Chapter 180: Through Flame and Frost
"Let GO!"
The baron’s roar tore through the courtyard, his voice raw enough to bleed. His muscles strained against unseen bonds, veins standing like cords along his neck.
Aman stretched his small hands toward him, tears carving clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
"Daddy-!" His tiny fingers flexed, grasping empty air. "It hurts-!"
But he didn’t move forward as if an invisible barrier held him back.
"Daddy!"
"Ama-gh!"
The pull at the baron’s back intensified.
Cold whispers slithered up his spine:
Baron...
Baron...
He ignored them. Ignored the way his shoulders screamed as phantom chains wrenched him backward. His boots scraped twin grooves in the marble as he fought forward, inch by agonizing inch.
Then—
"Father."
The voice was a breath against his ear, warm where the whispers were cold. Familiar in a way that made his ribs crack open.
Aman?
"Wake up."
"!" Baron froze, his eyes widened in disbelief.
Before him, little Aman whimpered, his outstretched hand trembling. "D-don’t leave me...!"
Behind him, only a whisper, but undeniably familiar:
"Father, it’s me."
The baron’s breath hitched. His head spun.
He felt trapped, torn between two impossible choices.
Before him, Aman, his first son, at eight years old, scorched and weeping on the shattered marble.
Just three steps away.
The boy’s tiny fingers stretched toward him, trembling. "Daddy, please...!"
Behind him, right beside his ears, late Amaniel’s voice, clearer now, laced with urgency: "Wake up."
The baron’s breath came in ragged bursts. His fingers twitched toward the child.
Then-
A ripple passed through the world.
The mist clouding his vision thinned abruptly. His pupils contracted. For one crystalline moment, he saw clearly:
Aman’s face flickered.
"!"
For half a heartbeat, the boy’s slate-gray eyes became pits of swirling blackness. His outstretched fingers elongated into clawed hands.
The baron’s stomach dropped.
"Wake up." Amaniel’s voice again, closer now, trembling with emotion.
"Ugh-!" The baron’s head throbbed, a dull, insistent drum.
Memories surged:
The blizzard. The void eyes. The spear still warm in his grip.
"-!"
His head snapped up, his eyes clearer now.
Little Aman tilted his head, his expression crumbling into confusion and sadness. "Daddy... Are you... leaving me?"
"..." Baron stayed silent.
And the world flickered around them, marble tiles warping into snow, the smoke and dust into violent wind.
The boy’s outstretched hand glitched violently, fingers snapping between a child’s soft skin and gnarled icy talons.
"I..." The baron’s voice was barely audible over the cracking sounds fracturing the air. "This is..."
His grip tightened on the spear’s haft.
"...an illusion."
The word shattered the world like a hammer through glass.
CRACK—!
The world splintered.
Jagged lines raced across the sky, the ground, the boy’s face. Aman’s mouth stretched too wide, his scream distorting as his form melted—
—revealing the Mistborn beneath, its vortex-head pulsing with fake memories.
The baron was already moving.
Flames roared down the spear’s length as he leveled it at the creature. "You made a mistake."
[Ignite]
Swoosh-!
Fire engulfed the Mistborn.
"GRAAH-!"
Its form blackened, curled in on itself, then exploded into ash that scattered across the now-familiar battlefield.
"You’re back."
The baron didn’t turn at the voice. His gaze remained fixed on the swirling snow ahead, where the real enemy watched.
Corrupted guards stood frozen mid-charge, their eyes milky-white. A fresh wave of Mistborn seethed behind them. And there, hovering above them all, the spiraling voids that had trapped him into that... that... nasty nightmare.
"..."
Nusayel’s jaw clenched.
Then, he noticed a movement at his periphery. He glanced right, where the young healer stood with his monocle crystal clear, though his one hand pressed to a bleeding temple.
For a heartbeat, Amaniel’s face superimposed over the healer’s features.
...
"...Thank you," the baron murmured.
Lumin nodded, then winced as a not-so-distant clanging sounds rocked the battlefield.
"Can you do that again?" He gestured to the lingering flames on the baron’s spear. "Even a smaller scale would work."
The baron’s gaze flicked past him to the silver-haired and golden-eyed eyed youth, holding the line against the corrupted units, their movements slowing under the onslaught.
"I can’t hurt them." The baron flexed his scorched hand. "They’re still alive under that... thing’s control."
A quiet laugh escaped Lumin’s lips.
He quickly schooled his expression when the baron arched a brow.
"Apologies. But—" He pointed to Zephyr, who was weaving between frozen guards with preternatural grace. "We just need you to make another ’opening’. For him."
The baron followed the gesture and understood.
Silver-haired youth’s daggers glowed faintly blue, their edges humming with restrained power. But it was obviously the boy’s ability the young healer was hinting at.
The baron exhaled, smoke curling from his lips as fresh flames coiled around his spear.
"One opening," he agreed. "Coming up."
"Wait." Lumin’s voice cut through the wind as he stepped forward, his shovel biting into the snowpack with a quiet thunk.
"They need to be unconscious first." His monocle gleamed as he glanced at the corrupted guards. "Or your ’opening move’ will scatter them into the storm."
The baron’s flames dimmed slightly as he considered.
A quick mental calculation confirmed the healer’s warning—his technique would indeed blast the mind-controlled units dangerously far.
"Throw them here." Lumin was already moving, his lean half-elf frame bending to scoop snow with methodical precision. His shovel moved like a surgeon’s tool, carving out a deep depression in the drifts beside him. Every motion was economical, creating a perfect landing zone without wasted effort.
The baron’s "Be careful" was barely audible before he vanished—
—reappearing behind the nearest corrupted guard with silent efficiency.
His spear butt struck with clinical precision, the man collapsing like a marionette with cut strings. Without pausing, the baron pivoted, using the haft to hook another’s legs, sending the woman tumbling toward Lumin’s prepared mound, while the flat of his blade deflected two Mistborn claws.
Aeron barely registered the first body flying through the air before Lumin’s shovel flashed. The half-elf caught the guard mid-air with his hands and redirected the unconscious form into the snow pit with the care one might show stacking firewood.
Clang!
Zephyr’s dagger intercepted claws aiming for Aeron’s exposed back.
"Focus," came the quiet reminder before silver hair vanished back into the blizzard.
Aeron shook himself, turning just in time to see Lumin field another guard with his shovel, the impact barely making the healer’s arms tremble. The half-elf arranged each body with unsettling calm, his breathing even, his movements smooth as oiled clockwork.
"Twenty more," Lumin murmured, more to himself than anyone, as he caught a particularly large guardsman by the collar, lowering him into the growing pile with gentle care.
The baron worked like a specter - every strike, every throw calculated to incapacitate without lasting harm.
Within two perfect minutes, the last guard arced through the air.
The howling wind nearly stole the body, but Lumin’s shovel shot out, the curved metal head snagging the guard’s belt at the last possible moment.
"Now." Lumin’s quiet voice carried surprising weight.
Above them, the baron materialized mid-air, his spear erupting in a helix of flames. For a suspended moment, he hung like a burning star, then plummeted.
SWOOSH-!
The spear struck ground ten paces away, its impact sending concentric rings of fire through the snow. The inferno parted around the pile of unconscious units and the trio but consumed the advancing Mistborn, their vortex faces distorting as flames turned them to ash.
The blast cleared a perfect circle in the storm, revealing-
The two massive hollow eyes.
Far closer now.
And hangrier.
The baron’s gaze flicked backward, just long enough to see Aeron and Zephyr vanish through the glowing portal in tandem, while Lumin worked with quiet efficiency, hefting unconscious guards through the gateway one after another like a farmer loading grain sacks.
His attention snapped forward again as the mist thickened.
The hollow eyes pulsed, their spirals spinning faster. New Mistborns coalesced from the snow itself, their clawed hands already forming.
With practiced motion, the baron yanked a vial from his pouch, downed its contents in one swallow, and felt the warmth of restored aura flood his veins. His spear flared back to life just as the first wave of creatures lunged.
Slash-!
A crescent of fire carved through three sneaking Mistborn that had been inching toward Lumin’s blind spot. The baron pivoted, his weapon tracing a perfect circle around the healer that left the snow steaming in a ten-foot radius.
"Forty seconds," Lumin noted calmly, not pausing in his work as he rolled another guard toward the portal.
The baron counted each breath between attacks. At the thirty-second mark, he drained another potion, the glass shattering at his feet as new flames raced down his spear. Another defensive circle. Another cluster of Mistborn reduced to ash.
By the third repetition, his fingers trembled slightly around the haft. Five bodies remained when his spine suddenly went rigid - not from exhaustion, but primal warning.
The snow itself rose in a creeping tidal wave from all sides, its crests hardening into jagged ice spears mid-motion.
"Shoot."
In one fluid motion, the baron slammed his spearpoint-first into the ground, the weapon dissolving into his resonator mark as he moved.
The icy waves crashed down on them.
"Jump!"
_____
(Note: Sorry guys, I couldn’t write yesterday, and as soon as I came back, I ate and slept. I started working on it after breakfast. Thank you for your patience and understanding.)