The blizzard howling around the Gate of Horn was not natural; it was a screaming tempest of corrupted ether, thick with microscopic needles of black ice that stripped the paint from shields and froze breath into bloody frost.
At three hundred paces, the pale-armored sentries atop the glacier-bulwark unleashed their barrage.
Twelve heavy mountain ballistas discharged in unison. Massive bolts carved from enchanted blue permafrost hissed through the squall, trailing streaks of cryogenic vapor capable of flash-freezing an armored warhorse upon impact.
Aurelia did not break stride.
Walking half a pace ahead of Malakor, she raised her left hand, fingers splayed toward the oncoming volley. The three unified shards within her breastplate pulsed in perfect harmonic chord. The ambient frost in the air—the very weapon Duke Vane sought to turn against them—recognized its true sovereign.
"Halt," Aurelia whispered.
The word was quiet, yet it rang across the mountain chasm with the weight of an imperial decree.
Fifty paces from them, the twelve massive permafrost bolts slammed into an invisible wall of absolute starlight. Their momentum died instantly. The enchanted ice didn't shatter; it dissolved into harmless, glittering snow that drifted softly onto the frozen ground.
A gasp of horror rippled across the parapet of the Gate of Horn.
"Loose! Loose again!" a commander shrieked from the ramparts. "Bring down the witch!"
Archers notched quarrels tipped with alchemical frost-pitch, but before a single bowstring could sing, Malakor struck.
He drove his back boot into the snowpack, shattering the stone beneath, and launched his massive, armored frame forward like a launched boulder. The abyssal fire wreathing his great sword exploded from smoldering charcoal into a roaring cyclone of black, violet, and crimson flame that parted the blizzard like an executioner’s cleaver.
He closed two hundred paces in three earth-shaking strides.
With a roar that echoed off the granite peaks like an avalanche, Malakor leaped forty feet into the air. He crested the frozen wall, landing dead center among the ballista batteries. The kinetic shockwave of his impact shattered the nearest two siege engines into splintered timber and flying ice, sending a dozen defenders plummeting off the cliff edge into the abyss below.
His great sword came around in a wide, horizontal sweep. The superheated abyssal blade sliced cleanly through permafrost battlements, iron breastplates, and dragon-bone braces alike. Everywhere the dark flame touched, the enchanted ice boiled violently, detonating into scalding clouds of steam that blinded and choked the remaining garrison.
Below the wall, Aurelia reached the foot of the Gate of Horn.
The twenty paces of glacier-ice barring the pass groaned under the heat of Malakor’s rampage above, but the structural core of the barrier still held.
Aurelia planted both hands flat against the freezing surface.
She did not summon heat; she exerted pure, absolute domain over the structure's molecular alignment. She resonated with the Fifth Shard's signature woven into the ice, overriding Duke Vane's crude, stolen enchantments with the ancient authority of the First Core.
"Yield your shape," she commanded.
A blinding pulse of silver luminescence rippled outward from her palms.
The twenty paces of ancient glacier-ice did not merely crack; the crystal matrix disintegrated. The colossal wall lost its cohesion in a fraction of a second, collapsing inward not as heavy boulders, but as an avalanche of harmless, fine powdered snow that billowed across the pass like a white wave.
Through the settling cloud of powder and steam walked Malakor, descending the newly cleared slope with his great sword resting across his shoulder. His black plate was scorched with frost-pitch, his breath coming in deep, steady plumes, his crimson-flecked eyes blazing with dark, predatory satisfaction.
He reached Aurelia, his free hand reaching out to catch her by the nape of her neck. He pulled her against his chest, his forehead pressing firmly against hers, his thumb tracing the sharp, beautiful line of her jawline.
"The gate is ash and powder, my queen," he murmured, his deep voice thick with raw, breathless admiration. "You broke their mountain with a touch."
Aurelia leaned into his touch, her hands resting over the hot steel of his breastplate, her starlit eyes meeting his with fierce, triumphant passion.
"And you cleared their walls before the snow could touch the ground," she whispered, her lips parting as he closed the distance, kissing her with rough, possessive hunger right in the center of the shattered pass.
Behind them, the thundering roar of seventeen thousand soldiers echoed through the gorge.
General Kaelen’s vanguard charged through the pulverized breach, their black-and-silver dragon banners held high as the army surged into the high plateau of the north.
Malakor slowly broke the kiss, his crimson eyes gleaming with lethal intent as he looked toward the northern horizon, where the jagged, icy needles of Frost-Spire rose against the storm.
"The pass is ours," Malakor declared, raising his blade to the marching columns. "Forward to Frost-Spire! Let the Pale King know his reign ends today!"