Chapter 852 - 851: Winter’s Wings

As Akaza stared at the golden eyes, he realized that the golden eyes held no ordinary pupils. A six-branched snowflake turned within each one, its white edges were sharp against the gold. Its smaller branches were divided from the larger ones in perfect symmetry.

Snow raced across the clearing, but none passed in front of those eyes. The blizzard curved around them.

Akaza stared through the gap between his raised arms. The eyes remained perfectly still while snow tore past them, and for a moment, he could not tell whether they were watching him or the entire clearing.

Virella stared upward through the roots shielding the wounded.

"Those eyes..." Her voice tightened. "How large is that thing?"

Ammor followed her gaze. His fingers clenched against the frozen stone beside him as something long and pale shifted through the whiteness.

"That is definitely not an ice statue," he muttered.

Suddenly, the remaining colour drained from his face as something enormous shifted inside the storm.

"No," he replied hoarsely. "Something is moving behind them."

Rellis lowered his gaze and followed the outline beneath the eyes.

A hooked beak suddenly emerged from the whiteness. Below it, a long neck curved toward a body that stretched far beyond the patch of sky he had been watching.

Then the wings opened.

"Oh," Rellis said quietly. "We might be fucked."

Akaza had arrived at the same conclusion because an enormous phoenix hovered behind Elara.

Four wings spread over the clearing in overlapping pairs. The upper pair carried long, translucent feathers with dark-blue spines. Beneath them, two smaller wings burned with pale, flowing light that resembled white fire.

But there was no warmth.

A feather drifted from one wing and touched a broken spear below. Frost swallowed the weapon. Its metal split with a sharp crack, and white crystals spread into the stone beneath it.

The phoenix was not simply a bird covered in ice.

Its feathers broke apart continuously, burning down into fine white ash. That ash became snow before touching the ground, while new feathers formed from the blizzard and slid into the empty spaces.

Through gaps in its breast, Akaza could see the storm turning inside it. There was no flesh beneath the beautiful plumage. Its body was a shape the ice and Aether kept making, destroying, and making again.

A swept-back crest rose above its golden eyes. Long tail feathers trailed behind it in translucent ribbons, their ends disappearing into different parts of the blizzard.

One passed through an embedded ice spear.

The spear softened into snow, joined the flowing tail, then formed again beneath the phoenix’s body as another feather.

Rathen stared at the transformation.

"Can it... even be killed?"

No one answered him.

The phoenix lowered its head, and the snowflakes inside its eyes turned toward the demons. It did not need to scream or beat its wings. The entire blizzard shifted with that small movement.

Cold pressed through their cover.

Virella felt it before she saw what was happening. The roots wrapped around the wounded stiffened beneath her control. Frost appeared along their bark, followed by a series of sharp pops as the wood split from within.

"Lift the cases!" she shouted. "Don’t let them rest against the ice!"

Rathen moved with the other two surviving combatants. Together with Ammor, they helped the four Runemasters raise their cases and draw closer behind the remaining wind.

Rellis pulled water around the cracking roots to reinforce them. However, it became cloudy halfway through the movement.

He severed the connection.

The frozen loop shattered, showering his boots with fragments. His fingers had gone numb.

"It is freezing my water before I finish shaping it," he said through clenched teeth.

He knew from the onset that Elara was a bad matchup for him.

Ammor pressed his palm against the ground. His depleted reserves stirred, but the patch of stone he tried to raise barely trembled. A thin blue vein had spread through it from below.

The cold was entering the rock itself.

Akaza looked back toward Elara.

Her icy-blue hair had turned completely white.

It floated behind her shoulders in long strands, untouched by the wind pulling at her coat. The blood beneath her nose had frozen into a dark line. She brushed it away, and frozen flakes fell from her fingertips.

Gold had replaced the pale blue of her eyes. Small snowflake-shaped pupils matched the enormous ones watching from above.

Fine white feathers formed along her temples and swept backward into her hair. More gathered over her silver armour, creating a mantle that shifted between solid crystal and pale mist. When she raised her hand, the phoenix’s lower wings moved with it.

Her staff rose from the ground and hovered beside her.

Akaza’s expression became grave.

Simon had said she could kill a Minor Demon Lord. Now her released power bore down on him with a pressure worthy of one.

She had not advanced.

The human beneath that manifestation still possessed the same rank. This was what her Elemental Blessing had been withholding while she fought them without its spirit.

"Akaza."

Sonya’s voice pulled him from his thoughts.

"What is happening?"

"We’re fucked."

Her head snapped toward him.

"This Honourable heard that part! Explain what you are looking at!"

"A phoenix. An enormous ice phoenix with four wings," he replied sharply. "Its feathers fall apart and form again from the storm. It just pulled one of her ice spears into its body."

Sonya’s brows drew together.

"Her Elemental Spirit?"

"Yes. And the cold around it is freezing Virella’s roots from the inside. Rellis can barely control his water. Ammor’s stone is freezing beneath the cases."

A faint crack sounded at Sonya’s legs.

She went still.

The stone anchoring her calves had begun to split. She sent demonic energy deeper, searching for a section the cold had not reached, and the effort pulled a strained breath from her chest.

Akaza watched her fingers tighten.

"She has the power of a Minor Demon Lord now," he said quietly. "And that phoenix has barely moved."

Sonya said nothing for a moment, then she spat onto the ice.

"Of course the dog’s sister has a damned bird."

The remark lacked its earlier cheer.

She loosened the stone around her calves before it could freeze solid. Akaza reduced his weight enough to move beside her, though maintaining his balance against the storm made his legs tremble.

The elixir had repaired his flesh, but it had not restored the demonic energy he kept spending.

"Stay close," Sonya said.

"I already am," Akaza said with a tinge of worry.

’Her senses are really limited in this situation.’ Akaza thought with a slight furrow of his brows.

A tail feather drifted between them and their supporters.

Virella sent a root toward it, trying to clear a path. However, it froze the moment her root touched it and the frost was moving toward her. She broke the root herself before it reached her hand.

Elara watched the attempt without expression.

Then she turned toward Sonya.

"You had an interesting technique," she said.

Her voice was quieter than the storm, yet every demon heard it clearly.

Sonya lowered her stance. A thick layer of earth covered her fists, and a narrow platform pushed beneath her feet. Beside her, gravity gathered around Akaza’s right arm and he watched Elara closely.

They were ready to move together.

"You worked so hard to reach my face," she said coldly. "Allow me to help."

The phoenix folded its lower wings, then Elara suddenly disappeared.

Akaza caught a streak of white crossing the ice. His shoulder turned, but the movement was already too late.

Sonya felt the pressure reach the stone beneath her. She began lifting her platform, bringing one fist up toward the approaching threat.

Something cracked, but it was not ice.

It was Sonya’s platform.

For an instant, Akaza saw shattered rock suspended beside his leg. At first, he thought Sonya had launched herself.

Then he blinked.

Elara stood beside him, and her fingers were closed around Sonya’s throat.

The short Kragh’s bare feet hung above the broken stone. Her hands seized Elara’s wrist, but frost was already spreading beneath her jaw, tracing white lines down her neck.

Elara held her with one arm, then she lifted her a little higher until their faces were level.

Above them, the golden eyes of the ice phoenix remained cold and unblinking.

"Sonya!" Akaza roared.