The heavy iron doors of the elevator had finally sealed, leaving Vane in a tomb of ice and silence. He did not look back. Every scrap of his focus was pinned on the figure standing ten meters away. Isaac Glacium was no longer looking at the exit where the other three members of Team 5 had escaped. He was looking at Vane's spear. Specifically, he was watching the way the silver mana was beginning to bead along the star-steel edge like liquid mercury, shimmering with a frequency that made the air around the blade blur.

Vane took a shallow, controlled breath. The air was so cold it felt like swallowing shards of glass, but his lungs did not seize as they once might have. He had come a long way from the boy who had watched his life burn in the mud of Oakhaven. He was no longer a victim of the world's physics. He was learning to dictate them.

He triggered the mechanism he had spent months refining in the darkness of the Old Gymnasium.

[Skill: Internal Pulse, Grade B]

His heart hammered a heavy, metallic rhythm that echoed in his ears. He forced the silver mana into his skeletal structure, creating a biological buffer against the crushing pressure of Isaac's aura. He did not just feel the silver mana anymore. He heard it. It was a high-frequency hum that vibrated through his marrow, a structural resonance that refused to let the surrounding environment dictate the state of his body.

Isaac stood still, his silver hair unmoving in the stagnant air. "You have changed the way you breathe, Vane. Most elites try to fight the cold by burning more mana. They try to out-heat the winter. You are doing something else. You are vibrating at a frequency the winter cannot catch."

Vane did not answer. Words were a waste of oxygen he needed for the internal furnace. He shifted his weight, his boots cutting through the thick frost on the floor with a sharp, calculated rasp. He was using the Argent Horizon logic, but the physical vectors were being overtaken by the mystical quality of the mana he had inherited from Senna.

[Argent Horizon, 1st Form: Quicksilver Thrust]

Vane moved. He did not lunge with a scream or a flare of light. He simply transitioned from stillness into a supersonic vector. The star-steel spear-tip did not just move through the air. It screamed with a pitch that would have shattered common glass. When it hit the three-fold spatial barrier Isaac had raised, it did not stop.

The silver mana on the tip vibrated with a frequency so intense that it disrupted the rigid folds of Isaac's spatial magic. The barrier did not just bend. It shattered with a sound like a thousand windows breaking simultaneously. The fragments of distorted space glittered in the dim light before vanishing into nothingness.

Isaac's eyes widened. He flickered to the left, his boots barely touching the metal grates as he used a localized spatial jump. He did not just stand there to be struck. He swept his hand in a wide, fluid arc, and the black ice on the floor rose in jagged, horizontal blades. These were not mere blocks of frozen water. They were reinforced with compressed mana, each edge capable of slicing through Grade B armor.

Vane did not dodge. He knew that to retreat in this cathedral was to be hunted. He spun the spear in a tight, defensive circle, the ash-wood shaft becoming a blur.

[Argent Horizon, 2nd Form: Lunar Deflection]

The silver mana around the spear-tip created a frictionless sleeve that hummed with kinetic rejection. The black ice blades did not shatter against him. They skidded off the vibrating mana-sleeve and were sent flying into the iron walls of the Cathedral, where they embedded themselves with the force of ballista bolts. Vane did not stop the rotation. He used the momentum of the deflection to close the gap, the star-steel tip carving a silver arc through the shadows.

Isaac clapped his hands together, his expression shifting from detached observation to a sharp, predatory focus.

[Skill: Temporal Stasis]

The world stopped. The steam leaking from the overhead pipes froze in mid-air, forming static clouds of white vapor. The flickering blue lamps in the corners of the chamber became motionless icons of light. It was the absolute command of the Monarch, a localized field where time itself was locked by the sheer weight of Isaac's mana rank. Isaac stepped forward, a shard of absolute-zero ice manifesting in his palm as he aimed for the center of Vane's stationary chest.

But the silver motes around Vane's shoulders began to sparkle with a violent, jagged intensity.

The hum of the Silver Fang reached a crescendo. Vane's arm moved. It was slow and agonizing, fighting through a sea of invisible, thick tar, but it was moving. The high-frequency vibration of the silver mana was disrupting the static mana-field of the temporal stasis. Vane was not using a counter-spell. He was using a mechanical rejection of the stasis's frequency.

Vane swung the butt of the spear. It caught Isaac in the ribs just as the Monarch's own strike was inches away.

The temporal lock shattered under the impact of the silver vibration. Isaac was launched backward, his boots skidding across the ice for five meters before he slammed into a massive, frozen gear. He coughed, a thin trail of blood running from his lip, staining the silver-white of his collar.

"I see," Isaac whispered, his eyes glowing with a flat, terrifying white light that began to wash out the blue of the room. "You aren't just using Senna's power. You are refining it. You have found the seam between the physical and the mystical."

Vane did not reply. His mana was boiling, the silver light now sparkling in a stable, rhythmic orbit around his skin. He felt the memories of Senna's prime self not as images, but as a physical weight in his hands. He knew the path she had walked. He could feel the 'Door' that Isaac had spoken of. It was a threshold of power where the spear became more than a weapon. It became a decree.

He launched himself forward again.

Isaac manifested a massive, jagged pillar of ice to meet him. Vane did not go around it. He used the 3rd Form: Falling Star, spinning his entire body like a drill. The silver mana on the spear-tip screamed as it ate through the reinforced ice, turning the entire pillar to diamond dust in a single heart-beat.

Isaac lunged with a frozen blade of his own, his space-time magic flickering as he tried to find a gap in Vane's relentless rhythm.

Vane countered with a low sweep, the star-steel shaft clashing against the ice blade. The sparks were silver and blue, showering the floor in a display of raw magical friction. Vane pivoted on his heel, his boots finding purchase on the slick, frozen metal. He used the recoil of the clash to reset his center, his pulse hitting a peak that threatened to fracture his own ribs.

'Now,' Vane thought.

He saw the opening. Isaac had over-extended his spatial fold for a split second to prepare a secondary burst of frost. It was a mistake born of the Monarch's habit of fighting those who could not touch him.

Vane thrust.

It was the most perfect execution of the Quicksilver Thrust he had ever performed. The silver mana on the tip did not just vibrate. It condensed into a singular, matte-silver point that seemed to absorb all the light in the cathedral. It pierced through the final spatial barrier. It cut through the freezing gale of Isaac's aura like a needle through silk.

The star-steel tip surged forward, a silver line of absolute intent that bypassed the cold and the distance.

Isaac's eyes were wide, the flat white light in them flickering with the sudden realization of his own vulnerability. He tried to raise his hand to manifest a temporal shield, but the silver mana was already there, disrupting the magic before it could take form.

The spear-tip moved closer. Centimeters from the center of Isaac's chest plate. It was close enough to feel the cold radiation of the Monarch's heart. It was close enough that the professors were ready to intervene.

Vane's eyes burned with a silver light as the spear-tip touched the fine fabric of Isaac's uniform, the metal poised to punch through the Elite's heart.

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