Yuki grinned as the word left her lips.

  ''Chasm.''

  Its effect manifested instantly, though to an untrained eye, many would have mistaken it for just another one of her abilities.

  Around her body, ice erupted.

  Not summoned, imposed.

  Jagged spikes burst outward, layering over her skin and limbs, forming a full suit of armor forged from absolute frost. Her fists became brutal weapons, encased in serrated ice, each movement leaving contrails of frozen air in their wake.

  The wolf growled.

  Then it charged.

  Yuki met it head-on.

  She caught the beast once more, hands slamming into its jaws with effortless precision. As she leaned closer, she stared directly into its burning eyes, grinning,

  And a helmet of pure ice formed over her head, sealing shut with a resonant crack.

  The wolf’s eyes expanded violently.

  Then they exploded.

  A point-blank eruption of heat detonated outward.

  Nothing happened.

  The ice didn’t melt.

  It didn’t even steam.

  The armor endured, no, it rejected the heat, just as the frozen world around them now did.

  Yuki laughed behind her mask.

  She ripped one of the wolf’s massive fangs free and, in a brutal twist of her wrist, drove it upward, impaling the creature’s lower jaw with its own tooth.

  The wolf shrieked in agony.

  Yuki answered with a single punch.

  The blow landed with cataclysmic force, launching the beast across the battlefield. As it flew, Yuki waved her arm casually.

  Mountains of ice erupted in its path.

  The wolf crashed through them one after another, each impact compounding the damage, each collision tearing more flesh, breaking more bone, until it finally came to a halt, half-buried in a frozen ridge.

  It was barely recognizable.

  Blood poured into the ice beneath it. Its breath came fast and ragged.

  Still,

  Its eyes trembled.

  And then, impossibly, it healed.

  Flesh reformed. Bone reset. Fire returned.

  With a furious roar, the wolf charged again, unleashing its beams of searing heat.

  Yuki dismissed her helmet with a flick of her wrist.

  She raised one hand.

  The beams froze solid midair, transformed into crystalline ice before shattering into harmless fragments.

  The wolf skidded to a halt.

  Disbelief flickered across its molten gaze.

  Yuki walked toward it, boots crunching softly against the frozen ground.

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  “Ah,” she said lightly. “I’m guessing you don’t know what I’ve done, do you?”

  The wolf fired again.

  Each beam froze.

  Each one broke.

  Yuki smiled wider.

  “Well then,” she continued, stepping forward, “let’s start at the beginning.”

  She vanished.

  The next instant, her fist smashed into the wolf’s jaw, sending it flying once more.

  “A Chasm,” she said, appearing above it as it fell, “isn’t something simple.”

  Spikes erupted from the ground.

  The wolf was impaled ten times over, its body convulsing violently as it tried, and failed, to dissolve the ice.

  “To reach the state of Chasm,” Yuki continued calmly, “you must first achieve perfect harmony with your plane.”

  She raised her hand.

  Dozens of massive ice spikes formed around her.

  Then she slammed her palm downward.

  The spikes surged toward the wolf like executioner’s blades. It fled desperately, narrowly avoiding annihilation.

  “But when you become a Chasm,” she said, suddenly appearing beside it, summoning a massive scythe in one fluid motion,

  She severed one of its legs in a blur of motion.

  The wolf screamed as she kicked it away.

  “it becomes the greatest amplification of power imaginable.”

  She looked down at it.

  “Even if that power can kill you within a minute of using it.”

  The wolf roared in pure rage and launched itself at her, its body burning hotter than ever before.

  It didn’t matter.

  Yuki backhanded it with a hammer of pure ice, sending it crashing through the air.

  “You see,” she said, her voice carrying easily over the destruction, “when we enter Chasm, we’re no longer connected to our plane.”

  She surged forward again, kicking the wolf high into the air. A whip of ice snapped around its body, yanking it downward and smashing it into the ice.

  “What we become,” she continued, eyes gleaming, “is a gateway.”

  Her voice dropped.

  “A gateway for our plane to descend into the world.”

  The wolf was slammed into a massive glacier.

  The entire structure fractured, and collapsed.

  “In exchange,” Yuki said, landing atop the shattered ice, “the limits on our strength nearly cease to exist.”

  She raised her fist.

  “The power we wield stops being a physical manifestation.”

  She punched.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  “It becomes conceptual.”

  The wolf’s body was breaking apart under the relentless assault, regeneration failing to keep pace.

  “In my case,” Yuki snarled, eyes blazing bright blue, “the concept of ice itself answers my call.”

  She raised her arm one final time.

  “That’s why your heat no longer matters.”

  The wolf twitched weakly beneath her.

  “A concept,” she said softly, “can only be defeated by another concept.”

  She smiled.

  “In short,”

  Her fist fell.

  “I’ve won.”

  The final blow shattered what little remained of the beast. Its regeneration collapsed completely, unable to recover from the conceptual annihilation inflicted upon it.

  The fire died.

  The battlefield fell silent.

  Yuki stood alone amid the frozen ruin.

  Victorious.

  Yuki stood over the lifeless body of her prey and finally allowed herself to breathe.

  Slowly, deliberately, she dismissed Chasm.

  She released Mors Frigus.

  The moment she did, the world came crashing back.

  Her breath caught violently in her throat as agony surged through her chest. She staggered, then collapsed to her knees, coughing harshly as shards of crystallized blood spilled from her mouth and clattered against the ice below.

  Her hands trembled.

  She stared down at her palm, at the frozen crimson fragments resting there, and narrowed her eyes.

  “…Damn,” she muttered hoarsely. “This is why I hate using it.”

  She leaned forward, bracing herself against the wolf’s once-burning fur, now soft, cooling, and stained deep red. The heat that had once radiated from it was gone, leaving only silence.

  Chasm.

  The greatest surge of power a Visorian could ever wield.

  And a death sentence if misused.

  When Chasm was activated, the body ceased to be merely flesh and bone, it became a gateway. A bridge for an entire plane to descend closer to the world. But gateways required conditions, structure and stability.

  The human body was not meant to serve that purpose.

  As her plane, the embodiment of absolute ice drew nearer, it began freezing her from the inside out. Nerves dulled. Blood crystallized. Organs slowed.

  One minute.

  That was all she ever had.

  After that, even victory would not matter. Her body would have frozen completely, and she would have died standing over her enemy.

  That was why Chasm was never a tool of endurance.

  It was a blade.

  meant as a last resort.

  Yuki took a slow, painful breath and raised her trembling hand to her intercom.

  “H-hey, boss,” she said, coughing again as more crystallized blood stained the ice. “I think… I’m done.”

  On the other end, there was a long pause.

  Then Rikin sighed, deep, exhausted, but relieved.

  “Roger,” he replied. “Get some rest, Yuki. You’ve earned it.”

  A faint grin tugged at her lips.

  “Yeah,” she chuckled weakly. “Will do.”

  Her strength finally gave out.

  She closed her eyes.

  Sleep claimed her, not as collapse, but as an embrace she had long been denied.

  Across the ruined battlefield of the Arctic, there were only two figures left.

  One was dead.

  A monstrous wolf, larger than any man, more ferocious than any natural beast. Its body lay broken and deformed, the malice that had animated it extinguished at last.

  The other was alive.

  Curled against the fallen titan’s side slept a war maiden, her olive skin marked by battle, her white hair spilling like snow across scorched fur. Her breathing was slow and steady now.

  Peaceful.

  She slept knowing she had won.

  Knowing her prey had fallen.

  Knowing that in the countless battles this crisis would demand, this one, at least, was over.

  And for now, that was enough.