As the dome expanded, a chilling shockwave rippled outward, washing over the frozen plaza like a tide of absolute zero. The ice mist thickened, condensed, and solidified into towering pillars of rime that erupted from the ground in jagged columns. Each pillar was unique, some twisted like tortured spines, others straight as spears, all of them glowing with a faint internal light that pulsed like frozen heartbeats.

Yenna stood at the center of this new landscape, her pale eyes reflecting the icy pillars surrounding her, and spoke in a voice that carried the weight of glacial millennia.

"The sky is sealed in rime, and the earth is a monument to all that must die. Welcome to your eternal winter. Reality Annex: Graveyard of a Hundred Pillars."

The words settled over the battlefield like a funeral shroud. The temperature inside the domain dropped to levels that made the Frost Zone feel warm by comparison. The air itself became hostile, each breath a knife of frozen crystals that cut the lungs from the inside.

The shadow user was already on his knees. Frost covered his body in a thick layer, his skin blue-black, his lips purple. The shadows that had been his weapons were gone. In this domain, darkness had no place. Every corner was illuminated by the cold, pale light refracting through a thousand frozen surfaces.

He looked up at Yenna with terror in his eyes.

She didn’t spare him a glance. Her attention was fixed on Ryan Durant, who stood thirty meters away, his necromantic energy churning beneath his skin like black oil, fighting against the cold that sought to freeze it solid.

Ryan’s smile was gone. In its place was something hard and calculating. He slammed his foot down, and death energy erupted from the ground in a massive geyser of black-green light. The energy punched through the frozen earth, cracking pillars, and the shockwave of necrotic force collided with Yenna’s domain.

The domain held. But cracks appeared in three of the nearest pillars.

"Interesting," Ryan muttered. "Your domain is strong, but it’s incomplete. A full Reality Annex would have crushed that without effort. This one has gaps."

He was right. Yenna knew he was right. Her Reality Annex was not much different from Caelan’s. Formed from intent and sheer will rather than the deep comprehension that a true domain required. It was a magnificent feat for someone at Peak Mana Heart Rank 3, but it was also a burning house. Beautiful from the outside, consuming everything inside to maintain itself.

Including her.

She was already feeling it. Her mana was draining at a rate. The pillars required constant energy to maintain. The cold required constant energy to sustain. Every second she spent in this state was a second she couldn’t get back.

But she hadn’t created the Graveyard of a Hundred Pillars to sustain it. She had created it to end this fight.

Ryan raised both hands. The death energy around him intensified, and from the cracked earth where the corpses had died and reformed, something far larger began to climb out.

A golem of bones. Constructed from the fused skeletons of every corpse Ryan had ever reanimated in this city, a towering monstrosity of interlocking bones held together by necrotic energy, standing eight meters tall, its skull-face turning toward Yenna with empty eye sockets that burned with green fire.

CRACK. BOOM.

The bone golem charged. Each footstep shattered the frozen ground, sending icicles flying. It swung a massive arm made of fused femurs and ribcages at Yenna.

She raised her ice sword. The blade met bone.

CLAAAAANG.

The impact sent Yenna sliding backward across the ice, her feet carving furrows. The bone arm was cracked but intact. The golem pressed forward, swinging again and again, each blow driving Yenna back.

The shadow user, despite his frozen state, was crawling toward her from the side.

Yenna cut down the bone golem’s second arm with a sweeping strike. It reformed in three seconds. She shattered its skull. It reformed in two. The death energy reservoir beneath the ground was feeding it endlessly.

Ryan watched from behind his creation, hands still raised, maintaining control. Blood was running from his nose now. The cold was getting to him too, even through his necrotic defenses. Frost was forming on his fingertips, slowing his chanting.

But he was winning. Yenna could see it in his eyes. She was burning out faster than he was.

So she made her choice.

Yenna dismissed the ice sword. Both hands came together in a sign, and every single pillar in the Graveyard of a Hundred Pillars began to glow.

Ryan’s expression changed. "What are you—"

"Graveyard’s End," Yenna whispered.

The pillars exploded.

Every pillar imploded simultaneously, creating a hundred points of absolute vacuum that suctioned everything toward the center of the domain. The bone golem was torn apart, its skeleton construct ripped to fragments. The shadow user, still crawling, was dragged across the ice at terrifying speed, his frozen body tumbling toward the epicenter.

Ryan planted his feet and reinforced himself with death energy, resisting the pull through raw power. But the suction was immense. Cracks appeared in his necrotic armor. Blood vessels burst across his face.

Yenna was at the center. She couldn’t resist her own technique. The vacuum pulled at her too, but she had expected that. She had counted on it.

The shadow user reached her first. His frozen body slammed into her, and Yenna grabbed him by the collar with both hands. Ice spread from her palms, racing across his body, not just freezing the surface but crystallizing the mana channels beneath his skin.

The shadow user’s eyes bulged. He tried to scream, but his throat was frozen solid.

Yenna pulled him close, her lips near his ear, and whispered, "Stay with me."

She detonated the frozen mana in his body but a bone spike pierce the shadow cultivator before Yeena killed him.

BOOM.

The explosion was contained within the imploding domain, but the force was enough. The shadow user’s body ruptured from the inside, frozen shards of mana and flesh scattering outward. His bracelet flared red.

[ELIMINATED]

Yenna felt the feedback tear through her own body. The domain was collapsing. The pillars were gone. The cold was fading. And she had nothing left.

The vacuum dissipated. Ryan staggered, bleeding from his ears, his nose, his eyes. His necrotic armor was in tatters. Three of his ribs were broken from the strain of resisting the implosion. Frost damage covered sixty percent of his body.

He looked at Yenna, who was kneeling in the center of the ruined plaza, the last wisps of her domain fading around her like dying breath.

"You took him with you," Ryan said, coughing blood. "Fucker. You fucking bitch"

Yenna looked up at him. Her eyes were losing focus. Her body was dissolving into light particles, the elimination triggering.

"Hope you lose," she said quietly.

[ELIMINATED]

Her body vanished, transferred to the stadium. Ryan stood alone in the ruined plaza, surrounded by shattered ice and scattered bone fragments, breathing hard, blood dripping from his chin onto the frozen ground.

"Annoying," he muttered, pressing a hand against his cracked ribs and wincing. "Fucking annoying."

He checked his bracelet.

[1,450 → 1,800 PTS]

350 points from the shadow user’s accumulated kills. Yenna’s points were lost because she had been eliminated by the domain’s collapse rather than by Ryan’s direct kill. He clicked his tongue in irritation.