Borin and Torsten carefully lowered Hemlock to the floor near the hearth, the elder druid's labored breathing the only sound cutting through the unnatural silence. Ben immediately moved to help steady the wounded man while his eyes swept the room, cataloguing the impossible scene.
Two enemies neutralized—but not by blade or conventional magic. The precision required to freeze blood while leaving living tissue untouched spoke of control that shouldn't exist in a village boy.
"This is impossible," Celeste whispered, approaching one of the crimson statues with academic fascination overriding her horror. Her wand traced the air near the frozen figure, detecting magical residue. "The selective targeting alone... freezing only the enemies' blood while leaving everyone else unharmed."
Mark knelt beside the other statue, his druidic senses probing the unnatural cold. "It's not just frozen—it's perfectly preserved. Every cell crystallized at exactly the same moment." He looked up at his companions, face pale. "I've never seen anything like this. Not even in the advanced texts."
"The magical resonance is all wrong," Celeste continued, her voice taking on the clinical tone she used when confronted with phenomena that challenged her understanding. "This level of elemental control... it should take decades to develop. And the mana expenditure..." She shook her head. "Whoever did this should be dead from core burnout, if not crippled their core permanently."
Ben's gaze swept the room, taking in the cowering villagers, the impossible ice formations, the small body near the wall. "Where's the caster? Who has this kind of power?"
That's when Elara's scream cut through their analysis.
"Alph!" Elara's scream tore through the hall as she spotted the unconscious form near Kael's body. She rushed across the frost-covered floor, dropping to her knees beside the motionless boy. "No, no, no... Alph, wake up!"
Her hands hovered over him, trembling as she checked for breathing, for pulse, for any sign of life. He was alive—barely—but his skin was cold as winter stone, and she could feel something terribly wrong when she touched his forehead.
"What happened to him?" she cried, looking up at the stunned villagers with wild eyes. "Someone tell me what happened!"
A gentle hand settled on her shoulder. Hilda, Torsten's wife and Astrid's mother, knelt beside her with the careful movements of someone still in shock. Her face was pale, but her voice was steady—the voice of a woman who'd seen too much and found strength anyway.
"He saved us," Hilda said quietly, her gaze flicking nervously toward the frozen statues. "The woman... she killed young Kael with some terrible magic. Blood magic." She shuddered at the memory. "Then she turned on the rest of us, laughing like a madwoman, and Alph..."
Hilda's grip on Elara's shoulder tightened, her voice filled with fierce gratitude. "He stopped her. Stopped them both. If not for that boy, we'd all be dead."
Elara pressed her palms against Alph's chest, drawing on the last dregs of her mana. Green light flickered weakly from her hands as she poured what little healing energy she had left into him. But nothing changed. His breathing remained shallow, his skin stayed cold, and whatever was wrong with him lay beyond her power to fix.
"Please," she whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Please wake up."
"Wait," Celeste's voice cut through Elara's quiet sobbing. "You're saying he did this?" She gestured at the crimson statues with undisguised fascination. "This boy? The unconscious one?"
Hilda nodded, still keeping her protective hand on Elara's shoulder. "Alph froze them both. In one moment, everything just... stopped."
Celeste approached with the intensity of a scholar who'd just discovered a rare phenomenon. "Incredible. The precision required feels like a textbook example of emotional breakthrough triggering impossible magical focus." She crouched beside Alph's still form, studying the scene with academic hunger. "We studied this in Advanced Elemental Theory, but I've never seen it executed."
"Celeste," Mark said quietly, moving to kneel on Alph's other side. His voice carried gentle reproof. "The boy nearly killed himself saving these people."
He looked at Elara with understanding in his eyes—one healer recognizing another's pain. "Magical exhaustion like this... it's dangerous. His core must have cracked under the strain." Mark's hands hovered over Alph, not quite touching. "I can feel the damage from here. Whatever he did, he paid a terrible price for it."
"A classic case of core overextension," Celeste muttered, earning a sharp look from the druid. She shrugged, unrepentant. "What? We're looking at a perfect example of the theoretical limits being shattered by desperate circumstances. It's academically fascinating."
Celeste had the grace to look slightly abashed under Mark's disapproving gaze, but her eyes still gleamed with curiosity as she studied the unconscious form of the boy who'd turned theory into devastating reality.
Ben stepped away from his survey of the room, his military instincts taking over. The immediate crisis was contained, but there were protocols to follow, wounded to tend, and prisoners to secure. He approached Borin, who stood near Hemlock's still form with the weight of sudden responsibility heavy on his shoulders.
"You must be Borin," Ben said, extending his hand in formal greeting. "I'm Ben Richards, Shield Fighter, Lumina Academy. These are my companions—Mark Turner, Druid, and Celeste Ravenswood, Arcane Mage. We're here at Torsten's request."
Borin clasped his hand firmly, the grip of a man grateful for professional help. "Borin, village Ranger. With Teacher Hemlock..." He glanced at the unconscious elder druid. "I suppose I'm speaking for Oakhaven now."
"Understood." Ben's gaze swept the hall, assessing priorities with military efficiency. "We need to stabilize the wounded first—Hemlock and the boy. Mark can handle the magical exhaustion while I tend to Hemlock's injuries. The prisoners outside need interrogation—we need to know if there are more threats coming."
Borin nodded, relief evident at having someone take charge. "What about... this?" He gestured at the crimson ice statues.
"We'll document everything, but the wounded take priority," Ben replied. "These two aren't going anywhere." He looked around the frost-covered hall. "For now, we secure what we can and get your people to safety."
"Aye," Borin said grimly. "Lead the way."
The hours that followed blurred together in a haze of urgent activity. Ben worked over Hemlock's broken body, his field experience with battlefield injuries proving invaluable in setting bones and stopping bleeding. Meanwhile, Mark focused on Alph, his druidic magic probing the fractured mana core with delicate precision. Both patients hung by threads, but gradually, painfully, they stabilized.
The prisoners were interrogated thoroughly. Gregor, when he finally came to, initially claimed they'd come for revenge—retaliation for the village harming Roric during a previous scout. But when he learned that Valerius was dead and witnessed the crimson ice statues, when he understood that Lyra had been practicing blood magic under his nose, his defiance crumbled. The Duke of Frostfell's hatred of blood magic was legendary, and association with it meant death. Faced with that reality, Gregor broke completely, revealing their true mission—to retrieve some artifact from the village for his mysterious employer.
The other three prisoners, seeing their captain's terror, proved even more talkative, though they knew little beyond following orders for promised gold.
Later that night, Elara and Iska paid their own visit to the bound captain. What transpired in those dark hours was never spoken of, but Gregor's screams echoed through the village until dawn, and when morning came, he was noticeably more subdued.
The crimson statues were carefully documented before being moved to a storage shed—a grisly reminder of the night's events that no one wanted to look at for long. The villagers gradually found their voices again, though they spoke in hushed tones as they prepared for the grim task ahead.
Through it all, Alph remained unconscious, his breathing shallow but steady. Elara rarely left his side, and when she did, others took up the vigil. The boy who had saved them all showed no signs of waking.
The next morning, as pale sunlight filtered through the frost-covered windows of the meeting hall, Alph's eyes finally opened.
The first thing he saw was wooden rafters overhead. The second was Elara's worried face leaning over him, tears of relief streaming down her cheeks.
"Kael," he whispered, the name a broken prayer on his lips.
The memory came flooding back—the blood magic, the desperate fury, the impossible cold that had answered his call. And beneath it all, the image that would haunt him forever: his friend's attempted smile, forever frozen in death.