The crushing death of Jack sent a massive shockwave across the dead plains. The ten thousand Solaris soldiers cheered loudly, their voices carrying over the howling wind. They clashed their iron spears against their shields. A warlord had fallen. The ancient shadows were not immortal. They could bleed, and they could die, but high above the battlefield, the Queen of the Black Mist did not mourn her fallen comrade.

She hovered a dozen feet in the air, ignoring the deafening cheers of the mortal army. Her long dress, woven from thick, living black mist, swirled around her legs. She turned her faceless, porcelain white mask toward the broken granite wall.

"You killed the twitching dog," a voice echoed across the plains.

The Queen did not have a mouth, but her voice filled the air. It was a terrifying, hollow sound. It sounded like a woman weeping uncontrollably in an empty room. The sheer sadness in the voice was fake, masking a rotting malice.

"But the dog was careless," the Queen wept, slowly raising her thin dark staff. The purple crystal at the top shimmered. "I do not play with my food. I simply let it rot."

The purple crystal flashed with a toxic light. The Queen did not aim at Luna Zephyros, who was still locked in a massive gravity duel with the King. She didn’t even aim at Velanor, who was kneeling in the dirt, exhausted from killing Jack.

She aimed at the center of the Solaris infantry.

"The Weeping Curse," the Queen whispered.

A massive, thick cloud of pitch black magic formed over the heads of the human army. It didn’t rain tiny needles this time. It rained thick drops of boiling black liquid. It looked like falling tar.

"Shields up!" the human commanders roared in panic.

The soldiers raised their iron shields, forming a tight metal roof over their heads. But the black tar was not normal acid. It was pure decay. The moment the black drops hit the iron shields, the metal hissed. Thick, brown rust instantly spread across the iron, eating through the solid metal in less than two seconds. The shields disintegrated into orange dust.

The black tar fell onto the soldiers.

Screams of agony erupted across the front lines. The cursed tar didn’t burn their skin. It aged their flesh. Strong, young soldiers suddenly fell to the ground, their skin wrinkling and turning a sick, bruised purple as their bones turned brittle and snapped under their own weight.

"Soltheia!" Catherine yelled, spinning around to look at her younger sister.

Soltheia was already moving. The young Princess of Sylphyros ignored the danger. She ran straight into the center of the screaming, dying soldiers.

"Do not break formation!" Soltheia yelled, dropping to her knees in the ground. She slammed her bare hands flat against the gray ash. She pushed her internal core past its safe limit. A massive wave of golden green water magic erupted from her small body.

The purifying water washed over the dying soldiers. The golden green magic fought the black tar. It was a brutal war between pure life and ancient death. The wrinkled, decaying skin of the soldiers slowly began to heal, their youth returning as Soltheia forced the curse out of their veins.

But the cost was horrific. Soltheia coughed, spitting a mouthful of bright red blood onto the dirt. Her own skin turned pale, and her hands blistered and burned. She was draining her own life force to keep the army alive.

"I can hold it!" Soltheia cried out, her ocean blue eyes fierce and devoid of fear. "Kill her, Catherine! Kill the Queen!"

Catherine Sylphyros turned her silver blue eyes back to the hovering Warlord. The older princess was known for her cold politics. She was always perfectly composed. She never showed anger. She never got her white dress dirty, but as she watched her little sister bleed in the dirt to save the army, Catherine’s composure shattered. The pure rage flooded her chest.

Catherine didn’t cast tiny, precise ice needles. She threw both of her hands forward. The temperature around her instantly plummeted to unnatural levels. The gray ash on the ground froze solid, turning the battlefield into a slick sheet of dark ice.

"You will not touch my sister," Catherine whispered coldly.

"Ice Shift: The Glacial Lance!" A massive, thick spear of pure ice formed in the air above Catherine. It was thirty feet long and sharp enough to pierce a dragon’s scale. With a sharp thrust of her hands, Catherine fired the massive lance at the floating Queen.

The ice lance crossed the distance in a fraction of a second. The Queen didn’t even flinch. She simply casually swiped her thin dark staff. A wave of black mist erupted from the purple crystal. The mist slammed into the ice lance. The pure, frozen water turned black. The ice rotted in mid air, crumbling into dirty, useless slush before it even touched the Queen’s dress.

"Your magic is frozen," the Queen wept, her voice echoing with amusement, "but even ice eventually rots. You cannot touch me, little princess. You are grounded, and I rule the sky."

Catherine gritted her teeth. The Warlord was right. Magic projectiles were useless. The Queen’s mist dress decayed any spell that got close.

If I can’t shoot her, Catherine thought, her silver blue eyes sharp, then I have to stab her with my bare hands.

Catherine didn’t hesitate. She ran forward.

She sprinted toward the Queen of the Black Mist. She used her magic, with every single step she took, a slanted pillar of solid ice erupted from the dirt beneath her boots. She wasn’t running on the ground. She was building a jagged, ascending staircase of ice into the cold red sky.

She sprinted upward, her white armor gleaming. She moved fast, completely driven by the desperate need to protect her sister.

"Foolish girl," the Queen mocked. The Warlord pointed her staff at Catherine. A massive beam of boiling black rot shot from the purple crystal, aiming to melt Catherine and her ice stairs.

Catherine didn’t dodge. She couldn’t dodge without falling fifty feet back to the dirt. She raised her left arm. She let the dark beam strike her. The black rot slammed into her sleek white armor. The expensive steel hissed and turned brown. The armor rusted and melted in less than a second. The toxic rot burned through the metal and struck Catherine’s bare forearm.

Catherine screamed in pain. The skin on her arm turned purple and black. Her flesh decayed, the rot eating through her muscle and exposing the white bone underneath.

It was agonizing, and lethal. But Catherine didn’t stop running. She sacrificed her left arm to keep her momentum. She reached the top of her ice staircase. She was now eye level with the floating warlord.

The Queen’s faceless porcelain mask tilted slightly in surprise. The Warlord hadn’t expected the human girl to sacrifice her own body just to close the distance. Catherine lunged off the top step. She flew through the cold air, completely ignoring the rotting pain in her left arm. She reached out with her good right hand.

She grabbed the long, thin dark staff. Her bare fingers tightly wrapped around the glowing purple crystal.

"Got you," Catherine whispered, her silver blue eyes burning with murder.

"Let go of that!" the Queen shrieked, her weeping voice cracking in panic.

The Warlord tried to pull the staff away. She pushed a massive surge of dark rot into the crystal, aiming to melt Catherine’s right hand off. But Catherine was a master of Ice. She didn’t freeze the air. She froze the rot itself. Catherine pushed her internal core past its breaking point. She didn’t use a spell name. She unleashed her soul.

"Absolute Zero." An intense wave of pure, cold erupted from Catherine’s right hand. It wasn’t just cold air. It was the total absence of heat. It stopped the movement of atoms. The boiling black rot pouring from the purple crystal instantly stopped moving. The dark magic froze solid. The long, thin staff turned white, encased in thick, unbreakable ice.

"No!" the Queen screamed.

The Warlord tried to let go of the staff. But she was too late. The absolute zero temperature didn’t just stop at the weapon. It rushed up the staff and slammed into the Queen’s black mist dress. The living, swirling dark fog stopped moving. The mist crystallized, turning into brittle black ice.

The cold rapidly spread to the Queen’s arms, her neck, and her faceless porcelain mask. The warlord entirely froze in mid-air. She was trapped inside a massive, jagged block of her own frozen dark magic.

Catherine let go of the staff. She fell vehemently through the air, dropping fifty feet back toward the dead gray ash. She hit the ground hard, rolling wildly across the ground to absorb the impact. She stopped, breathing heavily, clutching her rotting, ruined left arm against her chest.

She looked up at the sky.

The Queen of the Black Mist was frozen. The block of black ice lost its magical ability to hover. The frozen warlord fell from the sky like a heavy stone.

CRASH!

The impact was final. The frozen block of dark magic struck the solid granite wall Velanor had built earlier. The brittle black ice shattered into a million jagged pieces. The Queen’s faceless porcelain mask broke in half, revealing nothing but empty, hollow dark smoke underneath.

The Warlord disintegrated. The dark mist blew away on the cold wind, erased from existence. The massive, suffocating rain of black tar stopped falling on the Solaris army. The Weeping Curse was broken.

The ten thousand soldiers erupted into a deafening roar of victory. Two Warlords of the Black Mist were dead. The human army had held the line. Catherine didn’t celebrate.

She slowly forced herself to stand up. Her left arm hung limply at her side, the skin bruised and decaying. She stumbled across the gray ash, ignoring the cheering soldiers.

She walked to the center of the infantry lines. Soltheia collapsed in the dirt. The younger princess was breathing very weakly, her beautiful face pale and covered in sweat. She had drained her internal core to keep the army alive. Catherine dropped to her knees beside her sister.

"Soltheia," Catherine whispered, her voice cracking. She reached out with her good right hand, gently touching her sister’s cheek.

Soltheia slowly opened her ocean blue eyes. She looked up at Catherine. She saw the ruined, rotting flesh on her older sister’s left arm.

"You killed her," Soltheia breathed softly, a weak, tired smile touching her pale lips.

"I did," Catherine nodded, tears finally breaking through her cold posture. "The curse is gone. You don’t have to heal them anymore. You can rest."

Soltheia slowly raised her burned hand. She didn’t heal the soldiers. She gently pressed her hand over Catherine’s decaying left arm.

"I am a healer, Cathy," Soltheia whispered stubbornly. "I fix things."

A tiny faint spark of golden green light pulsed from Soltheia’s fingers. It wasn’t a massive wave of water, but it was enough. The purifying magic slowly pushed the remaining black rot out of Catherine’s arm, stopping the decay and slowly beginning to knit the broken flesh back together.

Catherine leaned forward, resting her forehead against her little sister’s shoulder. The two Princesses of Sylphyros held each other in the dirt, completely exhausted, bloody, and unbroken.

Fifty yards away, the Eastern Front was quiet. The thousands of Black Mist Knights stood perfectly still. They had lost their Queen. They had lost their Jack. But the war was not over. In the center of the dead plains, Luna was locked in a terrifying stalemate.

The King of the Black Mist hadn’t flinched when his comrades died. The towering Commander was still pressing his massive broadsword against Luna’s invisible gravity shield. Luna’s pale skin was covered in sweat. A thick stream of silver blood leaked from his shimmering cosmic eye, slowly running down his cheek. He was holding the weight of a mountain, and his mortal brain was beginning to crack under the pressure.

"Your friends are lucky," the King whispered heavily, his towering shadow eclipsing the Night Emperor. "But you are out of time, mortal."

Luna wiped the silver blood from his chin, his arrogant smirk vanished.

"I am never out of time," Luna stated coldly, his cosmic eye flaring with new intensity. "I am just out of patience."