.

The hardened snow gave way to a plain of transparent ice. Beneath the surface, Damon saw motionless shadows, long twisted forms imprisoned in bluish depths. Some looked like roots. Others looked like bones. One, particularly large, resembled the spine of some colossal creature that had died there before mountains existed. He decided not to ask. Then he thought better of it, because apparently he did not learn.

"Is this natural?"

"No."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Yes."

"Is it going to try to kill us?"

"Everything here tries to kill us. Some things are simply more patient."

Damon took a deep breath. "I miss simple corridors, with simple traps and simple assassins."

"You have a strange life."

"You have no idea."

Xue Lian stopped before a narrow fissure in the surface of the ice. The crack emitted a very faint blue light, almost buried beneath layers of crystal. She crouched with difficulty, touched the edge with two fingers, and closed her eyes. Damon saw her expression tighten. Not from surprise. From confirmation.

"He contaminated the path," she said.

Damon slowly approached. "The same man the world should have forgotten?"

"Yes."

"Does he have a name?"

Xue Lian’s hand remained on the fissure. "He had many. The last was Han Qirong."

The name seemed to enter the air like a thin blade. The snow around them grew heavier, and a few black cracks briefly appeared beneath the surface before vanishing. Damon did not like that. He did not like the name, did not like the world’s reaction, and definitely did not like the way Xue Lian pronounced those syllables, as if she were spitting out something poisonous without moving her mouth.

"Was he from the Heavenly Cult?"

"He was my martial brother."

That made Damon stop.

Not from fear.

From sudden understanding.

"Ah."

"That answer is insufficient."

"I was trying not to say something stupid."

"Keep trying."

Damon looked at the distant fortress, then at the crack beneath her fingers. "He betrayed you."

"Yes."

"Because of the flower?"

"Not only."

Xue Lian rose slowly, and Damon realized the movement cost her more than she wanted to admit. By instinct, he almost reached out to help her, but remembered she would probably turn that gesture into a lesson about childish arrogance. Or accept it in silence, which might be worse. So he kept his hand at his side and pretended he had not noticed her weakness.

She noticed anyway.

"You are learning."

"Am I?"

"You almost tried to help."

"And that would be bad?"

"It would be kind."

"Terrible."

"Exactly."

Damon let out a low laugh, but it disappeared quickly when Xue Lian pointed at the frozen surface. The blue light beneath the ice began to move, forming lines that resembled a map. Ancient paths emerged, some glowing cleanly, others overtaken by black veins. All the routes converged toward the fortress. One of them, however, led toward a distant depression between two smaller mountains, where five symbols shone like petals.

"The Five Heavens Ice Flower is there?" Damon asked.

"Or an imitation of it."

"Can you tell the difference?"

"When we are close."

"That answer comes a little late for avoiding traps."

"Yes."

He looked at her. "You really are planning to go anyway."

"Yes."

"Even knowing Han Qirong wants exactly that."

"Yes."

"You realize that sounds like willingly entering the mouth of a beast?"

"If the root is in the beast’s throat, I will still need to enter."

Damon fell silent for a few seconds, because that was an extremely good and extremely bad answer at the same time. He was beginning to understand Xue Lian in a dangerous way. She was not reckless like him. Not exactly. His recklessness was born from impulse, anger, need, or sheer inability to stand still when something had to be done. Hers was colder. More calculated. She knew she was walking into a trap and accepted it because every alternative was worse.

"You said he found the flower before you," Damon said. "Then why did he not use it?"

Xue Lian looked at the five symbols beneath the ice. "Because perhaps it does not save every life."

Damon frowned. "You said the root contains life essence."

"It does."

"Then?"

"Life is not goodness. Life is not healing. Life is the strength to continue existing, even when something should end."

The explanation passed through Damon with discomfort. He thought of his own body in the real world, frozen, destroyed, fighting against death with an energy that perhaps did not know how to distinguish survival from transformation. He thought of Ester trying to unblock his veins. He thought of Elizabeth saying that he was still fighting. Even without knowing it consciously, some part of him knew. Some part of him was clinging to existence with nails, teeth, and ice.

"So the flower could save you," he said slowly. "Or turn you into something that should not remain alive."

"Yes."

"And you searched for it for ten years anyway."

"Yes."

Damon stared at her for a long moment. "You are much more like me than you would like to admit."

Xue Lian looked at him with a deeply offended expression. "Take that back."

"No."

"I am refined."

"You are walking into a trap because you refuse to die."

"That proves nothing."

"It proves quite a bit."

"You are irritating."

"I hear that often."

She narrowed her eyes, and for an instant Damon had the impression she might freeze him purely on principle. Instead, Xue Lian turned and began walking in the direction indicated by the five symbols beneath the ice. The map disappeared behind her, as if it had never existed.

They followed an almost invisible trail between tilted crystalline formations. The sky above began to change for the first time since Damon had arrived. Not much. Just enough for the absolute white to gain a deep, heavy blue tone. The feeling of being watched increased. It no longer came only from the fortress. It came from the ground, the mountains, the air, and perhaps even the shadows imprisoned beneath the ice.

Damon tried to focus on his own breathing, as Xue Lian had instructed. Inhale without holding. Exhale without yielding to the voices. It was harder than it sounded. Every few steps, whispers returned in low layers, trying to form familiar names. Some belonged to the dead. Others to the living.

Elizabeth.

Morgana.

Ester.

Cherry.

Cherry’s name came accompanied by a melodramatic voice complaining that dying inside a frozen memory would be terrible for the group’s reputation, and Damon almost smiled despite the situation.

Xue Lian noticed. "Are the voices trying to manipulate you?"

"Yes."

"And you are smiling?"

"One of them chose the wrong person to haunt me with."

"Is that good?"

"Depends. If an ancient entity tries to imitate Cherry for too long, it will probably give up on existence."

Xue Lian stayed silent for a few seconds, absorbing that. "I want to meet this person."

"You do not."

"Now I want to even more."

"That is the first mistake."

For the first time since the rift, she smiled for real. Small, tired, but real. The smile disappeared when a new vibration passed through the ground. This time, it did not come from the crater’s direction. It came from the path ahead. The five blue symbols briefly shone beneath the snow and then went out, one by one, like candles being smothered.

Xue Lian stopped.

So did Damon.

Ahead of them, the snow began to rise by itself. First in small mounds, then in columns, then in incomplete human forms. Bodies of white ice emerged from the plain, dozens of them, all faceless, all with black marks on their chests. They were not like the creature from the rift. They seemed like soldiers hastily shaped by a distant will.

Damon let out a tired sigh.

"I knew the walk had been too peaceful."

Xue Lian raised her hand, and an ice sword appeared in her fingers. "They are not the problem."

"Naturally. Why would the army of faceless puppets be the problem?"

She pointed beyond them, where a dark silhouette began to appear atop a crystalline formation. This time, the figure was human. Tall, dressed in ancient robes, with black hair moving despite the absence of wind. Damon could not see his face, but he immediately felt that the presence was watching only Xue Lian.

The voice that came from there was calm.

Almost affectionate.

"Shimei, you finally brought the key."

Damon looked at Xue Lian.

Her expression had become completely still.

But the world around them froze deeper.

So deep that even the silence seemed to crack.