The two Adepts behind Isaac did not look back. They did not even draw their swords. They simply moved with a rigid, practiced rhythm toward the iron elevators at the rear of the Cathedral. They carried the keys they had secured from the Rank 4 Sentinel. To them, the Calamities were not a threat worth stalling for. They were a task to be delegated to their betters.

Vane watched them go out of the corner of his eye. He did not chase. He knew that the moment he turned his back on Isaac, the air in his lungs would turn to shards of ice. The trade was being offered. Isaac and Lyra would hold the center, while the support staff ensured the ranking. It was a display of absolute confidence that bordered on a psychological attack.

"They are leaving, Vane," Ashe hissed, her white hair whipping in the freezing wind. "We are being ignored. I am going to tear those shields into scrap metal."

"Stay on the Monarch," Vane commanded, his voice sharp and cold. "If you break formation, Lyra will pin you in a heartbeat. Valerica, the ceiling. Isole, the pulse. We go now."

Vane triggered his internal mechanics.

[Skill: Internal Pulse, Grade B]

His blood surged. The heat of his silver mana acted as a buffer against the frost that was trying to crystallize on his skin. In the First Practical, he had barely been able to stand in Isaac's presence. Now, he was moving before the frost could settle. He hit the ground running, his feet barely touching the ice-coated grates.

Beside him, Ashe and Valerica moved in perfect sync. This was the result of the countless hours of training in the villa. Vane was no longer the anchor slowing them down. He was the conductor.

Valerica didn't flare her mana outward. She focused it into a singular, high-density point above Isaac's head.

[Skill: Event Horizon, Grade S]

The air in the center of the room groaned. A sphere of distorted space manifested, the gravity so intense that it pulled the steam from the pipes in a violent spiral. The frozen golem beneath Isaac's feet began to crack, the heavy bronze shrieking as it was crushed into the floor. It was a strike that would have flattened a Rank 4 squad instantly.

Isaac didn't look up. He didn't even raise a hand to shield himself. He simply exhaled. A pillar of white, conceptual frost erupted from his body. It did not push the gravity away. It froze the very air molecules that were being manipulated. The gravity didn't disappear, but the medium through which it worked was paralyzed.

"Inefficient," Isaac noted.

Lyra moved then. She stepped to the left of the Monarch, her blizzard-white hair flowing in a halo of mana. She swept her hand across the air, and a curtain of diamond dust formed between the two squads.

[Skill: Niflheim's Shroud, Grade A]

The diamond dust was not just ice. It was a sensory network of microscopic shards. Vane felt his vision blur as the shards reflected the blue light of the Cathedral, creating thousands of false afterimages of Lyra and Isaac.

'It is a hall of mirrors,' Vane thought, his mind racing through the geometry of the room. 'She is hiding their true coordinates.'

"Ashe, three o'clock! Valerica, anchor the floor!" Vane shouted.

Ashe blurred into her Flash Arts. She didn't aim for where Isaac was standing. She aimed for the reflection. Her tekko kagi slashed through the diamond dust, the obsidian blades singing. But she didn't hit a mirror. She hit a solid wall of frost that Lyra had manifested in the millisecond before impact.

Vane lunged through the center. He didn't use the Silver Fang yet. He used the Argent Horizon to navigate the prismatic reflections. He closed his eyes, relying on the vibration of the iron floor through his boots. He felt the cold. The real cold was not the mirrors. The real cold was the silent void ten meters ahead.

He thrust his spear into the empty air. The star-steel tip connected with a barrier of absolute-zero ice.

Isaac finally looked at him. There was a faint glimmer of recognition in the Monarch's eyes. He saw that Vane had not been fooled by Lyra's shroud. He saw that the commoner had calculated the true position through pure sensory logic.

"Better," Isaac said.

Isaac tapped his finger against the air. A shockwave of frost exploded from the contact point. Vane felt the vibration travel through his spear, threatening to shatter the ash-wood shaft. He triggered a counter-pulse of silver mana, the Usurper authority fighting to keep his weapon from turning into glass.

"Isole, now!" Vane yelled.

Isole slammed her staff into the floor. She had been silent until now, weaving the holy and dark threads of her Samsara into a specialized trap.

[Skill: Shadow Bind, Grade A]

Dark tendrils did not come from the floor this time. They erupted from the very shadows cast by the frozen gears above. They coiled around Lyra's arms and throat, leaching her mana. Lyra gasped, her diamond dust shroud flickering for a fraction of a second.

This was the opening. Ashe didn't miss it. She pivoted in mid-air, her white hair trailing like a comet's tail.

[Skill: Weapon Communion, Grade S]

She slammed her claws into the frost-barrier Isaac had built to protect Lyra. The metal of her tekko kagi was pushed to its theoretical limit, the obsidian blades glowing with a white-hot friction. The barrier didn't just break; it shattered into a million pieces.

For a moment, the Monarch was exposed.

Vane, Ashe, and Valerica converged on Isaac from three different angles. It was a masterpiece of squad-level coordination. Valerica intensified the gravity on Isaac's feet. Ashe launched a supersonic strike at his throat. Vane thrust his spear toward Isaac's chest, the silver mana of the Silver Fang humming with a high-frequency roar.

Isaac stood in the center of the storm. He looked at the three strikes closing in. He didn't look afraid. He looked bored.

'Is this his limit?' Vane wondered, his heart hammering. 'We have him pinned.'

But then, the temperature in the room didn't just drop. It ceased to exist.

Isaac didn't move his hands. He didn't chant. He simply willed the world to be still. A dome of absolute-zero frost expanded from his heart, moving so fast that it bypassed the laws of kinetic energy.

Ashe was thrown back by the sheer density of the cold. Her Flash Arts were neutralized as the air itself became too thick to move through. Valerica's gravity well was extinguished, the violet mana snuffed out like a candle in a blizzard.

Vane felt the cold hit his spear. The star-steel, which had survived the ruins of Oakhaven, began to crack. He pulled back just in time, his hands numb and his breath coming in ragged, white plumes.

They were all thrown back five meters, sliding across the frozen iron grates. They were panting, their mana channels screaming from the sudden thermal shock.

Isaac remained in the center of the room. He had not moved from his original spot. He had not even broken his regal posture. But the atmosphere around him had changed. The casual, detached interest was gone.

"You have managed to touch the perimeter of my focus," Isaac noted. He looked at Lyra, who was breathing heavily after breaking Isole's shadow bind. "It seems the rat has indeed grown teeth. You are no longer just noise, Vane. You are a variable that requires a more precise solution."

Isaac closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the ice-blue light was gone. They were a flat, terrifying white.

The steam pipes in the Cathedral didn't just freeze this time. They imploded. The metal itself began to contract, the iron turning brittle and grey as Isaac began to draw the thermal energy from the entire sector into his own palm.

"I will show you the difference between a squad that fights for a ranking," Isaac said, his voice dropping into a register that made the floor vibrate. "And a Monarch who dictates the winter."

The air in the Cathedral began to crystallize into massive, jagged pillars of ice that rose from the floor like the teeth of a leviathan. Isaac took a step forward. This time, the frost did not follow him. He led the frost.

Vane gripped his spear, the wood groaning in his hands. He could feel the shift. Isaac was no longer testing them. He was preparing to end them.

"Get ready," Vane whispered to his team, his voice shaking from the cold. "He's not playing anymore."

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