Michael's breath caught, the world narrowing to a thin, trembling line. His knees buckled, slamming into the frost-bitten earth. The last of his strength fled his body in a cold rush, leaving him hollow, weightless, like a soul untethered.

Tears slid down his cheeks, warm at first, then chilling instantly in the frozen air. Each drop hit the ground with a delicate crack, like glass breaking under silence. The air wavered behind him, rippling outward in concentric waves, distorting the world as though reality itself recoiled.

A shadow fell across his back. And then the voice, low, intimate, monstrous, unfurled behind his ear: "Found you."

Michael froze. Every instinct he possessed, every honed reflex, every shard of training, collapsed beneath the weight of that single whisper. His breath shuddered in his chest, refusing to move, as if the sound alone had stolen the air from his lungs.

Something cold and impossibly heavy brushed the back of his neck. Not a touch. A presence.

The ground beneath him cracked in spiderweb patterns as his power buckled under the pressure. Frost twisted and warped, recoiling from the space the demon occupied, as though even ice refused to exist near it.

Slowly, agonizingly, Michael turned his head. The demon stood behind him, towering like a monument carved from night, its eyes simmering with amusement and hunger.

"Running out of tricks," it murmured, breath ghosting across his ear. "Good. Now I get to break you properly."

The demon's clawed hand drifted upward, not touching him, simply hovering, yet the weight of it pressed down on Michael's spine like a collapsing star. His pulse thrashed wildly, a frantic drum in a body that no longer felt like his own.

He tried to summon ice. Nothing answered. He reached for shadow, only silence. The demon cut that last thread of control with a single chuckle.

"Look at you," it whispered, savoring each word. "All that fury. All that grief. And still…" Its eyes narrowed, burning with cruel delight. "…you kneel."

The world tilted. Michael's vision flickered, swimming between clarity and oblivion. Every exhale tasted of iron. Every inhale burned like frostbite in his lungs. His fingers dug into the earth, desperate for something, anything, to anchor him.

"I'm not done," he rasped.

The demon leaned closer, its presence swallowing the light around them. "You were done the moment he fell."

Michael's breath hitched. Zane's broken body flashed across his mind, the limp figure, the blood, the silence. Something inside him twisted, cracked, threatened to snap.

The demon watched that fracture with rapture, tilting its head. "Yes," it breathed. "That's the sound I wanted."

Michael's hands trembled. A shard of ice flickered at his fingertips, pathetic, unstable, but alive. The demon's smile thinned.

"Oh? Still crawling?" It lifted one obsidian claw and tapped the air. "Let me help you lie down."

The atmosphere imploded with a deafening boom.Michael was wrenched backward, slammed into the ice-coated ground with force that split stone.

The crater swallowed him whole. The demon stepped to the edge, peering down like a god inspecting a broken offering.

"Again," it said softly. "Get up, Michael."

Michael coughed, snow and ice scattering from his cracked lips, but he obeyed. He forced himself upright, every fiber of his being screaming against it.

The frozen ground bit into his palms; jagged shards cut through his skin, but he didn't care. Pain was a whisper compared to the presence looming above him.

The demon's shadow stretched across the crater like nightfall made tangible, black and suffocating. Every breath Michael drew was an effort, each inhale tasting of ash and steel.

"You keep rising," the demon said, almost amused, almost tender, like it was praising a pet it had already broken. "Do you think that matters?"

Michael's eyes flickered with ice and shadow, weak at first, then burning brighter, fueled by rage and grief. "It… does," he growled, voice raw, trembling. "I… won't…"

The demon tilted its head, the air around it warping, vibrating with a quiet hum of destruction. "You won't?" It whispered, and in that whisper, a thousand screams echoed in Michael's ears. "You can't."

A tremor ran through the crater, splintering ice and stone. Shadows writhed across the edges, drawn toward the demon as if alive, yet Michael felt a pulse beneath it all, his pulse, defiant, fragile, and screaming.

He gritted his teeth. A shard of ice, jagged and trembling, erupted from the frozen ground at his feet. Shadows coiled around it, flickering and faltering, but together they formed a crude blade. Not powerful, not yet, but it was his.

The demon's grin returned, sharp as razors. "Ah… you still fight."

Michael rose fully, holding the fractured ice-shadow blade before him, trembling but unbowed. The wind howled, the crater shivering under their presence.

"For him," Michael whispered through cracked lips.

The demon tilted its head. "Then let us see if that word is stronger than death itself."

Michael tightened his grip on the jagged blade. Frost licked up his arms, shadows twisting in frantic spirals around him, feeding on the pulse of his anger, his grief, his refusal to break. The fractured weapon trembled, not yet whole, but it was enough.

The demon's eyes glowed deeper, crimson flames flickering against the obsidian darkness of its skin. Every movement it made caused the shadows around it to ripple like water disturbed by a storm.

Its grin had returned, razor-sharp and patient, but this time it carried an edge of curiosity, as if intrigued by the ember of defiance still burning within Michael.

"You cling to it," the demon said, voice low, almost intimate. "That sliver of hope, that shard of grief. Tell me, how long before it shatters?"

Michael's voice was raw, hoarse, but steady. "Not today. I won't let it break today. I don't care if I die, you're doing down with me."

The words seemed to amuse the demon. It leaned forward, filling the crater with its massive presence. The ice and shadow around Michael writhed, drawn to the demon.

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