The agony was blinding.
A burning sensation gnawed at Akira's chest, each breath rasping like steel dragged across stone. It was a cruel contrast to the freezing wasteland around him — a world of endless white and deathly silence.
He clutched the katana tighter. His body screamed for him to collapse, but survival demanded otherwise.
"Move," he snarled through gritted teeth. "Move, damn you!"
A shadow loomed above.
Without warning, a massive boulder of ice — wide as a cart — hurtled toward him. His legs refused to obey, locked stiff by frostbite that felt like fire gnawing at his veins.
Desperation lent him strength. With a raw shout, Akira hurled the katana like a javelin.
The steel sang through the air.
The impact shattered the frozen boulder into a storm of glittering shards.
Akira dropped to one knee, gasping. A brief victory — but his weapon was now buried twenty feet away, wedged deep into the trunk of a frostbitten tree.
Before he could curse himself, the air quivered with a sound that stabbed into his very bones.
"ROOOOAARRHHH!"
The roar hit like a hammer, forcing Akira to clamp his hands over his ears. Blood welled from one eardrum.
He staggered upright, ignoring the roaring pain. Weapon first. Kill the beast second. Survive third. In that order.
Stumbling through the deep snow, Akira wrenched the katana free.
Too late.
A presence loomed behind him — cold, vast, and seething with hatred.
Slowly, he turned.
The creature was gargantuan: twenty-four feet tall, its wingspan spanning a hundred. Its scales were the hue of shattered glaciers; its curling horns were whiter than snow. Its eyes — deep, ancient, and furious — fixed upon him with the unreasoning malice of a mad beast long unchained.
It was a frost wyvern, a relic from a forgotten era of blood and sorcery.
It lunged without hesitation. A blur of frozen scales and razor-sharp wings.
Akira leapt back — but not fast enough. A shallow cut bloomed across his left arm. Worse, he watched in horror as his own blood began to freeze on contact with the frigid air, numbing the limb almost instantly.
The wyvern screeched again, its elemental aura intensifying, spreading a cold so pure it felt like burning silver against Akira's skin.
Pain wracked him, but he held his ground.
If he faltered now, death would come swift.
The beast charged once more, swinging a wing like a guillotine. Akira read the feint too late.
The true target was his crippled arm.
With a desperate motion, Akira brought the katana down in a defensive arc, catching the blow. The impact sent a shock through his body, nearly wrenching the blade from his hand. His left arm screamed in protest.
"Ten minutes," he thought grimly. "Ten minutes before hypothermia claims me. I need to end this before then."
Gritting his teeth, Akira dashed sideways through the snow-laden forest.
The wyvern roared in frustration, beating its wings to conjure a hailstorm of ice boulders overhead.
One by one, the frozen projectiles rained down, forcing Akira into a deadly dance — weaving, diving, rolling behind skeletal trees. Each time he closed the distance, the wyvern retreated just enough to keep him within the killing range of its elemental aura.
A cruel intelligence gleamed in those glacier-blue eyes.
Akira cursed under his breath. He had underestimated it.
He was not facing a mindless beast — he was prey before an ancient predator.
Still, he pressed forward. Waiting for a mistake. An opening.
But the wyvern changed tactics. With a thunderous beat of its wings, it soared high into the sky, vanishing into the stormclouds.
Akira skidded to a halt, heart hammering.
This was worse. Much worse.
Planting his feet, he gripped the katana with both hands and reached deep inside himself — searching for the ancient power he had felt once before, long ago when death had brushed against him for the first time.
Nothing.
Only emptiness answered.
"Damn it," he hissed. "Why won't you awaken?"
Far above, the wyvern unfurled its wings. A transparent barrier of magic wrapped around it like a second skin.
Seven spears of pure ice materialized, circling its head like a crown of death.
Elemental Technique: Killer Cold Spears.
The air itself trembled.
Akira barely spared it a glance. His focus turned inward. The katana in his hands was not ordinary steel. It was Tiidkosaar, in the tongue of dragons — a relic forged from the essence of Akatosh, the Dragon God of Space and Time. By rights, its power should have answered his call.
Unless…
A grim realization dawned.
The essence within the blade remained sealed until blood was offered — not the blood of an enemy, but the wielder's own.
Without hesitation, Akira drew the katana across his frozen wrist.
Pain lanced up his arm. Blood, dark and sluggish, spilled onto the steel.
The sword drank deeply.
At once, power surged into Akira's veins — not a gentle flow, but a flood, violent and overwhelming. His limbs vibrated with strength; his senses sharpened to painful clarity. He could feel every snowflake falling, every heartbeat of the beast overhead.
He felt ALIVE.
And it was GLORIOUS.
His entire body flooded with power, rushing through him like a torrent of lightning. His movements became faster, sharper. The world around him slowed, and for the first time, Akira understood the true nature of the sword in his hands.
Time. Power. Lifeitself.
The first ice spear shrieked down toward him.
To Akira, it moved almost lazily through the frozen air.
A sidestep. A twist of the body.
The spear slammed into the ground where he had stood.
He smiled grimly, eyes gleaming with newfound light.
"Twenty-nine seconds left," he muttered. "Time to end this."
Another spear hurtled toward him. He didn't dodge.
He ran straight into it, katana raised.
Steel met ice — and the ice shattered like glass.
One after another, he cleaved through the spears, the katana singing with each strike.
The wyvern screeched in fury, repositioning the last two spears to flank him.
But Akira was already moving.
Planting his foot deep into the snow, he launched himself upward with inhuman strength.
The wyvern recoiled — but too late.
Akira tore through its magical barrier with a howl of rage, driving the katana deep into the beast's right eye.
Both man and monster screamed.
An instant later, one of the last ice spears slammed into Akira's left arm, tearing through flesh and bone.
Blood fountained into the stormy air.
But Akira did not let go.
Not until the wyvern's shrieks faded into a gurgling death rattle, and its massive body tumbled from the sky — a broken titan crashing into the snow below.
Akira hit the ground hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs.
For a long moment, he lay still, staring up at the gray sky.
Victory tasted like ash.
And the storm raged on.