Chapter 437: Time Freeze

The air at the northern ridge was thick with the high-pitched whine of mana-engines. Grand Duchess Selena stood at the edge of the metallic boarding ramp of her sleek, obsidian-hulled transport ship, her midnight-blue silk dress rustling against the cold draft drifting up from the trench.

Behind her, inside the cushioned cabin of the vessel, Elara lay motionless on a low couch, her breathing slow and measured under the influence of her mother’s sleep-mana.

Selena adjusted the pristine silver clover brooch on her collar, her cold blue eyes scanning the dark edge of the cliff. "Boarding sequence complete," she said quietly into a small communication crystal floating near her ear. "Prepare for atmospheric ascent to the Spire as soon as the Archmages clear the upper seal."

"Not so fast, Duchess."

A quiet, raspy voice carried through the engine noise.

Selena didn’t look surprised. She simply turned her head, watching as two bruised, bloody figures emerged from the shadow of the basalt rocks. Kyle leaned heavily on Yua’s shoulder, his leather coat scorched to cinders, his chest bandaged with strips of torn cloth that were already soaked with fresh blood. Yua moved with a silent, lethal grace, her crimson eyes locked onto Selena with absolute hostility.

"You should have stayed in the mud, pureblood," Selena said, her tone carrying the casual condescension of a noble speaking to stray animals. "And you, shadow user. You look as though a light draft would break your spine. Do you truly think you can stop a Grand Duchess of the Clover Council?"

"We don’t need to defeat you," Kyle said, his voice ragged as he forced his feet apart to find his balance. "We just need to take Elara back."

"She is my daughter," Selena replied coldly. "Her place is in the high courts, far away from this wet gutter and the dead fools who tried to defend it."

"She isn’t yours to take anymore."

A deep, reverberating voice echoed from the dark water below the ridge. It didn’t sound like a whisper; it sounded like the grinding of tectonic plates beneath the seabed.

Selena’s eyes narrowed as the shadow beneath the landing pad began to warp. The sea water turned ice-cold, and from the edge of the cliff, a single, bloodied hand gripped the iron railing.

Queen Seraphina pulled herself up onto the ridge.

Her pearl armor was completely destroyed, leaving only torn dark undergarments stained with her own shimmering, indigo blood. Deep burned gouges lined her arms and shoulders where the Archmages’ light spears had scorched her, and her hair was a tangled, dark mass around her pale face. Yet, in her right hand, she still clutched the broken haft of her obsidian trident. Her dark eyes burned with an unyielding, ancient fury that made even the ship’s engine hum sound feeble.

"Sovereign," Selena said, her calm facade finally slipping as her brow furrowed in genuine disbelief. "You survived the Judgment of the Six Archmages? Your core should be shattered."

"The ocean does not shatter for surface rats," Seraphina rasped, coughing up a small drop of dark blue liquid that hissed as it hit the metallic ramp. She took a slow, heavy step forward, her presence alone forcing Selena’s protective light-barrier to flicker.

"It matters little," Selena said, recovering her composure and raising her hand to gather kinetic mana. "You can barely stand. If you step path of the Council again, I will personally ensure the Archmages return to finish the execution."

"I am not here to fight your Archmages today, Selena," Seraphina said, her voice dropping into a low, terrifying growl. "I am here to claim what belongs to my realm. And that includes Elara."

Selena let out a sharp, dismissive laugh. "Elara? She is a merfolk half-breed raised in your outer reefs. She owes you nothing."

"She owes her domain nothing," Seraphina agreed, her dark gaze shifting briefly to Kyle before returning to the Duchess. "But she belongs to my King’s house now. She is part of his harem—bound by blood, shadow, and the ancient laws of the deep trenches."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Selena’s hand froze mid-air. Her wide, sharp blue eyes darted from Seraphina to Kyle, who looked equally caught off guard by the Sovereign’s blunt, shameless declaration.

"Her... what?" Selena blinked, the icy, refined arrogance completely vanishing from her face, replaced by utter, baffled confusion. "You... the cold, ruthless Sovereign of the Wandering Springs... you bound my daughter to a broken, starving human shadow-caster?!" 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

"He is no mere human," Seraphina said flatly, not a single trace of hesitation in her voice. "He bled for this realm while you brought fire to it. Elara chose his side. She is part of his inner circle, his woman, and therefore under the protection of the abyssal throne. Consider her loss a small, necessary tax for the immense damage your futile pursuit of our core has caused my kingdom."

Selena’s face flushed with a mixture of disbelief and deep, noble humiliation. "A tax?! You speak of a Grand Duchess’s bloodline as if she were a piece of stray livestock?!"

"I speak of her as a sovereign speaks to an invader," Seraphina countered, raising the jagged tip of her broken trident. "Leave her, or I will collapse this entire ridge into the trench, transport ship included."

Selena’s eyes turned stone-cold. The confusion evaporated, replaced by a dark, desperate fury. "I have humored this pathetic display long enough."

From beneath her heavy silk sleeves, Selena pulled out an ancient, brass device shaped like an hourglass encased in interlocked, spinning silver rings. The artifact hummed with a strange, unnatural distortion that made the surrounding air warp like heat rising from a desert road.

"You think your numbers and your dying queen give you leverage?" Selena whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "This is a **Chronos Core**—a high-grade time-stasis relic from the First Age."

Kyle’s eyes widened as Snow’s warning chimed frantically inside his mind, but before he could speak, Selena slammed her palm onto the center gear of the artifact!

*TICK.*

A sharp, metallic click echoed through the ridge.

Instantly, the color drained from the world. The blue glow of the ship’s engines turned into a dull, frozen grey. The spray of ocean water hanging in the air froze into millions of motionless glass droplets.

Seraphina’s mouth remained open in mid-threat, her dark eyes locked in place, completely immobilized. Beside Kyle, Yua was frozen mid-stride, her blood-whips suspended like static red glass in the air.

The entire world had stopped.

Only two people could move within the grey, silent domain: Selena, and Kyle.

Kyle tried to pull away, but his legs felt heavy, like wading through wet concrete. He looked at Selena, whose skin was rapidly turning grey at the edges. Small lines of crimson were leaking from her eyes and nose, running down her pale cheeks.

"Using this... costs life force," Kyle realized out loud, his voice sounding muffled and flat in the suspended time zone.

"Ten years of my life for every thirty seconds this relic remains active," Selena rasped, wiping the blood from her nose with her sleeve, her blue eyes burning with desperate intensity. She drew a thin, silver stiletto from her waist and began walking toward him with stiff, rapid steps. "I do not have time to play games with your shadow magic, boy. I will sever your head, break your core, and take my daughter home before this stasis collapses."

"You’re killing yourself just to control her!" Kyle shouted, forcing his shadow channels to ignite. Black fog seeped from his palms, but the dark mana moved sluggishly, fighting against the suffocating drag of frozen time.

"I am saving her from a life of running in the dark with monsters like you!" Selena screamed, lunging forward with the silver blade aimed directly for Kyle’s throat!

Kyle raised his shadow talon to block, but his reaction speed was cut in half by the temporal drag. The silver stiletto sliced straight through his shoulder guard, biting deep into his flesh!

*CLANG!*

Kyle gritted his teeth against the searing pain, grabbing Selena’s wrist with his left hand to hold the blade back. The sheer physical pressure of a high-tier noble was immense, even with her life force draining by the second.

"Die!" Selena hissed, pressing her full weight down on the dagger. Blood poured from her ears now, staining her immaculate silk collar, but her grip didn’t slip an inch.

*CRACK.*

A strange, crystalline fracture echoed through the silent grey world.

It didn’t come from Selena’s artifact. It didn’t come from Kyle’s shadow blade.

It came from the dark forest line fifty yards behind the landing pad.

Selena’s eyes darted toward the tree line in horror. "What...?"

A towering, magnificent creature stepped out from the grey shadows of the frozen trench. It was a massive deer, its body composed entirely of jagged, translucent dark-green crystals that reflected no light. A strange, unnatural aura surrounded its magnificent antlers—an aura that defied the temporal stasis, causing the air around its hooves to ripple and shatter like thin ice.

The **Rootcrystal Deer**.

The ancient anomaly that Kyle had fought in the lower vaults had tracked the scent of fractured mana all the way to the ridge. Because its very existence was tied to natural spatial distortions, the time-stasis didn’t freeze it—it merely enraged it.

*ROAR!*

The creature released a sound that wasn’t a roar, but a high-frequency crystalline vibration that rattled the grey sky!

It lowered its massive, antlered head and charged straight across the frozen ridge, its crystal hooves smashing through the suspended water droplets like glass!

"Get out of the way!" Selena shrieked, forced to release her grip on Kyle as she raised her brass artifact to direct a temporal beam toward the beast!

**"Chronos Lock: Temporal Pin!"**

A beam of grey light struck the Rootcrystal Deer’s chest, but the creature didn’t stop. The dark-green crystals along its ribs flared with volatile energy, absorbing the temporal force and converting it into pure kinetic power!

The deer slammed directly into Selena’s side!

*BOOM!*

The impact threw Selena across the metallic ramp. The brass hourglass slipped from her blood-stained fingers, tumbling across the grey stone floor.

"No!" Selena gasped, coughing up a thick glob of blood as she scrambled on her knees toward the falling artifact.

The Rootcrystal Deer turned its glowing green eyes toward Kyle, its crystal antlers humming with enough raw spatial energy to tear the ridge apart.

Kyle pulled his shadow talon close, his body exhausted, his shoulder bleeding heavily, but his dark eyes fixed firmly on the beast and the bleeding Duchess desperate to recover her relic.

Inside the frozen, grey world where no one else could move, the battle raged on.