While Lin stood frozen in the chaos, haunted by the voice echoing in his mind—
—they moved.

Like white serpents slithering from a frozen hell, dozens of women surged from the icy tiers,
their bodies flowing across the ground like poisoned streams.
Their eyes saw nothing but him,
as if the entire world had collapsed into his trembling form.

His heart battered his chest like a caged bird,
wild and frantic.
His breath caught, his throat turned to stone,
and his legs—
they no longer belonged to him.

It was as if the ice had claimed them,
or the earth itself had opened to swallow him whole.

“Run…” his mind screamed.
But his body—
shattered like a puppet in a storm—remained still.
He stood helpless,
like a mouse encircled by starving serpents.

A scream cut through the air.

Before Lin could trace it, one of them—a silver-haired woman with eyes as cold as eternal night—
crawled across the ice toward him.

She didn’t run.
She slithered.
Like a winter wind with claws,
raking the ground, carving crimson cracks into the ice.
Even the earth groaned beneath her.

Her shadow lunged with demonic speed—
and instinct, raw and primal, took over.
He rolled to the side in a desperate lurch.

Her claws sliced the air where his head had been.
He hit the ground, hand skidding across the ice, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps.

“They’re not fighting me… they’re hunting me.”

His eyes shook with dread as the others approached—
crawling, leaping, salivating.
Death, wrapped in white flesh,
and he was the only thing left to devour.

He staggered upright, back pressed to an icy wall.
His limbs betrayed him,
his eyes trembled.

“I don’t want to die here…”
Weapon… I need a weapon…

And then—

A woman’s arm pierced through his body.

Lin spat blood.

And death came close—so close he could taste it.

Amid the chaos, amid the footsteps of the hunting She-Spawn,
he heard her voice.
Her voice.

Cold and merciless, it whispered in his skull:

> “Show me… your worth.”

Then—

Something moved.

Older than fear.
Older than pain.
Something that had slumbered in the darkness,
waiting for this exact moment.

His hands grabbed a shard of ice—
a jagged, frozen splinter.
But it was more than that.

His eyes turned black.
As if his consciousness had slipped away—
as if the world itself had vanished.

Time stilled.
Sound vanished.

Then instinct struck.

From the depths of his being,
a bestial force surged forth—
merciless, unyielding.
A raw need to survive.

His eyes, now pits of endless black, saw no reason.
No thought. No mercy.

And the shard between his fingers pulsed.
It breathed.
It twisted.

It became something darker.

A jagged spear—black ice tainted by some unseen aura.

He didn’t think. He didn’t plan.

He moved.

He roared—a cry not of man, but of some ancient beast.

One motion—one strike—
and the first She-Spawn fell, her belly ripped open.
Her death cry was a hiss, an animal’s last breath.

But he didn’t stop.

Screams. Steps. Chaos.

The spear spun like a storm of shadows.
Another body torn apart.
Pale blue blood scattered like a blooming ice flower.

Third. Fourth. Fifth.

He saw no faces. Heard no voices.

Only targets.

Only the pounding of his feral heart.

The She-Spawn, who mocked him moments ago, now faltered.
For the first time—
they felt fear.

And on the frozen throne above them all,
the White Queen sat.

She rested her chin on her hand.
And smiled.

A strange smile—one of amusement… and satisfaction.

> “Beautiful…”
“It seems I’ve finally found myself a husband.”

Amid the corpses and blood,
Lin stood.

Breathing heavily,
each inhale felt like a blade dragging through a storm of agony.

His hands trembled, glimmering with a strange blue hue.
His arm—once flesh—was now host to something else.

And his eyes…
were no longer human.

It was an alien feeling.
Cold like ice, bitter like fire.
He had killed for the first time.

Even in the abyss of his soul,
he knew it was survival.

But the feeling that consumed him was not regret.
Not guilt.

It was something larger.
Something shifting.

Had something changed inside him?
Had he become a part of this frozen world?

He didn’t know.

Everything was chaos.

But amid the scent of blood and the gaze of death,
something had awakened in his heart.

Is this the price?
The cost of survival?

As time stood still,
several She-Spawn princesses gathered at the edge of the arena,
eyes glinting with hunger.

One, with silver hair that sparkled like stars and eyes of deep sapphire, tilted her head and whispered:

> “This boy… is mine.”

Next to her, another with pale gold hair smirked, her voice sharp as a blade:

> “You’ll die if you think you can claim him before I do.”

Then came a third, black-haired and heartless,
stepping forward as if the ground froze beneath her feet:

> “Enough chatter. When he bleeds again… we’ll see who takes him first.”

Tension crackled between them.
Gazes collided.
Silent sparks flared.

Not a battle of blades—
but a war for the boy who dared shed their blood.

But before chaos could erupt again—

The air shuddered.

A cold deeper than death swept the field.

Upon the throne, the White Queen rose.

Graceful. Fatal.

She brushed her silken hair back,
and looked down upon them all—
a gaze that cracked the frost itself.

And she declared, in a voice that allowed no defiance:

> “He is mine.”
“Mine alone.”
“Any who dares reach for him… will be buried beneath Nivara forever.”

Everything was silent.
The princesses.
The arena.
Even the air obeyed.

Lin, standing alone amidst the chaos and blood—
realized, for the first time,
that he had fallen into the grasp of something far greater than a mere hunt or chase.
He had been caught in the heart of a merciless storm.

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