FROST
Chapter 132: A Rare Magic

Chapter 132: A Rare Magic

The two cloaked figures hovered above the snow like specters—silent, unmoving, untouched by the howling wind that stirred the world below. The hems of their dark, voluminous cloaks twisted in the air as if defying gravity itself, brushing against the sleet-heavy fog that blanketed the mountainside.

On the ground, Ezekiel and the other apprentices held their positions in the open clearing, the bitter cold gnawing at them with unseen fangs. The snow had begun to rise unnervingly, swallowing their boots and creeping up their legs, submerging the deep azure trim of their cloaks. Each flake that fell shimmered faintly with magic, like cursed ash from a long-dead fire.

Tension cracked like thunder in Ezekiel’s fingers as magic surged to his palms. Pale red light danced along the veins of his forearms, coiling. His breath misted before him, fast and shallow. His gaze locked onto the smaller of the two figures, just as the one on the left reached up with gloved fingers and pulled back its hood.

A cascade of snowflakes seemed to pause midair.

Short, bubblegum-pink hair spilled out in soft waves, sharp against the desaturated backdrop of storm and ice. The woman’s skin was deathly pale, untouched by warmth. But it was her eyes—hidden behind thick circular glasses—that struck Ezekiel cold. The lenses were so dense they magnified nothing, merely dulled her gaze, rendering her already emotionless expression utterly unreadable.

There was no flicker of recognition. No hatred. No curiosity. Just the abyss of apathy, as if her soul had been peeled back and left blank. A puppet of intellect, not will.

Ezekiel’s brows pulled tight. His heart stuttered.

"A human?" he breathed, barely audible over the sound of the whirling snow. His voice was taut, caught between disbelief and dread. His magic sparked again, jagged and reactive, dancing higher with alarm. "She’s not even an apprentice..."

From afar, above the treeline and elevated on a crag of dark rock, East stood like a sentinel—motionless, statuesque, his robes swirling around his legs. His amber eyes narrowed, tracking the woman’s face with unsettling stillness. He had seen enough battles to know when something was wrong.

This... wasn’t just an enemy encounter. It was a shift. "She didn’t have any mana thread," East muttered. "What in the world is this now?"

The silence between the opposing forces stretched, taut and fragile. Every apprentice felt it—the delicate moment before a storm’s first scream. A single move, a single breath wrong, and everything would descend.

And still, the woman said nothing nor the figure beside her who still has his cloak on.

They simply floated there. The woman’s head tilted slightly to one side, as if observing ants beneath her. Her companion remained silent as well, face hidden, posture relaxed—but coiled like a serpent waiting for the strike.

The apprentices’ boots trembled under the snow’s grasp, now rising past their calves.

Then suddenly, the air cracked like shattered glass.

Without a chant, without even a flick of her fingers, the woman attacked—not with fury, but with cold, surgical precision. The snow beneath the apprentices ruptured with a wet, gelatinous pop.

From the earth burst an unnatural slime, thick and gleaming like molten candy. It bloomed upward in vivid, pastel pink, its glossy surface glistening under the storm clouds. It looked like melted gum—but it moved with a predator’s hunger, slithering unnaturally as if it had veins and a mind of its own.

Then came the scent.

Sweet. Artificial. Overwhelming.

A cloying aroma of bubblegum coated the air, too strong to be natural, so thick it burned the nostrils. And where the slime touched the snow, it sizzled. Hissing. Steam erupted in bursts as the terrain beneath was eaten away—not melted, but corroded, devoured molecule by molecule.

"What the—" one apprentice gasped, before choking on the sugary fume.

The pink sludge shot forward, tendrils unfurling mid-air with sickening elasticity. They stretched like ribbons, curling toward the apprentices with gleeful intent, the ends snapping open into maw-like tips that gurgled and spat more fumes.

"Get back!" Ezekiel barked, his voice rising above the storm. Instinct seized his limbs. Magic surged violently from his core.

He slammed his palms into the ground, and a ring of searing fire exploded around his group—a shield of red-hot flame that clashed with the oncoming pink mass. The moment fire met slime, the clash ignited in a spray of hissing gas and blistering light. The sweet scent turned caustic, fouler, as if the spell was trying to rot the flames themselves.

But it wasn’t just a spell—it was alive, or something pretending to be.

The slime splintered where it burned, but from the scorched fragments, new slivers oozed out, duplicating, bubbling, adapting. The pink ooze crawled over rocks and snow alike, leaving behind a trail of burned-out craters and melted roots.

"That’s not elemental magic," Ezekiel growled, planting his stance. His flame barrier surged higher, struggling to hold back the infectious tide.

Above Ezekiel, one of the apprentices—Marcel, if Ezekiel recalled correctly—thrust both arms forward, his fingers trembling but determined. Wind began to spiral from his palms in a sharp vortex, forming a sleek, silver barrier that crackled with effort. He was trying to cut through the spreading, toxic mist—a countermeasure meant to scatter and dissipate fumes before they reached the formation.

But the moment the bubblegum-colored vapor collided with his wind barrier, something went wrong.

The wind didn’t slice through the fog.

It clung to it. Twisted with it.

The fumes spun into the gust like threads of taffy, corrupting the magic itself, turning the clean lines of Marcel’s spell into something warped and glistening. His eyes widened as the color of his wind—normally sharp and clear—began to shimmer with an unnatural pink sheen.

His forehead furrowed sharply, sweat breaking across his brow. "I-It’s not even magic," he said aloud, voice like cracking ice. "It doesn’t pull from any leyline or relic source. It’s... Manufactured."

Everyone looked at Marcel, trying to understand what was going on. Most of them looked extremely terrified, barely able to move. If Ezekiel had been a second late to counter the woman’s attack, they would already be dead.

Tension coiled in the air, each apprentice ready to strike—but frozen by uncertainty. One wrong move, one misjudged spell, and they could bring more ruin upon themselves. So they waited—shoulders taut, magic pulsing underneath their skin—eyes pleading for a command from the only one who had yet to falter.

But Ezekiel... couldn’t speak.

The words caught like thorns in his throat. His mind raced, digging through every Guardian archive, every forbidden tome he’d ever skimmed, trying to identify what he was seeing and fail.

That sludge—that sweet, pink, gum-scented horror—was not in any record. It was not magic as they knew it. No signature. No resonance. No element they could track.

Just corrosive beauty in slow decay.

Above it all, the woman remained deathly still.

She hadn’t moved since casting the spell. Not even a twitch of the fingers. Her round glasses caught the light of fire and magic, turning her eyes to two blank mirrors. She didn’t revel in the destruction. She didn’t gloat.

She just watched.

Like a biologist examining diseased cells in a petri dish. Her bubblegum-pink hair drifted with the wind, echoing the color of the sludge now slithering through the snow and eating through enchanted boots and spell-formed shields alike.

Behind her, the second cloaked figure remained silent, unmoving—but his presence pressed on Ezekiel’s senses like a knife trailing the spine. Not attacking at all. His eyes remained hidden underneath his hood.

Ezekiel’s jaw locked tight. Magic pulsed at his back, surging up his arms, and still he could taste the ash of hesitation. But he had no choice. He had to move.

"Jules! Mira! Volley formation!" he barked at the two apprentices nearest to him, voice cracking like a whip. "Break her focus before she casts again! Move—now!"

The apprentices sprang into action—though their steps trembled, their faces pale. They scattered into formation with practiced rhythm, hands raised, glyphs swirling into being midair. The air throbbed with spellwork.

Ezekiel thrust his arms forward, and fire roared from his palms—searing and bright. It swept across the clearing in a flaming arc, striking the slime with full force.

It hissed, shrieked, and cracked.

The sludge splintered, but did not die.

Chunks of it splashed aside, only to squirm, stretch, and reform—bubbling like chewing gum in a child’s mouth, eating deeper into the earth with renewed hunger.

The clearing erupted with motion the moment Ezekiel’s voice cut through the cold.

"Volley formation—now!"

Apprentices surged into action despite the frost biting at their heels and the unnatural slime devouring the battlefield. Their deep blue cloaks flared like banners, half-soaked in shimmering snow, as they moved to encircle the enemy in a tight crescent formation.

Mira stepped forward first—calm, focused, even as fear churned in the air around her. Her fingers curled, then sliced through the air with eerie precision.

"Crux sanguinem," she whispered.

A glint of crimson shimmered across her pale skin, rising in threadlike strands from beneath her sleeves. The air thickened. Blood—not drawn from injury, but summoned from within—twisted around her arms, forming a series of jagged, pulsating blades. She was the only apprentice who could will her blood into a weapon without collapse—a rare and dangerous talent.

The blades launched toward the pink-haired woman in a sweeping arc, each one sharp enough to cut through iron.

But before they landed, Jules joined in. His eyes glinted with steel-toned determination as he slammed his fists together. "Ferra formare!"

From the earth below, iron plates erupted like dragon scales, orbiting Jules before shooting toward the enemy in sync with Mira’s blood blades—dozens of gleaming shards hurtling through the snow-laced air.

For a moment, it looked like the attack would overwhelm her.

But the woman moved only her hand.

With a casual flick of her wrist, the bubblegum-colored slime around her surged upward like a living wall—elastic, rippling, and impossibly fast. It swallowed Mira’s blood blades and sizzled through Jules’ metal shards with a low, acidic hiss. The slime didn’t just resist—it ate the spells, digesting them with corrosive ease.

Pink fumes puffed from the contact points, cloying and sweet. The scent was nostalgic, like candy—deceptively innocent.

"Our magic types won’t work on something like this," Ezekiel muttered under his breath, straightening his stance as another arc of flame sputtered against the regenerating sludge. The realization struck like iron against ice—conventional magic wouldn’t win this fight.

Then his eyes shifted—cutting through the chaos—to a figure standing several paces behind.

A trembling man, slightly hunched, as if the storm itself bore down harder on his shoulders than anyone else’s. His long gray hair was knotted and wind-snarled, clinging to the damp folds of his cloak. His almond-shaped eyes darted between the floating woman and the melting battlefield, filled with visible panic.

Tomoe Higurashi.

Ezekiel clenched his jaw. Of all people, of all times... it had to be him. The quiet one. The one who flinched at combat drills and avoided sparring matches. But Ezekiel also knew the truth—the reason the instructors barely touched him, the reason even the most reckless apprentices never challenged him.

Tomoe bore the rarest magic in all of Moonstone Academy—spacial magic.

"Tomoe!" Ezekiel called out sharply, voice cutting across the wind like a whip.

Tomoe jerked upright like he’d been struck. His lips parted in a breathless gasp as all eyes snapped to him—recognition flashing across the circle of apprentices.

"M-Me?" he stammered, stepping back instinctively as if the name alone was a threat. "Y-Yes?"

His knees trembled, nearly buckling. His hands were still held close to his chest, knuckles white. The firelight from Ezekiel’s spell shimmered across his skin, revealing a faint tremor through his fingers.

Ezekiel stepped toward him, urgency threaded in every word. "We need your spacial magic. Now."

Tomoe swallowed hard. His throat bobbed. "I—I haven’t—Ezekiel, if I mess up, it could tear through you, or Mira, or—"

"You won’t mess up," Ezekiel said, cutting him off, voice steady despite the maelstrom. "You’re the only one who can manipulate the field. That thing—that spell—it’s warping space itself. And if we don’t anchor it, it’ll consume more than just this clearing."

Behind them, Jules roared as another wave of metal shards was melted midair, while Mira crouched low, dragging blood sigils through the snow to summon another offensive sweep. Marcel’s barrier flickered, struggling to hold against the thickening fumes.

"We can’t keep her tangled forever," Ezekiel added, teeth clenched. "We need to break her. And you’re our only chance."

Tomoe hesitated, breathing shallowly. The snow crunched beneath his boots as he tried to steady himself.

"Please," Ezekiel said, softer this time. "Trust yourself. Or we all fall."

For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Not the slime. Not the storm. Just the silent, shrinking form of Tomoe as he fought his panic.

Then he exhaled.

And his trembling hands dropped to his sides.

"A-Alright," Tomoe whispered, eyes flickering with a glow not seen since his first arrival at the Academy. "Just don’t stand too close."

The air around him shivered and space itself began to bend. The apprentices gasped. They have not really seen his spacial magic before but it is almost as rare as Levi’s gravitational magic but in different scale.

Spacial magic can do as much as devouring an entire city or worse.