The Silver Horn's Frozen Despair

The third watchtower.

Archer Hakan wedged his body into the narrow embrasure and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

'Noisy bastards who can't even hit their targets.'

Hakan had trusted his eyes his entire life. His vision, capable of catching the flutter of a fly's wings from a hundred meters away, was the pride of his unit. And right now, that target had finally entered his sights.

One of the blue ghosts scaling the wall had paused for a split second, preparing for its next leap. A perfect opportunity.

'Got you, you monstrous freak.'

The instant he held his breath and released the bowstring—

The ghost vanished.

With a sharp whoosh, Hakan's arrow buried itself into the empty wall. In that fleeting moment, a short scream came from directly behind him.

'It dodged? No—it disappeared!'

His spine chilled at the impossible situation. But what he heard from behind wasn't a scream.

“Guh…”

It was a wet, choked sound, as if something had been blocked. When Hakan turned his head, everything seemed to move in slow motion.

The blue ghost that had been his target moments ago was now pulling its blade from his comrade's heart. Sticky blood flowed down over the glowing blue moonstone armor in a grotesquely unreal scene.

The ghost turned its head. Those eerie moonstone eyes fixed on Hakan, as if to say you're next.

That was the last thing Hakan ever saw.

“Third watchtower, no response!”

“Fifth battery, comms severed! Mana reaction gone!”

“Damn it!”

Fortress Supreme Commander Kaelus felt like grabbing the communication officer by the collar as the man shouted his reports. A ceaseless barrage of despairing updates hammered his ears.

Just ten minutes. In a mere ten minutes, the supposedly impregnable defensive line was crumbling like termite-riddled wood.

Those blue ghosts were no ordinary killers.

Kaelus pointed at the strategy map with a trembling hand. The silenced strongpoints. Third watchtower, fifth magic battery, western supply route… every one of them was a vital artery and nerve center of the fortress. It was as if those blue ghosts had studied the fortress blueprints and were striking only the most painful spots with surgical precision.

“You… you monstrous bastards!”

Kaelus glared down at the walls with bloodshot eyes. Flames spread, structures collapsed, and the screams of his men erupted. At this rate, the impregnable fortress would fall in less than an hour.

Grinding his teeth, he resolved to play his final card.

'No choice. Forgive me, Lord Ulysses, but I have to use that device.'

The Silver Horn. The heart of the fortress. The core that maintained the absolute barrier—and in emergencies, the forbidden device that converted all mana into a single spell. One mistake and the entire fortress could be obliterated.

—But there was no time to hesitate now.

“Hold them off! Stop those monsters no matter what!”

Kaelus screamed as he spun around. Shoving through the panicked soldiers, he sprinted madly toward the highest point of the fortress. At the very top of the wall, the massive mana amplification device known as the Silver Horn was emitting a low, growling hum of power.

When he arrived beneath the amplifier, gasping for breath—

A man was already standing there.

Soft blue hair fluttering gently in the wind. A man gazing down at the battlefield with an expression of pure boredom.

“Th-that’s… Lord Lucian?”

One of the five great Tower Masters of the Astra Empire. The Tower Master of the Winter Tower, Lucian.

“The Prophecy Tower brats were being annoyingly persistent. So something really was going on.”

Lucian muttered lazily. Without even glancing at the panicking Kaelus, he tossed out a single curt remark as if the whole affair was beneath him.

“How noisy.”

His gaze swept across the collapsing defensive line. He clicked his tongue softly and added, almost to himself,

“It’s quite unsightly to see Ulysses’s old man’s masterpiece being broken by the likes of them.”

The moment those words left his lips, Lucian slowly raised his hand. The motion was languid and unhurried, yet the very act of lifting his hand caused the flow of the atmosphere to freeze.

And then he spoke a single word.

“Freeze.”

“Squad Three, seize the left watchtower! Squad Five, follow me!”

Kaizen kicked off the wall and shot straight upward, slicing the throat of a terrified enemy mage in the same motion. The tide of battle had completely turned. The Empire’s new blade, the Night Ghosts, was proving its worth.

The soldiers clad in the unfamiliar new equipment moved with such overwhelming precision that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Astra’s troops fell helplessly before them.

Boom!

The heat from a magic shell exploding right beside him scorched his face. But Kaizen didn’t even feel it. The burning pride in his chest had swallowed every other sensation.

All of this was the miracle she had created for them.

Now only one thing remained: planting the Empire’s flag atop that fortress.

That was when it happened.

A single phrase rang out from somewhere, crystal clear as if whispered directly into his ear.

[Freeze.]

In that instant, every sound in the world evaporated.

The ragged breath Kaizen had been exhaling turned into white frost and shattered in midair. The metallic stench of blood, the smell of gunpowder—everything vanished like a lie. An absolute cold that seemed to reject life itself tore at his flesh. Inhaling felt like swallowing needles of ice that stabbed straight into his lungs.

'What the…?'

He instinctively fired his wire anchor for the next leap. But instead of the heavy thud of piercing stone, what he heard was—

Clang—!

A horrifying scraping sound like nails on a mirror as the anchor bounced off harmlessly. Only then did he see it.

The rough wall that had been covered in blood and dust moments ago had transformed into an unnaturally smooth sheet of ice.

“C-Commander! The anchors… the anchors won’t stick!”

“Damn it, the equipment’s frozen solid!”

Panicked shouts erupted from all around. The aerial maneuver devices wrapped around their bodies began to tremble faintly, as if issuing a warning—then went cold as the flow of mana was severed.

The blue glow of the moonstone flickered weakly before winking out one by one. The predators who had been enjoying their hunt atop the walls had, in the blink of an eye, become pathetic insects frozen against a pane of glass.

The eyes of the Astra soldiers watching this changed completely. The terror that had gripped them vanished, replaced by cruel, vicious glee.

“Those bastards… they’ve stopped moving!”

“Now! Fire everything! Turn them into porcupines!”

The tide had reversed. A rain of arrows and magic shells poured down on the Night Ghosts, who had become helpless targets.

“Guhk!”

One of the squad members operating just below Kaizen was struck by dozens of arrows. He fell without even managing a scream. Another soldier who lost his balance in midair slammed into the ice wall and was swallowed by a fireball, reduced to a handful of ash.

The one-sided massacre from moments ago was now being reenacted in the exact opposite form.

“No…!”

Kaizen cried out in despair. He tried to move to save his men, but the frozen equipment mocked his will and refused to budge. With a single person’s intent and a single spoken command, every ounce of their confidence, technology, and so-called innovation had been rendered powerless.

It was a calamity that transcended tactics, strategy, or technological disparity—an insurmountable gap in raw power.

Clinging precariously to the ice wall, all he could do was helplessly watch the hellish scene of his proud subordinates dying without resistance.

*

Just a few minutes ago, victory had been within reach.

Yet the battlefield Serian observed from above ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had turned into hell in an instant.

There was only one cause.

The heart of the fortress—the massive Silver Horn structure. Thanks to her innate mana sensitivity and experience as a magitech engineer, she immediately understood what was happening.

The dozens of power mana stones embedded throughout the walls that maintained the absolute barrier. The clustered circuits connecting those stones were operating in a completely different pattern than before. The mana that should have been flowing toward the barrier was instead reversing course, being sucked into the Silver Horn.

And standing at its peak was a single mage. He had seized the fortress’s heart and was converting its vast mana into his own power.

'This is completely unexpected. There was no information about a monster like this.'

If someone of this caliber had been stationed here, this operation would never have been planned in the first place.

Serian glanced at the command artifact in her pocket. Three mana stones. She needed to fire the red retreat signal right now—!

But—when she looked down, her face hardened.

The Night Ghosts had already penetrated too deep. Their maneuver devices were frozen, and the anchors wouldn’t stick. Even if she sent the retreat signal now, almost none of them would make it back alive.

The main force waiting on the plains would be able to withdraw safely. But the Night Ghosts stranded on the ice wall would be annihilated.

Of course, she had only wanted the operation to fail. There could be no more perfect failure than this. The overall commander had recklessly pushed the plan forward and lost the entire unit to an unforeseen enemy counterattack. With a catastrophe of this scale, she would surely be removed from this wretched project once and for all.

But…

“No…”

A trembling voice slipped from her lips.

“This isn’t… this isn’t what I wanted…”

Her plan had been failure. To waste the budget, drag things out, and eventually be labeled as “a theoretically interesting but ultimately disappointing project” and shuffled off to a quiet desk job. She had expected some casualties along the way, but she had never imagined a one-sided massacre like this.

Three months. It wasn’t a long time. Yet the faces she had seen every day at the training grounds flashed before her eyes. Kaizen, who had looked at her with nearly fanatical devotion. The rough laughter of the soldiers who grumbled about insufficient training but still threw their arms around each other’s shoulders and headed to the mess hall together. The eyes that had called her a goddess and followed her without question.

To Serian, they weren’t mere soldiers of the Empire. They were pitiful people heading to their deaths wearing the toys she had built.

And now those pitiful people were hanging helplessly from a frozen wall, dying without any way to fight back.

The selfish worry of what if it actually succeeds? had become the cold reality of they’re dying because of me, stabbing straight into her heart.

Her fingers trembled violently over the red mana stone. This might be her last chance. If she sent this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠signal, everything would end. She could escape this horrific sense of responsibility and the unwanted yoke of heroism.

But… she couldn’t press it.

They weren’t NPCs she had watched through a screen in a game. This was reality. Their blood was red, and their screams were real.

The finger that had been about to press the retreat signal shook uncontrollably and curled into a fist.

“There has to be… there has to be a way. If I can just stop that spell… if I can do something about that horn…!”

Serian’s eyes began to shine with desperate determination. She had to save them somehow—from this hell, from the hell she herself had created.

She forced her mind to focus. Suppressing her fear and guilt, she activated only the cold, analytical thought processes of a developer.

She needed to understand the principle.

In an instant, the flow of mana across the battlefield unfolded before her eyes like a massive circuit diagram. The fortress’s entire mana supply was gathering at the Silver Horn, being amplified into cold waves of a specific frequency, and spreading outward.

The core of that spell was resonance and amplification.

In that case—the answer was simple.

'…I just need to break the resonance.'

She couldn’t completely destroy it. That mage’s power was beyond imagination. But she could introduce dissonance into his precise performance.

If she fired a completely different type of mana wave to cause interference, the spell’s precision would falter and its power would weaken.

Even just a few seconds. If she could buy the squad members enough time to move—!

Serian pulled out the command flare artifact once more. Green, yellow, and red. A high-grade artifact that compressed and fired mana of different wavelengths. She had never seen its blueprints, but she had already grasped its underlying principles.

Without ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hesitation, she poured mana into all three mana stones at once. Forcing opposing mana forces to collide within a single space to create an uncontrollable chaotic interference wave. It was a dangerous gamble that could cause the artifact to explode in her hands.

“Please, just once! Give us even the slightest opening!”

She aimed the artifact at the Silver Horn. The unstable, tangled wave of chaotic mana was fired.

The moment that wave touched the Silver Horn—

Crack—!

A tiny fissure appeared in the perfect domain of absolute cold that had dominated the battlefield. Parts of the ice wall began to melt, and the suffocating pressure of the cold eased for a brief moment.

A few of the squad members stranded on the ice wall used that opening to desperately regain their footing.

The dissonance that had intruded upon his perfect performance. Lucian’s brow furrowed. He lifted his head in irritation.

'There.'

The starting point of all the commotion. The commander riding the frost griffin. A mocking smile of interest curved his lips.

“Oh…? So from up there you saw through the principles of my spell and attempted to interfere. It seems you’re not just an ordinary commander.”

He had no intention of killing her. Not yet. He simply wanted to drag her down from that lofty height.

With a casual wave of his hand, a massive ice spear formed in the air.

“Is the sky that comfortable? Come down and play, Commander.”

Shwooooosh—!

The ice spear Lucian hurled flew with a density and speed on an entirely different level from any other attack. It didn’t strike the griffin’s body, but instead pierced precisely through the tip of its wing.

“Kwaaaaaah—!”

The divine beast’s horrifying scream tore through the night sky. The griffin’s body convulsed wildly in agony, thrashing up and down in a mad frenzy. The few remaining feathers Serian had been desperately clutching were torn away.

In that instant—everything supporting her vanished.

Serian’s body, which had been clinging precariously, was flung into the empty air with a short scream.

All sound in the world grew distant. The howling wind tore at her ears as her vision spun wildly. Her body plummeted helplessly into the pitch-black abyss below.