The instant Belle and Kai emerged from the stone stairwell, the world transformed around them. This time they were swallowed whole by a storm of white.
Howling winds screamed like wailing spirits, flinging snow and biting shards of hail through the air with merciless fury. Flurries spiraled wildly in every direction, obscuring the horizon in a veil of white mist.
The land before them stretched into a barren, frost-covered wasteland, vast and alien. Jagged ridges of glacial ice loomed in the distance like the skeletal remains of some ancient, forgotten beast.
Snow crunched beneath their boots. Ice clung to their lashes. A single breath was enough to bite the inside of Kai's lungs. He immediately recoiled, hunching into himself.
"W-What the—! It's freezing!"
His voice was carried off by the wind.
Belle didn't respond right away. She stood there, silently observing the frozen expanse, her long silver hair whipping behind her like a banner. Her jacket fluttered in the storm, her skin exposed to the elements. And yet… she didn't shiver.
She exhaled softly.
No fog. No steam. Just breath.
"…Huh." Kai glanced at her and blinked through the storm. "…Wait. You're not cold?" His teeth chattered as he spoke. "Belle. It's—It's gotta be below freezing! How are you not—?!"
She tilted her head and slowly raised one hand, letting the hail strike her bare fingers. Ice dusted her skin and melted on contact, vanishing instantly.
She didn't feel the sting. Not even numbness. The cold simply wasn't there.
Her brows furrowed slightly. "…This isn't normal."
Kai's voice trembled. "Yeah, no kidding."
He dropped to one knee, cupping his hands together. A small flame flickered to life in his palms, a desperate attempt to generate heat. But the wind howled again—fierce and wild—and a cluster of hailstones bombarded the flame, nearly snuffing it out.
He growled and fed more mana into it, trying to stabilize the flickering fire. Even with effort, the flame wavered like a leaf in a hurricane.
"This… isn't going to last," he muttered. "I can't even hold a campfire spell in this weather. We're gonna burn through mana just to stay alive on this floor."
Belle turned toward him, her eyes narrowing slightly.
She said nothing at first. But her gaze drifted to her own hands—where, just beneath the surface of her pale skin, faint blue lines of energy pulsed, barely visible in the light of the storm. They traced like glowing veins, branching in subtle patterns across her arms.
Aetherion's energy.
First the miasma in the Forbidden Forest. Now this. Another immunity.
"Extreme cold… doesn't affect me," she said at last, almost to herself.
Kai let out a sharp, disbelieving breath, half-chuckling and half-groaning. "Of course it doesn't. You and your freak abilities."
She smiled faintly. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"I didn't mean it as one."
Still, despite the sarcasm, there was admiration buried under his exasperation. Belle knelt beside him and reached out. Her fingers closed gently around his arm. Her touch was startlingly warm, like a hearth flame in a blizzard.
Kai blinked in surprise, his shivering lessening slightly under her contact.
"No time to look for shelter," she said softly. "Our goal is the twelfth floor. The longer we stay here, the more mana we waste. If we reach the core and destroy it, the dungeon will collapse. That's our best shot."
Kai looked up at her, his breath shallow. Then he grinned weakly. "Yeah. Save the world… freeze to death trying."
Still, he took a deep breath and forced his stiff legs to move, standing beside her. They pressed forward through the frostveil expanse.
The storm did not relent. The snow grew deeper with every step. The terrain uneven and shifting beneath them, hiding jagged ice pits and concealed drops.
Kai's boots were soaked. The hail cracked against his jacket and scraped his skin. Every minute was a battle just to walk.
Belle led the way, cutting a path through the chaos. She moved like she belonged in the storm—untouched by its cruelty.
Kai followed, but the gap between them widened with each step.
His breathing was getting worse. His hands were white. The fire he'd conjured was gone, and his arms hung limp at his sides. Then he stumbled.
Belle turned immediately, her eyes locking on him. "Kai."
"I'm fine," he muttered, lips pale. "Just… don't stop."
But she did stop. She stepped back toward him—just as the wind died for a single breath. And then the snow shifted. A silent, deliberate tremor passed beneath their feet.
It wasn't from the weather.
Belle's expression hardened. "Movement. Ahead."
Kai barely had the strength to lift his head. "Please don't tell me—"
All around them, the snow began to rise.
Not from the wind. From shapes—white-furred, low-slung bodies shaking off layers of frost and snow. Camouflaged perfectly against the terrain, these creatures had been lying in wait.
Hunched shoulders. Gleaming fangs. Clawed paws pressing silently against the snow.
One… three… six… a dozen… two dozen… more still.
Dozens of ambush predators, forming a loose circle in the storm. Belle's eyes gleamed, her body subtly lowering into a battle stance. Sparks crackled along her fingertips—lightning magic, surging and ready.
"I'll take the lead," she said calmly. "Conserve your mana. Your job is survival."
Kai tried to protest. "But—"
"I'm immune," she reminded him, lightning pulsing from her hands. "You're not."
Then she took a step forward.
The earth trembled. A low rumble passed beneath their boots, so faint it could've been imagined—until the wind suddenly twisted direction, howling with a pulse that wasn't natural.
It wasn't just the wind anymore. It was a warning.
Belle stopped her step.
Kai felt it too. His breath hitched as a sharp crack echoed through the sky above. The thick clouds overhead shuddered—then split slightly, as if something ancient had breathed. Shafts of ghostly blue light lanced down between the swirling storm, illuminating the ice plains in fragments.
"…The hell?" Kai muttered, squinting through the storm. "The wind… it changed."
"No," Belle murmured, her silver eyes narrowing. "The storm is awakening."
The clouds sparked again—tracers of lightning arcing in broad, elegant spirals across the sky. Not random bolts. Patterns. Almost like they were forming a sigil. Then they paused, hovering in place like coiled serpents, crackling, waiting.
Then the world went still. And from the silence, a faint crunch of snow.
Belle's head snapped to the side.
Too late for words. Too late for warning. The first predator struck.
It lunged from a snowdrift like a ghost—silent, white-furred, muscles rippling beneath its icy hide, its maw wide with rows of serrated teeth.
Belle moved on instinct. Her body turned, arm snapping forward, and a compressed fireball—dense and sharp as a bullet—exploded from her palm and struck the beast mid-air.
BOOM.
It detonated in mid-lunge, steam and scorched fur bursting outward as the creature was flung sideways into a ridge, motionless. Smoke rose.
Kai's eyes widened—but barely had time to react before something burst from below. A predator had tunneled beneath the snow and erupted underneath him, jaws snapping upward.
"Shit—!"
His katana flew up defensively, just in time to block the beast's maw. But the impact sent him flying backward. He hit the snow hard—hard enough to make the world spin. Cold needles bit into every inch of his skin. The breath left his lungs.
He rolled once, twice, then lay still, blinking against the haze creeping at the edge of his vision.
Too cold. Every breath he took hurt. His mana was draining fast—used to generate even the slightest warmth. His hands refused to move properly. His fire magic flickered to life weakly—just enough to light the edge of his blade.
But that weak flame… it barely pierced the swirling wind.
The predator stalked toward him again—eyes glowing like frosted embers.
Move.
His legs screamed in protest.
Get up.
He forced himself up just in time to meet the next strike—parrying with the last of his strength and slicing across the beast's flank. Blood misted the air.
But it wasn't enough. Another came from the left. Another from behind.
He was surrounded.
"Damn it…"
"Focus on the cores!" Belle's voice rang out through the gale. "Strike the veins!"
Kai swung desperately, cutting one down, but another pounced. And in that instant—CRACK-KOOM!
A bolt of pure lightning streaked through the snow, slamming into the beast mid-pounce. The explosion of energy shattered the air in a blast of steam and light, reducing the creature to scattered embers.
Belle strode forward. Hair whipping like silver fire, eyes glowing faintly with a dangerous light. She raised one hand. Lightning danced between her fingers, humming like a song of war. In the other—flames curled up her arm, vibrant, living.
The predators paused. Even they felt it—the pressure in the air. The change.
Belle stepped forward again.
One of the larger beasts leapt at her.
She didn't flinch. In a fluid, dancer-like spin, she ducked beneath the strike and unleashed a thunderclap burst of lightning into its underbelly. The impact sent the creature skyward before it crashed down, convulsing, lightning crackling from its corpse.
Belle didn't stop moving. She swept her arm forward, igniting the snow in a crescent-shaped wall of fire that engulfed three more of the approaching predators.
They screamed, ice armor melting as the flames consumed them, steam billowing high into the sky. But it wasn't over.
The storm roared. Above them, a bolt of magical lightning arced down—not like natural lightning. It struck the ground and left behind a glowing crystal spire, jagged and pulsing with unstable magic.
It hummed, then pulsed—sending out waves that made Kai's vision blur.
"Belle!" he shouted. "That thing's draining mana!"
Belle's eyes flicked toward it.
Then to the left—where the ground fractured. A chasm split open across the expanse, swallowing a snowbank—and two unfortunate beasts along with it.
The terrain itself was falling apart.
"The floor's becoming unstable," Belle called out. "We have to keep moving!"
Kai could barely stay upright. The snow reached his knees now. Each step was a battle. His katana felt heavy. His fire had almost died. And the cold… it was inside him.
One of the beasts slammed into his ribs from the side, tackling him into the snow. He didn't get up. He couldn't. The world went white. His vision blurred. But just before the cold claimed him—a hand reached out.
Warm. Solid. Familiar.
Belle's.
She pulled him up, eyes fierce. "Stay with me."
He grabbed her wrist, trembling. "I-I can't keep this up… Belle…"
"You don't have to," she said.
She turned. Behind her—the blizzard roared, and the beasts gathered once more. Dozens of them now. Maybe more.
But Belle stood tall. Her flames and lightning converged—glowing brighter, spinning around her body like twin storms caught in orbit.
She raised both hands. With a thunderous roar, she slammed her palms together.
A shockwave of combined elemental magic burst outward in every direction—fire spiraling into lightning, lightning dancing with flame, a cyclone of raw destructive power that tore through the battlefield like a divine storm.
Beasts were incinerated in waves. The snow boiled. The wind fled. The crystal spires cracked under the weight of the spell and shattered into shards.
For one instant—all was light.
Kai stared, breath stolen—not from cold. But awe.
She stood alone in the center of devastation, the storm parted around her like a curtain. Snowfall stopped midair.
The sky itself hesitated.
"…She's…" Kai whispered.
A gust of wind passed. Belle turned her head slightly, silver eyes glowing.
"I'll carve a path," she said quietly. "Stay close."
The spiral storm of fire and lightning thinned, its violent energy unraveling like threads torn from the fabric of the world.
For a few precious seconds, there was silence.
BOOM.
A distant echo rolled across the frozen plains like thunder given form. All around them, the snow was scorched black and glassy where lightning had fused it.
Predators lay strewn across the ice—still twitching, still steaming—some split open by arcs of energy, others frozen mid-scream with bodies half-incinerated. It was carnage. A war zone born of elemental wrath.
Kai breathed heavily, every inhale scraping his throat like knives. His legs buckled, knees dipping into the snow, katana still clutched in a death grip.
And then the wind changed again. Low and deep.
Then—a rumble.
It wasn't the weather anymore. It was footsteps. Not soft, not stealthy like the first wave of predators. These were deliberate. Each impact thudded like a war drum against the earth.
beyond the fogged horizon, they emerged. Larger. Colder. Stronger.
Juggernauts.
They weren't ambushers. They weren't scouts. They were enforcers—behemoths plated in glacial armor, their muscles rippling beneath thick white fur like creatures carved from icebergs and nightmares. Frost clung to their massive antlers, which shimmered faintly with crystalline veins of magic. And their eyes… Burning. Cold. Merciless.
"...Second wave incoming," Belle muttered, her voice low—almost reverent.
Kai's breath hitched. His limbs trembled from a mix of fatigue and cold. He'd been hanging by a thread for the last few minutes. But now? He was dangling over a cliff.
Belle stepped beside him, scanning the oncoming beasts. Her silver hair blew wildly in the blizzard, yet her expression remained carved from steel.
Kai's voice cracked. "I-I don't… I can't fight those."
"No," Belle agreed. "You can't."
He blinked. Looked at her.
"We're running," she said simply.
Before he could speak, her eyes fluttered shut.
Aura Sense—Activated.
A wave of invisible awareness exploded outward from her body, brushing against the very world itself. It filtered through the wind, snow, mana and beast. Her senses extended past the howling blizzard, painting the battlefield with echoes of life and death. The magic storm itself pulsed in her mind's eye, and through the madness, a single path gleamed like a lifeline.
"Staircase," she said softly. "Nine hundred meters. Southwest. Beneath a collapsing ice shelf."
Kai winced. "C-collapsing?!"
She didn't answer. Because the first juggernaut was already charging. With a cry like splitting mountains, it barreled forward—its antlers aglow, paws shattering ice beneath each gallop.
Belle moved first. Lightning surged down her arm and exploded from her palm—a concentrated rail-bolt aimed straight at the monster's chest.
The blast hit with full force. A shockwave tore through the snow. But the beast didn't fall. It shrugged it off.
Belle's eyes narrowed. "Magic resistance..." She turned. "Aim for the legs."
Kai growled, dragging himself to his feet. "Then we break their foundation."
And so they ran.
The storm had become a wall. Snow ripped through the air like shrapnel.
Belle ignited the ground beneath her with miniature flame bursts, each one launching her faster as she dodged low and spun beneath the juggernaut's swiping claw. A second bolt of lightning—this one angled—crashed into its foreleg. It stumbled.
Kai followed behind her, his katana engulfed in flickering flame. He leapt and slashed horizontally across the weakened limb.
CRACK.
The beast roared and fell to one side, crashing like a falling tower.
They didn't stop. They couldn't.
Another monster came from the left—its antlers slashing like blades. Belle ducked under the strike, then thrust both arms out and conjured a horizontal firewall that split the battlefield. The beast screeched as the flames enveloped it, but they were already past.
Behind them, monsters howled. Ahead—the earth shook.
CRACKKKKK.
A roar shook the sky. One of the largest juggernauts, twice the others' size, rammed the ground with its forelegs. Ice cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern. Entire slabs shifted. The ice shelf began to tilt. The path to the staircase—the only way out—was breaking apart.
Kai's eyes went wide. "It's falling! The entire thing's—!"
"I know!" Belle snapped.
Her magic surged like a tidal wave. She threw one hand forward—flames erupted beneath the shelf, destabilizing its edges on purpose. With her other hand, she launched a precision lightning strike into the cliff wall.
BOOM.
The resulting force chain-reacted across the fault lines. The shelf tilted, but instead of crashing straight down, it slid sideways—avalanching into a nearby ravine. Chunks of ice the size of buildings tumbled past them, shaking the world as they fell. Steam hissed. Shards rained down like glass knives.
But the path—was open.
"GO!!" Belle roared.
Kai pushed past his pain, sprinting with everything he had left. He slid down the freshly formed slope like a falling leaf caught in the wind.
Belle followed, spinning midair to launch a chain fire-blast behind her, which caught two lunging monsters mid-pounce and detonated them in a cloud of flame and ice shards.
The staircase appeared ahead—a jagged spiral carved into the cliff face, lined with frost and runes that pulsed with dim blue light.
Kai collapsed against the wall the second they reached it, coughing violently. His arms dangled uselessly. His katana dropped from his fingers.
"Belle… I-I… I thought that was it…"
Belle didn't reply. She stood facing the battlefield, eyes blazing, body outlined by the last flickers of flame and lightning still crackling around her.
Above, the storm wailed like a beast denied its prey. The juggernauts howled in rage, unable to cross the gap fast enough. Their glowing antlers and burning eyes vanished into the white fog.
Kai looked at her—really looked—and felt something twisted in his chest.
She wasn't even breathing hard. Snow landed on her shoulders. Melted instantly. The storm had tried to break her. But it failed.
She just turned away and started walking down the stairs—into the darkness of Floor Nine.
End of Chapter 59