The simple question did not receive a simple answer.

The open door in the black mountain began to breathe.

There was no other word to describe it. The immense luminous arch, formed between towers that rearranged themselves like the bones of a divine corpse, expanded and contracted in slow pulses. With each expansion, a layer of deep blue sky appeared beyond the passage. With each contraction, that blue was swallowed by white shadows, as though frozen clouds were trying to seal again what had been awakened. The sound produced was not wind, thunder, or stone breaking. It was something lower, more organic, like the heart of an ancient creature beating inside the mountain.

Damon kept his sword raised, although his left arm remained numb almost to the shoulder. The spiritual ice that had climbed up his fingers had not completely disappeared, and every attempt to move his hand caused small luminous cracks beneath the skin. It was not exactly pain. It was worse. It was the sensation that his body, even inside that memory, was beginning to remember far too precisely the destroyed state it was in within the real world. He hated the idea that even his consciousness could be freezing from the inside.

Xue Lian also watched the passage, but her face remained so still it seemed carved from the same ice as the plain. The only evidence of her tension was in the sword, whose blade vibrated silently between her fingers. The ice covering her right arm had reached her shoulder, turning part of the white sleeve into a crystallized shell. Even so, she remained standing before Han Qirong as if she were still invincible, and perhaps that was her greatest lie.

Han Qirong slowly walked toward the passage, while the kneeling soldiers around him remained motionless. The five lights behind him aligned into a vertical formation, each blue point corresponding to one of the visible layers inside the portal. He seemed far too satisfied. Not euphoric, not anxious, merely serenely convinced that everything was proceeding according to an ancient prediction only he knew.

"You are not crossing," Xue Lian said.

Han Qirong stopped, turning half his face toward her. "Still giving orders to reality, Shimei?"

"Not to reality. To you."

"That requires authority."

"I have a sword."

"You always confused threat with argument."

Damon took a deep breath, trying not to look at the symbols burning around the passage. "Personally, I find the sword to be a rather convincing argument."

Han Qirong looked at him with faint interest. "You continue trying to turn fear into noise."

"And you continue trying to turn trauma into architecture."

Xue Lian glanced sideways at Damon, and for an instant she seemed genuinely surprised. "That was good."

"Thank you."

"Do not get used to it."

"Of course. Receiving emotional support would be dangerous."

Han Qirong let out a low laugh, but there was no humor in it. "You use levity as if it could stop the inevitable."

"It does not," Damon replied. "But it irritates people like you. That already has strategic value."

Han Qirong’s expression changed very little, but the void around him rippled again. Damon realized it had struck him, not deeply, but enough to create a tiny flaw in his serenity. Perhaps ancient and corrupted beings disliked being reduced to irritable people. It was a small discovery, but a satisfying one. If he survived, maybe he would turn it into a technique.

Xue Lian advanced one step. The ice beneath her feet spread in a white line that interrupted the black cracks coming from the passage. "Damon, listen. The door needs two halves to remain open. As long as we are close, it will continue stabilizing. If one of us moves away, the path weakens."

"One of us?"

"Do not make this strange."

"You included my fragment in the feminine category?"

"I included your relevance within my patience. Do not test either."

"Understood."

Han Qirong raised a hand, and the five lights pulsed. The symbol beneath Damon’s heart responded so violently that he staggered. Xue Lian extended her free hand and held his shoulder before he could fall, but the contact made the ice on her arm crack. She did not retreat. Damon noticed, and for some reason, that irritated him more than if she had simply let him fall.

"Stop using energy on me," he said through his teeth.

"Stop needing it."

"I am trying."

"Failing."

"You are terrible with patients."

"You are terrible at being patient."

She released him only when she was sure he could stand on his own. The passage in the mountain kept pulsing, and now something could be seen beyond the five layers of sky. It was not a complete landscape, only fragments: a suspended garden covered in blue ice, giant roots crossing clouds, frozen rivers flowing upward, and white petals floating around a central light. The Five Heavens Ice Flower did not look like a plant. It looked like a natural phenomenon that had decided to imitate a flower so lesser minds could understand it.

Damon felt a strange tightness in his chest when he saw it. Part of him wanted to move forward. Not by his own will, but because the root was calling to the fragment inside him with terrifying gentleness. It promised stability. Promised life. Promised that the ice in his veins could stop being death and become form. That was the most dangerous part. It did not feel like a threat. It felt like a solution.

"Do not trust that feeling," Xue Lian said, as if reading his thoughts.

"It feels... peaceful."

"Exactly."

"Is that bad?"

"Everything that promises peace without demanding truth is lying."

Damon looked at her, and this time he found no irony in her eyes. Only experience. The sentence was not an abstract lesson. It was a scar turned into advice. He nodded slowly, forcing himself to breathe as he shifted his attention away from the central light behind the passage.

Han Qirong seemed pleased with the reaction. "She still teaches well, does she not? Even broken, she can still turn fear into discipline."

Xue Lian pointed the sword at him. "You talk too much for someone who wanted to cross a door."

"I am waiting."

"For what?"

"For you."

The answer fell between them like a blade.

Damon immediately felt he had understood something too late. Han Qirong had not forced them to open the passage merely so he could enter alone. He needed them to cross. He needed both halves close on the other side, or perhaps needed one of them to take the root in order to complete something he had not yet revealed.

"He cannot touch the flower," Damon said slowly.

Xue Lian did not take her eyes off Han Qirong. "Not directly."

"Because his body is void."

"Yes."

"So he needs someone with a Pure Ice Heart to do it for him."

"Yes."

Damon let out a humorless laugh. "Excellent. We are back to my favorite role: mystical utensil."

Han Qirong turned fully toward them. "You simplify out of resentment, but you are not wrong."

"I would rather be."

"Of course. Truth is rarely comfortable."

Xue Lian breathed deeply, and a thin layer of ice spread through the air around her. "If you need us to touch the root, then we can still refuse."

Han Qirong smiled. "You can. He cannot."

Damon felt the sentence before he understood it. The symbol beneath his heart glowed again, and the world around him tilted. Not physically, but spiritually. The passage pulled his consciousness like an invisible chain, and his feet slid a few centimeters across the ice without him moving. He drove his sword into the ground, trying to resist, but the force did not grip his body. It gripped something deeper.

Xue Lian grabbed his arm.

This time, the crystallization in her advanced immediately.

"Let go," Damon said, forcing his voice while trying to keep his balance.

"No."

"You are going to freeze completely."

"Perhaps."

"That is not a strategy."

"It is a choice."

Han Qirong watched them both in silence, and there was something almost sad in his expression. "You always choose to break yourself for people who do not understand the cost."

"He understands enough."

"He understands nothing."

Damon clenched his teeth as the pull increased. Voices began to emerge again, but now they did not come from the ground or the rift. They came from the passage. Some pleaded. Others sang. Others called his name with a tenderness so false it made him want to vomit. The flower’s light shone brighter and brighter, and for an instant, he saw his bed in the real world, Ester bent over his back, Elizabeth standing beside him, Morgana farther away with tired eyes. He did not know whether it was memory, vision, or manipulation. Even so, it hurt.

"They are trying to show me the real world," he said, breathless.

Xue Lian narrowed her eyes. "What do you see?"

"People trying to keep me alive."

"Then use that."

"How?"

"As an anchor. Not as a weakness."

The sentence passed through Damon with unexpected clarity. The voices were trying to turn those faces into guilt, haste, desperation. They were trying to make him believe he had to accept any promise of life in order to return. But the people on the other side were not asking him to surrender. Ester would not spend six days destroying her own body only for him to hand his soul to the first suspicious flower. Elizabeth would not sell Morgana’s last resource to buy him a chance only to see him become the key of an ancestral lunatic. Cherry would probably make an offensive comment about him being bad even at serving as a mystical object.

That helped more than it should have.

Damon breathed.

Correctly this time.

The pull weakened.

It did not disappear, but it became weak enough for him to remain steady. The light beneath his heart still burned, but it began pulsing in a different rhythm, less obedient to the passage and closer to his own heartbeat. Xue Lian noticed first. So did Han Qirong.

His smile disappeared.

"Interesting," Damon said, with a tired smile. "I think my tendency not to follow instructions also works against monsters."

Xue Lian slowly released his arm. Her hand trembled, but her expression carried faint satisfaction. "Finally, a useful flaw."

"I am moved again."

"Control yourself."

Han Qirong raised his hand, and all the remaining soldiers dissolved into black snow. It was not surrender. It was concentration. All the energy previously spread among the creatures returned to him, wrapping his body in layers of void that distorted sight. The five lights behind him slowly rotated, aligning with the crystal on his forehead.

"If you will not come by calling," he said, "you will come by rupture."

Xue Lian moved her sword forward. "Damon, when I attack, cut the lowest light."

"Which one is the lowest?"

"The first."

"They are all floating in mystical formation. That is not didactic."

"The one that tries to speak to you using the voice of someone loved."

Damon looked at the five lights, and immediately one of them pulsed with a voice that sounded like Elizabeth saying his name. His face hardened. "Understood."

Han Qirong advanced.

The void around him swallowed the distance.

Xue Lian met the attack halfway.

The impact between them did not create an ordinary explosion. It produced absolute winter and total absence colliding like opposing principles. Half the plain turned white, so cold even light seemed to crystallize. The other half turned black, so empty the snow vanished before touching the ground. Damon was thrown backward, but managed to regain his balance and ran toward the five lights.

The first light whispered again.

"Damon."

The voice was perfect.

Almost too perfect.

He felt his throat tighten, but he did not slow down.

"You need to come back."

For an instant, the light showed Elizabeth smiling sadly, extending her hand to him through a frozen surface. The image was cruelly convincing. Damon almost stopped. Then he remembered the real Elizabeth touching Ester’s back, keeping her voice steady even with fear in her eyes. The real Elizabeth would never ask him to obey a suspicious light inside an ancestral memory. She would call it an idiotic idea with aristocratic elegance.

Damon smiled.

"Weak imitation."

He struck.

Not only with the sword. With Qi, with will, and with the brutal refusal to accept a lie dressed as salvation. The white blade passed through the first light, and the blue point shattered like glass under pressure. A scream crossed the frozen world. Not Elizabeth’s. Not anyone alive. A collective, ancient, furious scream.

The passage wavered.

Han Qirong turned his face, and Xue Lian used the opening. Her sword passed through his chest, emerging from his back in an explosion of black crystals. For a second, Damon thought it was over. Then Han Qirong grabbed the blade with one hand and smiled as dark blood ran down his lips.

"You taught too well," he said.

Xue Lian tried to pull the sword free.

She could not.

Void climbed up the blade and reached her fingers.

Damon started running back, but the second light glowed behind him, brighter, more desperate. The passage tried to stabilize again. Han Qirong opened his wounded chest, and inside there were no organs, only a small white root pulsing within the void.

Xue Lian went still.

Damon saw it too.

"You already used the root," she said, and her voice sounded quieter than any storm.

Han Qirong smiled.

"No. I became its vessel."

The white root pulsed.

And the ice on Xue Lian’s body began to bloom.