A few weeks had passed since Damon woke up, and the mansion had finally stopped functioning like an emergency ward. There were still guards in the hallways, servants walking far too quietly, and piles of documents in Morgana’s office, but the atmosphere was no longer that of a wake awaiting confirmation. Damon could already walk on his own, though Ester still watched him as if he were a bomb about to make a stupid decision. His physical recovery was advancing fast—too fast, even—but that didn’t mean everything was fine.

That morning, he was alone in the mansion’s garden, sitting cross-legged on the ground atop a thin layer of ice that had formed without his wanting it to. The grass around him was white, covered in tiny crystals, and some nearby flowers had withered at the edges because of the temperature. Damon looked at it with silent irritation, as it was already the third time that week he had tried to cultivate outdoors specifically to avoid freezing furniture, walls, or people.

His body was completely different.

It wasn’t just a feeling. It was something physical, practical, inconvenient. His muscles felt stiffer—not weak, but dense, as if every fiber had been reinforced from within with an icy structure. His movements had improved greatly, yet there was still a kind of new weight in every gesture, as if his body were relearning how to obey with a strength that hadn’t existed before. He could walk calmly now, climb stairs, train basic movements, and even hold a sword without looking like he would collapse.

Even so, everything remained cold.

The Qi veins were unblocked, according to Ester, but unblocked didn’t mean normal. The flow passed through them easily, yes, but it carried an absurd temperature. It was no longer the dead ice that had consumed him during his coma. It was something alive, stable, strong. That was precisely the problem. Too stable. Too present. The cold wasn’t leaking by accident. It was part of him now.

Damon took a deep breath and tried to control the flow, pulling the Qi back toward the center of his chest. The elemental root responded immediately, pulsing beneath his heart with that silent, deep sensation he still didn’t know how to properly describe. It wasn’t an organ, nor a core, nor a technique. It was a kind of new foundation, planted inside him, feeding the Celestial Ice Body and rebuilding everything that had previously been destroyed.

"Let’s go again," he whispered to himself.

He closed his eyes and concentrated the energy in the center of his body. The plan was simple in theory: make the Qi circulate without allowing the temperature to spread beyond his skin. Ester had called this "peripheral containment." Aria had called it "stop turning every hug into a climate punishment." Elizabeth had merely looked at him for two seconds after touching his hand and said he needed to resolve it quickly.

Her comment had been elegant.

The message, not so much.

Being a Primordial Incubus and a vampire already made Damon’s body different from that of any ordinary human. Before, this manifested in ways he understood: regeneration, strength, endurance, an appetite for blood, and that unsettling presence that sometimes made sensitive people react before he even spoke. Now, with the Celestial Ice Body mixed into all of that, his entire nature seemed to have changed temperature. Vampiric blood didn’t warm. The incubus lineage didn’t balance. Both parts merely endured the cold better than a normal body would.

Which was great for survival.

Terrible for socializing.

Damon opened his eyes as he remembered Aria’s expression two days earlier, when she had tried to hug him by surprise and immediately recoiled, making a face. "You’re too cold for someone who’s emotionally available," she had complained, rubbing her arms. Cherry, passing through the hallway, had suggested he put up a sign saying "do not touch without gloves." Morgana hadn’t complained, but Damon had noticed her shiver when she held his hand for too long.

That irritated him more than he cared to admit.

Not out of wounded pride.

But because there was a big difference between being powerful and being impossible to touch.

He held out one hand before him and observed his fingers. His nails were normal, his skin no longer had the sickly look of before, but bluish lines appeared beneath the surface whenever the Qi moved. Damon breathed slowly and tried to reduce the external emission, pushing the cold inward instead of letting it circulate through his skin. For a few seconds, it seemed to work. The nearby grass stopped forming new crystals.

Then a stone beside him cracked with a sharp snap.

Damon looked at the stone.

The stone was frozen down the middle.

"Great," he said. "Excellent progress. Now I’m freezing minerals."

He ran a hand through his white hair, which still irritated him by its mere existence. They had already trimmed some of the length, but it was still too long compared to how he used to wear it. Aria said it suited the new, dramatically cursed look. Ester said hair was the least of his worries. Elizabeth said it at least made him look less irresponsible, which he considered a very well-dressed indirect insult.

Damon closed his eyes again.

The real difficulty wasn’t in controlling the ice when using a technique. That, strangely, seemed easier than before. If he wanted to create a blade, freeze water, lower the temperature, or mold ice, his body responded with a frightening naturalness. The problem was the opposite. Doing nothing. Keeping everything quiet. Preventing the cold from escaping simply because it existed.

This required a kind of control he had never needed to develop.

Before, Damon thought of ice as a weapon.

Now he had to treat it like breathing.

The Qi traveled through his veins in a slow flow, and he tried to observe without interfering. Ester had insisted on this: first understand, then correct. He hated this method because it felt passive, but she was right. Whenever he tried to force the cold to retreat, his body reacted as if it were being threatened. The elemental root would harden the flow, the celestial meridians would close, and the temperature would drop even further.

So he tried another approach.

Instead of telling the ice to stop, he tried to give it a place to stay.

Damon imagined the center of his chest as a deep chamber—not a prison, but a frozen lake. The Qi could circulate there, it could remain alive, but it didn’t need to rise to the skin, it didn’t need to leak through his fingers, it didn’t need to turn the surrounding air into winter. He let the energy descend, layer by layer, guiding it into the elemental root.

For a few moments, the garden grew warmer.

Not truly warm.

Just less cold.

The layer of ice over the grass stopped expanding. The vapor of his breath diminished. The sensation of biting air around his body receded slightly. Damon opened his eyes slowly, careful not to break his concentration, and observed his own hand. The bluish lines were still there, but less bright.

"Finally."

The word came out low, almost suspicious.

He maintained the state for a few more seconds.

Then he tried to move his fingers.

The control broke immediately.

A cold wave surged from him in all directions, covering the grass, the stone bench, and half of a nearby bush with white crystals. A small bird perched on the wall let out an offended chirp and flew away. Damon stared at the damage with the blank expression of someone who had just lost an argument with their own circulatory system.

"Right," he muttered. "Don’t celebrate before moving your hand."

He took another deep breath and rested his elbows on his knees. It was still frustrating, but not useless. For the first time, he had managed to reduce the cold by his own will, even if only for a short time. That meant it was possible. Difficult, unstable, and probably humiliating for several weeks, but possible. Ester would be satisfied. She might say it was the bare minimum acceptable. Which, coming from her, would practically be a celebration.

Damon looked at the frozen bush and made a face.

"Sorry," he said to the bush.

Then he realized he was apologizing to a plant.

"I’m getting worse."

He tried to stand up, not because he wanted to stop, but because he needed to test if he could maintain the containment while moving. Standing up was easy now, at least compared to the first few days. There was still a stiffness in his knees and back, but no real pain. His body obeyed. The problem was that as soon as he stood up, the temperature dropped again, and a thin trail of ice appeared under his bare feet.

Damon looked down.

"This is extremely inconvenient."

He took a step.

The ice followed.

Another step.

More ice.

He stopped.

The ice stopped.

Damon stood still in the middle of the garden, staring at the frozen footprints he had left on the grass. It would be funny if it weren’t his life. And worse, it would probably be funny to Cherry. He could already hear her voice saying that, on the bright side, he would never have to buy ice for drinks again.

He sat back down before he destroyed anything else.

The hardest part was accepting that new power also meant new limitations. He had survived, yes. He had obtained something absurd, something that no normal training would have granted. But it wasn’t a clean reward. It wasn’t a gift delivered without cost. Xue Lian had lived centuries trying to carry that physique and had still ended up dying because of it. Damon did not intend to forget that just because he could walk now.

Her memory was still there.

Not as a constant voice.

Not as a presence dominating his mind.

But as small echoes, sometimes surfacing when he cultivated. A breath adjustment he didn’t remember learning. A clearer perception of the glacial flow. An intuition about how the Qi should bend within the celestial meridians. It was useful, but also strange. Like finding someone else’s notes written in the margins of your own soul.

Damon closed his eyes again and tried to repeat the exercise.

This time, he didn’t imagine a prison.

Nor a lake.

He thought of the cold as part of his body.

Not something to expel.

Not something to release.

Something to guide.

The elemental root pulsed slowly, almost like approval. The Qi descended to the center, circulated through the new meridians, and returned with less aggression. Damon kept his breathing steady. When the cold tried to rise to the skin, he didn’t push back with force. He simply opened another path—deeper, wider—letting the energy move without needing to escape.

The grass didn’t freeze anymore.

At least not immediately.

Damon remained motionless, counting his breaths. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. The control held. Unstable, but present. He moved a finger on his right hand. A small crystal appeared on the nail but melted instantly, without spreading to the rest of the skin.

It wasn’t perfect.

But it was better.

"There," he whispered. "Slowly."

For a few minutes, the garden was quiet.

Damon didn’t try to do anything big. He didn’t try to create a new technique, nor access Xue Lian’s memories, nor test his limits. He just breathed and held his own cold within himself, like someone holding a door against the wind. It was unheroic, undramatic, and extremely necessary. Perhaps that was exactly why it felt so difficult.

Then he heard footsteps on the stone path.

He didn’t open his eyes immediately.

He recognized the presence first.

Morgana.

She stopped a few meters away, likely observing the ice scattered around him, the partially frozen bush, and the white footprints on the grass. Damon maintained his concentration, because losing control now would be ridiculously embarrassing. After a few seconds, he heard her voice.

"Should I ask about the bush?"

Damon opened one eye.

"It provoked me."

Morgana was silent for a moment.

Then she replied with absolute seriousness: "I see. I always suspected it."

Damon looked at her.

She looked back.

And for the first time in weeks, the cold around him didn’t seem so hard to bear.