The General's silver sword snapped in half under the weight. The golden handle clattered away. The General lay in the center of the shattered floor, defeated and breathless, as Everett stood over him, the tip of his unbroken greatsword hovering just inches from the General's chest.
...
The howling winds of the Endless Desert shrieked, carrying a wall of stinging grit that blurred the horizon into a haze of orange and gold. Lucian hovered amidst the chaos, his silhouette flickering against the darkening sky as he let out a giggle that sounded like breaking glass. With a sudden, sharp motion, he dropped his hand, and the heavy atmosphere seemed to crystallize instantly. Hundreds of silver needles materialized from the thin air, caught the draft of the sandstorm, and began a lethal, spinning descent toward the dunes below.
March scrambled backward, his boots sinking deep into the shifting sand as he watched the sky fall. He couldn't spare the breath for a complex chant; he had to rely on the Inferno Blaze already active behind him. The remaining eleven fireballs began to whir with mechanical precision. As the first sphere reached the trigger point above his head, it streaked upward like a comet, colliding with a cluster of ice shards in a violent explosion of steam.
Yet for every shard vaporized, a dozen more took its place, guided by the swirling winds. March dove behind a sun-bleached rock, but a volley of ice shredded the stone into pebbles in a matter of seconds. The fireballs launched one by one—eight, seven, six—each a desperate, flickering shield against the relentless silver rain. A shard grazed March's shoulder, the absolute zero of the ice feeling like a brand of white-hot iron against his skin in the hundred-degree heat.
By the time the final orb glowed a frantic orange and launched itself into the storm, the sky finally cleared of the shards. March stood in the center of the raging sandstorm, his back empty and his primary defense extinguished. He looked up, expecting the final blow, but Lucian simply descended, his bare feet touching the burning sand with a soft hiss.
March didn't wait for the boy to recover. He slammed both palms into the ground, pouring his mana into the dune. The sand beneath Lucian instantly liquified, turning into a bubbling, orange pool of molten glass that popped with toxic heat. Lucian didn't flinch; he merely tapped the air with his toe, conjuring Frost-Plates—translucent blue discs of ice that hummed with a low light. He skated across the surface of the lava, the ice releasing thick clouds of steam as he lunged forward. Lucian swung a palm toward March's chest, manifesting a Glacial Fang—a serrated drill of ice that spun at high speeds, screeching as it cut through the air.
March twisted away, the ice drill whistling past his ribs and tearing through his robes. He countered with a point-blank Cinder Punch, his fist becoming encased in a blackened, volcanic crust that glowed with internal fire. Upon contact with Lucian's arm, the crust shattered, releasing a localized blast of concussive heat. However, Lucian had already coated his skin in Diamond Rime, a layer of ice as clear as glass but as hard as steel. The fire bounced off the frozen surface with a metallic clink, leaving Lucian unharmed as he swept his leg out to cast a Crystal Spire. A six-sided pillar of blue ice erupted from the dune at a sharp angle, forcing March into a desperate mid-air roll to avoid being impaled.
Landing hard in the sand, March's frustration began to boil over into fear. He cast a Heat Wave, sending a ripple of distorted, shimmering air in all directions to parch Lucian's throat and bake his lungs, but Lucian merely breathed out a tiny puff of frost. That breath expanded into a Mist Veil, a frozen fog that turned the sandstorm into a blinding white-out. Through the haze, Lucian began shaping mana with his bare fingers—a feat March knew should be impossible without a staff to focus the energy. Lucian grabbed the swirling grit and cast Sand-Glass Daggers, freezing the grains into thousands of transparent needles that he flung in a wide, invisible spread.
March roared, manifesting his Phoenix Wing to wrap himself in a shield of orange flame that melted the glass needles before they could reach his skin. But his mana was a flickering candle. I've read every Ice Grimoire, March thought frantically as he watched Lucian move with a grace that defied the desert's heat. This isn't in the books. He's taking the storm and rewriting the laws of magic while he breathes. Gathering the last sparks of his power, March unleashed his Supernova Burial. The ground for fifty yards began to glow white-hot, the sand turning into a sea of liquid fire and blinding light. Lucian didn't run from the pillar of heat. He walked through the white glow, his body protected by a flickering blue aura. He reached through the flames and gripped March's throat with a hand that felt like a block of ancient glacier ice.
"Zero Degree Touch," Lucian whispered.
Blue veins of frost spread instantly from his fingers onto March's neck, bypassing the external heat to freeze his blood and snuff out his mana at the source. The white light died, and the desert went silent. March's legs gave out, and he fell into the shifting dunes, looking up at the teenager who had outclassed a master. Lucian stood over him, breathless and pale against the howling storm, the undisputed victor of the battle.