The star-steel tip of Vane's spear pressed into the fine, silver-threaded fabric of Isaac's uniform. It created a microscopic ripple in the air, a distortion that threatened to unravel the Monarch's very heart. In that fraction of a second, the Iron Cathedral seemed to hold its breath. Vane's silver mana was a razor-thin line of absolute intent, vibrating with the raw rejection of the Silver Fang. The professors in the observation room were no longer watching a student evaluation: they were watching a lethal collision. Their hands hovered over the emergency termination runes, waiting for the sound of a chest plate being pierced.

But inside the stillness of that moment, Isaac Glacium was not looking at the spear. He was looking through it. He was looking at the boy holding it. A flurry of images, sharper than any frost, surged from the depths of Isaac's memory.

The Glacial Palace of Boreas stood at the zenith of the frozen world, a fortress of eternal winter where the air was so thin it tasted of starlight. Isaac remembered the day he was eight, standing in the Great Hall beneath the ribcage of a fallen frost dragon. His mother, the Queen, sat upon the Obsidian Throne. She was a Rank 9 Transcendent, a woman whose mere presence caused the moisture in the air to crystallize into geometric perfections.

"Isaac," she had said. Her voice was not cold; it was the sound of a deep, ancient hearth. She walked down the steps, her heavy silk robes trailing like a glacier. She knelt before him, her eyes, the same sapphire blue as his, softening. "Do you see the snowflakes falling outside the window?"

"I see the way they spin," Isaac had replied, his small hands curled into fists. "I see the path they take before the wind even touches them."

His mother had touched his cheek, her skin a comforting balm. "That is the curse, my light. You see the end before the beginning. You are the Sun of the North. But even the sun is alone in the sky."

The court poets would later write myths about him defeating the Elite Guard with a book in his hand, but the reality was quieter. Isaac was seven when he realized his tutors were teaching him the "alphabet" of mana while he was already composing symphonies. He would watch a Master-at-Arms execute a mana-flare, and Isaac would not see a display of power. He would see a "hiccup" in the mana-flow, a slight misalignment in the mana-veins that made the strike ten percent less efficient than it should be. He was bored because the world was a collection of slow, poorly executed movements.

He remembered a diplomatic trip to the Aurelia Empire when he was ten. He had met a young girl named Anastasia. She was the "Sun of the South," a child beloved by mana itself. The adults had watched them interact with hushed awe, expecting a clash of titans. Isaac had looked at her and felt a profound, heavy weight in his chest. Anastasia was talented, but her magic was "loud." It was a desperate roar of mana that wasted half its energy. Isaac had already stopped trying to impress anyone. He had realized that he was growing so fast that the world would eventually run out of space to hold him.

He had slowed down. He had adopted the persona of the Monarch, a mask of regal stagnation, because there was no one left to run with.

Inside the Iron Cathedral, the present rushed back. It was a sharp, cold spike of adrenaline. Vane was not a genius born of a royal bloodline. He was a genius born of a slaughterhouse. He had not learned to move with the Argent Horizon because it was his nature: he had learned it because the fire was at his heels. He was a variable that Isaac's years of "slowing down" could no longer account for.

Vane's spear-tip began to sink deeper. The silver mana was screaming, a high-frequency rejection that was eating through Isaac's internal mana-shields. Vane's face was a mask of absolute strain. Blood was running from both his nostrils. The silver motes around his shoulders were no longer just sparkling: they were burning with a steady, translucent flame.

Since Senna's death, Vane had been moving in the dark, but here, under the pressure of the Monarch, the path was lighting up. He was over-clocking his body, forcing his heart into a rhythm that he had only begun to master after leaving Oakhaven. He was pouring every drop of his life's history into this single, desperate thrust.

Isaac closed his eyes for a heartbeat. He stopped slowing down.

The thermal energy in the Iron Cathedral was deleted. The blue light of the lamps vanished, replaced by a blinding void of mana. Isaac's internal clock, which had been set to a regal crawl for years, suddenly accelerated.

The spear-tip was a millimeter from piercing Isaac's skin. The silver mana was already beginning to sever the molecular bonds of his chest plate. In that micro-second, Isaac did not use a skill he had learned from a book. He stopped being the observer.

The star-steel tip, which had been gliding through Isaac's spatial barriers like a hot knife through wax, suddenly stopped.

A layer of ice began to form on Isaac's chest. It was not the blue, brittle ice of the Labyrinth. It was a matte, obsidian-black frost that did not reflect any light. It was dense. It was heavy. It was a material that should not have existed in the physical world. Vane roared, his muscles bulging as he poured the final remnants of his mana into the Quicksilver Thrust. The silver mana of the Silver Fang intensified, the vibration becoming so violent that the iron floor beneath Vane's boots shattered into dust.

He was using the Argent Horizon to funnel the weight of his entire soul into that one-centimeter point. The silver mana lashed out against the black ice. It tried to reject it. It tried to sever the bonds of the frost. The sound was not a crash: it was a low, heavy thud that vibrated through the entire floor.

Vane's spear did not move forward another millimeter.

The silver mana hit the black frost and simply died. The high-frequency hum of the Silver Fang was swallowed by the silence of the armor. The star-steel tip, the hardest metal in existence, began to groan under the pressure. Vane stared at the contact point, his eyes wide, his pupils dilated from the shock. He could feel the feedback traveling back up the ash-wood shaft. It was a cold so absolute that it bypassed his Internal Pulse and began to freeze the marrow in his hands.

Isaac opened his eyes. The flat white light was gone. They were a deep, sapphire blue. He looked down at the spear-tip pressed against his chest. He looked at the jagged cracks forming in the star-steel.

The black ice armor was untouched. There was not a single scratch. The Silver Fang had finally met something it could not cut.

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