"Magnus!" Leiko yelled, but he was in no better shape.

The Beast King had abandoned all hope for survival seeing as the two were able to counter and corner it so well, It has its pride and so it chose to take both with him. He lunged at Leiko through the steam. Leiko felt the "rhythm," but the air was filled with shattered glass that his reflexes were lagging. The Beast King’s tail, encrusted with razor-sharp ice, slammed into Leiko’s ribs with a sickening crunch.

Leiko was sent skidding across the floor of the domain space, blood coughing from his lips, his bare chest a sight of shallow, freezing cuts.

"Still... breathing..." Leiko wheezed, pushing himself up. A frenzy in his blood began to activate, something innate to the people of Björn when they saw their own blood or enemies blood, a smile came upon his face as the pain exploded into pleasure.

Magnus, forced onto one knee, gripped the shard in his shoulder and ripped it out with a snarl. He looked at the blood on his hands, it was dark, contrasting with the silver light. "Leiko... the moonlight. Give me the heat, and I will give you the path."

The two princes locked eyes. The competition was gone. There was only the kill.

Magnus raised his hand, and the Domain of Umbral Refraction shifted. The moon overhead began to pull. It sucked the blinding glare from the air, concentrating every stray photon into a single, needle-thin line of pure light that pointed directly at the Beast King’s true heart.

"Now!" Magnus roared, his eyes bleeding from the strain of holding the light.

Leiko didn’t use a sword. His figure combusted in flames as it covered his figure.

He tapped into the "rhythm" of Magnus’s light. Using the lunar path as a rail, Leiko ignited every remaining drop of his mana. He surged forward, a streak of white-hot plasma. The Beast King tried to raise a final, massive Refraction Plane, but the light from Magnus was so concentrated it bored a hole through the ice before Leiko even reached it.

Leiko’s fist, wreathed in flame, punched through the Beast King’s chest.

The impact was silent for a heartbeat before the sound caught up, a thunderous boom that shattered the remainders of the tri-domain.

The Beast King’s eyes widened, his reptilian pupils shrinking to pinpricks as the heat vaporized his insides. He didn’t even have time to scream. The fire erupted from his back, leaving a huge gaping hole.

The domain collapsed.

The Icy Expanse rushed back in, the cold, the wind, and the snow.

Leiko fell to the ground, his skin smoking as he melted the snow around him, his breath coming in ragged, bloody hitches. A few yards away, Magnus slumped against a real, stone pillar, his pale hair matted with blood, his bow snapped in two.

They lay there in the freezing silence, two broken princes in a wasteland of red snow. With the dead body of the beast king laying there.

"I still..." Leiko coughed, a weak, arrogant smirk tugging at his lips, "...got the final hit."

Magnus let out a dry, pained wheeze that might have been a laugh. "Shut up, Leiko. For once just... shut up."

The two sat in heavy silence, waiting for their mana pools to replenish and for the slow, steady rhythm of natural healing to mend what it could. It was during this quiet respite that a familiar set of footsteps echoed through the clearing.

Lunara approached, accompanied by a shrunken Nova. When her gaze fell upon the pair, her expression tightened at the sight of their battered forms. Without a word, she swept her hand through the air, casting a shimmering mana bubble that enveloped both Magnus and Leiko, its restorative glow immediately easing their strain.

Relief washed over their faces, and seeing them stabilize, Lunara let out a long, weary sigh. She turned her attention toward the fallen Beast King. Her eyes drifted toward the scorched hole in its chest, a wound so devastating she knew instantly who had delivered the final blow.

She began to pace along the serpentine length of the beast, her eyes searching for something specific. Finally, she stopped at the very tip of its tail. There, nearly invisible to the untrained eye, was a ring-like mark. At a glance, it appeared to be a natural part of the creature’s hide, but Lunara knew better.

As Lunara reached out and touched the mark, the ring slid effortlessly from the tip of the tail. The moment her fingers closed around the metal, her instincts flared as she vanished in a flash of movement, reappearing several dozen yards back and dragging the protective bubbles containing Magnus and Leiko with her.

Hardly a second later, the Beast King’s corpse began to undergo a violent transformation. It groaned and enlarged as if being pumped full of air, its scales groaning under the pressure of sudden expansion. Within heartbeats, the once-manageable serpent had bloated into a titan, a mountain of flesh and bone that towered over the icy expanse.

Lunara wasn’t taken aback. She had expected this. Her focus remained entirely on the small object in her palm, a specialized creation of the Menagerie, forged specifically for creatures of this magnitude.

It was a stark reminder of a biological truth many have begun to forget. Beast Kings were legendary for their sheer physical presence, it was a common misconception among travelers to mistake dormant Beast Kings for actual mountain ranges, so vast was their natural scale. Without the ring to compress its essence, the king had finally returned to its true, gargantuan form. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

However, these gargantuan sizes were largely a thing of the past. The Menagerie had developed a solution that served as a powerful lure for these wild rulers "the ring". Through these artifacts, Beast Kings could compress their massive forms, allowing them to walk the earth at a "normal" height and move with a newfound, deceptive grace.

But this convenience came with a dark side. The ring was an easily earned gift, and it invited betrayal. The fallen serpent before them was a prime example, one of many who had joined the Menagerie for the wrong reasons. They sought the power and the form, only to defect the moment their personal goals were met.

This particular scaled king had plagued the Northern Continent for some time now. While the residents of the North had always known the Icy Expanse was treacherous, the danger had spiked considerably with this beast king apperance.

Casualty reports began to flood in from every corner of the landscape. Vital trade routes that cut through the frozen lands were suddenly flagged as high-risk, with entire merchant convoys and seasoned explorers simply vanishing into the snow.

Initially, identifying the root of the problem was nearly impossible. The culprit was careful, leaving behind no tracks or evidence to be traced through the snow. A heavy tension gripped the North as the reports mounted, but fortunately, the Menagerie finally stepped in to fill the vacuum of silence.

They provided exactly what they were lacking "Information". They revealed the true nature of the terror haunting the frost and explained how a creature of such magnitude was able to bypass border defenses and move between territories completely undetected.

Of course, this intelligence wasn’t shared in the taverns to the common folk, it was shared only with those who held power. In response, a massive collective bounty was placed on the creature’s head, funded by the Menagerie and the various kingdoms that had suffered under its reign.

Countless mercenaries, mages and warriors pursued the beast, who has developed a strong craving for human flesh. It had grown bold, even slithering beyond the icy borders into the Sunny Lands, where it had completely erased a small village from the map.

Yet, despite the wealth thrown against it, the Beast King remained a ghost. Many hunters fell during the pursuit, and the few who survived returned empty-handed, frustrated by the creature’s elusive nature and its uncanny ability to vanish back into the white waste at the first sign of a losing fight.

Even when the creature found itself cornered, it possessed an uncanny knack for survival. It would bolt toward the boundary, slipping across the border with a desperate sprint, knowing full well that its pursuers wouldn’t dare chase it into restricted or sovereign lands.

News of the Beast King’s elusive feats eventually reached the ears of Leiko and Magnus. To them, this was a formal invitation, they both agreed it would be a hunt worth their time.

Their motivations, however, were as different as their fighting styles. Magnus was driven by the Menagerie’s promised rewards, resources and connection he found far too tempting to pass up. Leiko, on the other hand, cared little for gold. He was lured by the raw challenge, seeking the visceral thrill that only comes from stalking and ending a predator of such caliber.

Lunara stood before the massive corpse, which was about to become a permanent landmark in the Icy Expanse. She let out a heavy sigh as she looked up at the mountain of scales. It was a horrifying realization, without that ring acting as a prop to suppress its size, a creature this gargantuan shouldn’t have been able to move, without causing earth quakes, yet it had navigated the world in silence unknown.