Lucas did not give the celestial time to recover his rhythm because the moment the ice domain began to fracture under his fire, he pushed forward into sustained offense, not a single uncontrolled burst but a structured sequence of flurries, each wave of flame shaped and directed with intent, forcing the battlefield to widen as heat replaced the oppressive cold and the corridor became a volatile clash of opposing forces rather than a static containment zone. Every strike he released carried enough force to melt through residual frost and disrupt the celestial’s attempts to rebuild structure, and even when the attacks did not land directly on the target, they did not disappear harmlessly, because the narrowness of the corridor meant anything that missed still had consequences, igniting armor, scorching stone, and forcing the pursuing soldiers behind the celestial to scatter in panic as sections of their formation were caught in the expanding heat.

The celestial shifted constantly, no longer standing still, now forced into movement as he deflected and redirected bursts of flame with rapidly forming ice barriers that shattered almost immediately upon contact, his expression tightening as he realized Lucas was not only matching his output but forcing him into defensive reactions he had not expected in this confined space. Behind him, his soldiers attempted to advance again, but the corridor had become too unstable, fire and melting frost turning the environment into a hazard zone where discipline mattered less than survival, and their formation began to break apart under pressure they could no longer properly coordinate.

Wesley seized the opening first and moved in alongside Lucas, his strikes precise and efficient, targeting gaps created by the fire flurries to disable advancing enemies before they could regroup, while Murray followed with controlled bursts that reinforced pressure on the celestial’s flanks, preventing him from stabilizing a full counter-domain. Vorde joined shortly after, emerging from a side angle that had been previously cleared, using his familiarity with movement routes to intercept soldiers attempting to circle around the engagement, cutting off reinforcement paths and keeping the battlefield contained within Lucas’s expanding fire control.

The combined pressure shifted the engagement further in their favor, not because the celestial had weakened, but because the environment itself was no longer fully under his control, and every attempt to reassert dominance was being met with immediate disruption from multiple angles. Flames surged forward in overlapping arcs as Lucas maintained offensive momentum, forcing the celestial into constant adjustment while the corridor behind him became increasingly unstable, with soldiers either retreating or being overwhelmed by the collateral spread of fire that continued to deny safe positioning.

Amid the chaos, Patrick stayed anchored near the emperor, maintaining protective positioning while monitoring both forward engagement and potential rear collapse, and as the situation stabilized just enough for him to speak without breaking formation, he turned his attention fully to the weakened ruler.

"Where do we go from here," Patrick asked firmly, keeping his voice low enough not to carry into the ongoing clash.

The emperor, still supported between him and Darmian, struggled to focus through pain and exhaustion, but his eyes tracked the shifting corridor for a moment before he answered, his voice strained but deliberate.

"Not forward," he said faintly. "Down."

Patrick’s expression sharpened. "Down where."

The emperor inhaled slowly, as if gathering the last of his clarity. "Below this layer... there is an old descent passage. It bypasses the main exit routes. It leads outside the castle perimeter into sewers."

Patrick absorbed the information quickly, then nodded once without hesitation, already adjusting mentally to the new direction.

The exchange did not slow as Lucas continued his flurries of fire, each strike carving through the corridor with controlled intensity, forcing the celestial into constant motion as he demonstrated why he was not simply a guardian of ice but a battle-hardened fighter in his own right, because despite the overwhelming pressure, he adapted with remarkable precision, forming compact ice barriers at critical angles, redirecting heat, and shifting his position just enough to avoid direct collapse under the sustained assault, and for a brief moment it seemed as though neither side would gain decisive ground.

But Lucas had already stopped treating it as a contest of endurance.

He had started treating it as a setup.

While maintaining the visible rhythm of fire flurries, he subtly adjusted the flow of his energy, not increasing output but compressing it into spatial instability rather than direct force, and within the chaos of overlapping strikes and collapsing frost, he created four discrete spatial pockets, each one hidden within the distortion of his fire attacks, not visible as constructs but as folded pressure points in space itself, each infused with tightly bound explosive fire energy that would only release when disrupted by proximity and force interaction.

The celestial did not notice them at first because his attention remained locked on the visible threats, the continuous fire waves and Wesley and Murray’s pressure from the sides, and even Vorde’s interference kept his focus fragmented just enough for Lucas’s setup to complete without immediate detection, and when Lucas finally released the next wave of flurries, the four spatial pockets were carried along within them like invisible seeds hidden inside the storm of attacks.

For a split second, everything aligned.

Then Lucas detonated them.

The explosions did not happen randomly in space but inside the compressed pockets he had prepared, causing a chain reaction that amplified the force far beyond what a standard fire burst could achieve, and the result was not just heat but spatial rupture combined with thermal expansion that hit the celestial from multiple angles simultaneously, bypassing his ice defenses entirely because the attack originated from within the distortion field itself rather than from outside it.

The celestial’s expression shifted for the first time into something closer to genuine surprise as he realized too late that the attacks were not what they seemed, and before he could fully reinforce his defenses, all four explosions collapsed into him in rapid succession, sending a violent shockwave through the corridor that shattered remaining frost structures and destabilized the stonework around him.

The impact threw him backward with tremendous force, his body crashing into the reinforced section of the passage as cracks spiderwebbed across the walls and ceiling, and before he could stabilize, the weakened structure gave way under the compounded damage, collapsing in a heavy cascade of stone and debris that buried his position entirely beneath the rubble.

For a moment, the corridor fell into a tense silence broken only by settling dust and falling fragments, the aftermath of a space that had just been forcibly rewritten by overwhelming force, and Lucas lowered his hand slightly, his expression still focused rather than relieved, because in battles like this, collapse did not always mean conclusion, only interruption.

Behind him, Wesley exhaled once as he steadied himself, Murray’s gaze remained fixed on the rubble, and Vorde quickly scanned for any remaining movement, while Patrick kept the emperor secure and immediately turned back to the urgency of their route. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"We move," Patrick said firmly.

They shifted their focus away from the collapsed passage and toward the descent path the emperor had revealed, because whether the celestial was dead, injured, or still conscious beneath the ruins, their mission had not changed, and the castle was still actively hunting them.