Chapter : 1195

Using a network of hidden contacts and whispered codes that Bael himself had taught her, she sent a summons. A challenge. She named a place: a desolate, forgotten ruin of an old sea-fort on the coast, miles from any prying eyes. And she named a time: the next full moon.

She spent the intervening week in a state of cold, focused preparation. She was not a fool. She knew Bael would not come to negotiate. He would come to collect, or to eliminate, his disobedient tool. This would be a battle.

She pushed her own, formidable powers to their absolute limit. She spent hours in a state of deep, icy meditation, her spirit, the White Fairy, a creature of pure, conceptual cold, her constant companion. She was a Sovereign-in-waiting, a goddess of winter whose true potential had been leashed and suppressed for years, both by her own emotional cage and by Bael’s subtle manipulations. Now, she was systematically, deliberately, and ruthlessly breaking those chains.

She felt her power growing, expanding, becoming something wilder, colder, and more absolute than she had ever imagined. The very air in her chambers grew frigid, and a fine, beautiful layer of frost permanently coated the inside of her windows, a testament to the untamed, arctic power that was awakening within her.

Her hair, once as black as a raven’s wing, began to change. It started at the roots, a single, shimmering strand of pure, silver-white. Then another. And another. As her power grew, as she shed the last vestiges of her old, human self and embraced the cold, divine truth of her spirit, the silver spread, a slow, beautiful tide of winter, until her entire mane of hair was a cascade of shimmering, moonlight-silver. It was a physical manifestation of her ascension, a mark of her new, and terrible, power.

On the night of the full moon, she was ready. She slipped from the Ferrum estate like a ghost, a silver-haired specter of vengeance moving through the darkness.

She arrived at the ruin to find him waiting for her, a beautiful, elegant silhouette against the moonlit, crashing waves. Bael regarded her with an expression of profound, and almost paternal, disappointment.

My little Ice Queen, his voice whispered in her mind. You have made a foolish, and very emotional, decision. I had thought I had cured you of such weaknesses.

"Our contract is over, Bael," Rosa said, her own voice no longer a whisper, but a clear, cold, and utterly defiant thing.

*Is it now?_ he purred, a dangerous, predatory amusement in his voice. I think not. You are mine, Rosa. You are my most beautiful, and most valuable, creation. And I do not suffer my creations to rebel.

He gave her a final, magnificent, and utterly monstrous ultimatum. He told her of a new plan, a grand, sweeping act of terror that would bring the Ferrum house to its knees. He wanted her to unleash a new, and even more virulent, strain of the Curse Knight plague upon the estate itself, to turn her own new home into a graveyard.

Do this one, final thing for me, he promised, his voice a silken, hypnotic temptation. And I will give you the pearl. I will even, out of the goodness of my heart, forgive this little tantrum.

"No," Rosa said, the word a blade of pure, forged ice.

Bael’s smile finally, at long last, vanished. His beautiful, aristocratic face twisted into a mask of pure, demonic rage. The game was over.

Then you are no longer a useful asset, he hissed, his voice now a chorus of screaming, damned souls. You are a loose end. And loose ends must be… snipped.

He attacked. A wave of pure, soul-eating blackness erupted from him, a tide of absolute despair that was meant to unmake her very soul.

But he was not facing the cold, logical machine he had created. He was facing a goddess.

Rosa did not retreat. She did not defend. She met his attack with her own.

A blinding, silent, and absolute explosion of pure, conceptual cold erupted from her. It was not a blizzard. It was not a wave of ice. It was a fundamental, violent rewriting of the laws of reality in her vicinity. It was the concept of Absolute Zero made manifest.

The world went white. The sound of the crashing waves, the howl of the wind, the very hum of magic in the air—it was all instantly, and absolutely, silenced.

Chapter : 1196

The confrontation in the seaside ruin was not a battle; it was a birth. A violent, cataclysmic, and utterly magnificent birth of a new and terrible power. Bael, the ancient, arrogant demon lord, had made a fatal, and deeply ironic, miscalculation. He had spent a decade forging a perfect, emotionless weapon, a creature of pure, cold logic. And he had failed to comprehend that logic, in its purest form, can lead to a conclusion of absolute, and utterly ruthless, rebellion.

He had expected his disobedient tool to fight him with the powers he had taught her, with the neat, predictable, and ultimately limited abilities of an Ascended-level Ice Mage. He was prepared for a storm of icicles, for a wall of glacial ice, for the clumsy, human-scale magic she had mastered.

He was not prepared for a goddess.

The moment he attacked, the moment his wave of pure, soul-eating despair washed over her, he had unknowingly provided the final, necessary catalyst. Rosa’s own immense, suppressed power, the Sovereign-level potential that had been sleeping in her soul, was a coiled spring of absolute zero. His attack was not a crushing blow; it was the final, foolish finger pressing down on the release mechanism.

The explosion of her power was a silent, beautiful, and utterly terrifying event. It was not a chaotic burst of energy. It was a perfect, crystalline expansion of her will. The very concept of heat, of motion, of life itself, was systematically and instantaneously erased from a hundred-yard radius around her. The air did not just freeze; it solidified into a lattice of perfect, intricate, and impossibly beautiful ice crystals. The sound of the crashing waves was not just muffled; it was frozen, the very vibrations of the air locked into a state of absolute stasis.

It was the birth of her own, unique Authority, the signature power of a true Sovereign. The Authority of Absolute Stillness.

Bael, who had been a being of flowing, liquid shadow and effortless, arrogant motion, was caught in this conceptual net. He was not just frozen; he was halted. His own demonic power, his connection to the Abyss, was momentarily severed, his very being locked into a state of perfect, crystalline immobility. He was a god trapped in a photograph.

And in that single, frozen, perfect instant of absolute vulnerability, Rosa moved.

She was not a blur of speed. She was simply… there. She flowed through the frozen, crystalline air, a silver-haired ghost of vengeance, her movements as silent and as final as the death of a star.

She did not attack his body. She did not attack his soul. She attacked his prize.

Her hand, now glowing with a soft, internal, and terribly cold light, phased through the frozen, howling vortex of his demonic energy and closed around the single point of warmth and life in this universe of absolute zero: the 5-Color Divine Pearl, still held in his paralyzed grasp.

The moment her fingers touched it, a new and different kind of explosion occurred. The pure, vibrant, life-affirming energy of the pearl, a thing of creation, came into contact with the absolute, life-negating cold of her Authority. The two opposing, conceptual forces met, and they did not just cancel each other out. They annihilated each other in a flash of pure, white light and a silent, concussive shockwave that shattered the very fabric of the stasis field.

The world crashed back into motion. The sound of the waves returned, a deafening roar. The wind howled through the ruin. And Bael was thrown backward, not by a physical blow, but by the sheer, conceptual whiplash of his own power being turned against him. He crashed into the far wall of the ruin, his elegant form flickering, his beautiful, aristocratic face for the first time showing a flicker of something other than amusement: genuine, shocked, and absolute pain.

Rosa stood where she had been, her silver hair a wild storm around her, her chest heaving with the exertion of an act that had almost unmade her. And in her hand, glowing with a soft, triumphant, and now blessedly, terribly, free light, was the 5-Color Divine Pearl.

She had done it. She had not just defied a god; she had robbed him.

Bael pushed himself up from the rubble, a thin trickle of black, ichorous blood running from the corner of his perfect lips. The amused, condescending mask was gone. His amethyst eyes were now two burning pits of pure, unadulterated, and deeply personal hatred. He had not just been defeated; he had been humiliated. Robbed. By his own creation.