Polar Day And Polar Night

The storm of destruction raged within the Source-core. The colossal Grey-Azure Cocoon, like a cold tumor embedded in the Festering Source-Eye's festering wound, throbbed and groaned under the onslaught of filthy shadow and incandescent magma. The azure ice shell cracked and mended with grating *CRACK-SNAPS*; the internal networks of pale light flickered like dying candles; the etched runes of crimson and black flashed wildly, devouring the chaotic energy assaulting it like a glutton on the brink of bursting.

Inside the Cocoon, was damnation.

Lu Chen's consciousness drifted in an endless maelstrom of energy. His body had transcended physical form, utterly fused with Tang Xiao's cold corpse, the core of the Abyss-Devouring Flame, and the bound portion of chaotic Source-essence. Flesh, bone, icy jade-like remains, raging flame, deathly cold, tainted shadow-magma—all tore, shattered, and reassembled in a frenzy!

Agony was insufficient. It was the ultimate torment of existence disassembled and forcibly reassembled by chaotic laws. Each inch of "newborn" structure screamed with the sound of a soul being ground. He felt like iron plunged into a primordial forge, hammered relentlessly by countless unseen mallets.

*"URGH—AAAAAGH!!!"* A silent roar echoed in his dissolving mind. At this brink of dissolution, a point of icy light—like the last star over the Perpetual Frost Wastes—ignited at the maelstrom's heart.

*Tang Xiao.*

Not sound, nor thought. A torrent of shattered images, emotions cold as the void, flooded Lu Chen's crumbling awareness.

He saw Frostveil Citadel (Jinshibao) howling with snow. Not the warm memory of home, but its final moments of calm before the earth-vein magma erupted. Young Tang Xiao stood atop the high walls, ice-blue eyes reflecting the leaden sky, a delicate, spinning snowflake of pure, potent cold coalescing in his palm. It radiated the will to protect, absolute mastery over frost and order.

The scene shattered! The earth screamed as it split! Crimson magma, like a beast's blood, burst through the crust, devouring homes, igniting mountains! Screams of terror, desperate flight, the stench of charring flesh... Young Tang Xiao stared, eyes wide with horror. He frantically summoned all his frost, trying to freeze the deluge! Ice melted pathetically before magma; his power was a drop in the ocean...

*"Not... enough... far... from enough..."* Icy despair, venomous, saturated the memory.

Then, deeper darkness. Sealed underground, beside a colossal magma fissure—a festering wound in the world, spewing ruin. Tang Xiao stood alone at its edge, his worn grey cloak snapping in the heat. The pure obsidian Abyssal Taint already crept on his face, bringing icy numbness. He spread his arms, becoming a conduit of frost, recklessly drawing extreme cold from the Source's depths, mingled with his tainted life-force, pouring it into the teetering ice-dome seal! Each expenditure spread the Taint, bringing agony as his soul froze.

*"Prison... of flesh... ice... the final... seal..."* Resolve, dead as ancient ice, carved into bone.

Finally, the ice lake of the Perpetual Frost Wastes. The figure of the exile burning with uncontrolled pale flame. Cold scrutiny. The power to freeze light. And the raw, naked fury—pain and annihilation fused—when his secret Taint was seen!

*"Light-realm... trash... your fire... is... noise..."*

All of Tang Xiao—memory shards, power source, icy will, Taint's agony, guardian's obsession, and the final spark of life's resolve—crashed into Lu Chen's chaotic mind like a glacial river!

This wasn't gentle fusion. It was cold *consumption* and *overwriting*! Tang Xiao's remnant existence was forcibly imprinted onto Lu Chen's soul, becoming the core "skeleton" and "law" of this nascent structure!

*"URGH—!!!"* Lu Chen felt his consciousness freeze, reform! The past of "Lu Chen"—Xi Yao City's glory, the disgrace of the runaway Sacred Flame, exile's despair—blurred, distant, behind thick ice under this cold will's torrent. A new existence—colder, heavier, bearing the dual traits of guardian and destroyer—was hatching in excruciating fusion!

*BOOOOOOM—!!!*

As if sensing the core's metamorphosis, the Festering Source-Eye outside shrieked—a sound of unprecedented, primal terror! It felt the existential threat! This forming core wasn't just devouring its power; it was violently assimilating, *overwriting* the chaos it embodied! It marshaled the Source-core's last vestiges of chaotic will—all or nothing!

Outside the Cocoon, the roiling magma sea surged upward! Countless tendrils of purest filthy shadow, thick as mountain ranges, coiled around cores of incandescent magma—like world-ending claws from hell's abyss—lanced towards the throbbing Cocoon! Space corroded in their wake, leaving viscous black trails!

Simultaneously, deep within the festering wound, the Festering-Eye's chaotic crimson core contracted violently, then *exploded*! A beam of viscous, unspeakable filth—saturated with the malice of eons and pure destructive will—a spear of the world's suppurating blood—struck the Cocoon's heart, ignoring space!

*CRACK-SNAP-SHATTER—!!!*

Under the twin assaults, the Grey-Azure Cocoon's shell screamed with despairing, continuous fractures! Vast swathes of azure ice vaporized instantly under the putrid beam! Massive shadow-magma tendrils constricted the Cocoon, searing magma and corrosive shadow eating into the shell! The Cocoon deformed inward under immense pressure; its surface runes groaned, near breaking! The internal pale networks flickered wildly, on the verge of extinction!

Inside, Lu Chen (or the nascent consciousness fusing) endured cataclysmic impact! The fusion was violently interrupted; the agony of Tang Xiao's icy imprint combined with the external crushing force. The nascent structure groaned under impossible strain, teetering on total collapse!

*"Ice... as... bone..."* Shards of Tang Xiao's glacial will coalesced like eternal glaciers amidst the storm!

In that life-or-death instant, something primal within Lu Chen—buried beneath ice and reshaping, not his light-fire power, but the indomitable will to survive, to ignite madness in the abyss, again and again—rebounded like a spring compressed to its limit!

***"NO—!!!"***

A roar from the soul's deepest core, blending Lu Chen's frenzy and Tang Xiao's coldness, detonated within the Cocoon! It wasn't rejection, but the ultimate *push* of the nascent, fused will!

*BOOOOOOM—!!!*

The grey-white-azure vortex at the power's core, driven by this dual-willed extremity, transformed again!

At the vortex's heart, Tang Xiao's icy life-spark and will to order crystallized, solidified! Forming a diamond-shaped core of azure ice—deep as the abyss of ages! Within its facets flowed frozen veins of Tang Xiao's memory and power!

Around it, Lu Chen's blazing defiance erupted! The pale flame ceased to be lightning, becoming a viscous, liquid radiance—seething with annihilative fury and all-consuming hunger—engulfing, *smelting* the nascent azure ice core!

*SKREEEEE—!!!*

The ultimate smelting of ice and fire! The core of frigid order and the devouring liquid radiance, under apocalyptic pressure and dual will, fused and forged in a law-defying crucible!

The azure ice didn't melt; it grew deeper, harder, its glacial veins hungrily drinking the radiant power, staining them with flowing pale luminescence! The raging pale radiance was bound, tamed by the ice's absolute order, becoming condensed, stable—a burning, liquid shroud of light encasing the core!

A wave of unprecedented power erupted from this nascent core!

*Cold!* Purer, deader than Tang Xiao's frost, freezing the very flow of time!

*Heat!* More contained, more savage than Lu Chen's runaway Sacred Flame, holding the will to incinerate chaos!

*Devouring!* More tyrannical, more efficient than the Abyss-Devouring Flame, possessing the ultimate trait to *subsume* and *assimilate* all!

This was no longer frostflame. It was... *The Shroud of Terminus*! A supreme force forcibly unifying the laws of "Stasis," "Incinerate," and "Consume"—pointing towards final encasement and termination!

*"ENVELOPE!"*

A voice—cold, heavy, dual-toned (Lu Chen's rasp and Tang Xiao's flatness)—detonated within the Festering Source-Eye's chaotic core!

*HUUUUM—!!!*

The Grey-Azure Cocoon imploded! Shrinking multiple times in volume! But its density and strength increased exponentially! The near-shattered azure ice shell became deep and hard as purest obsidian, flowing with a metallic, icy sheen, overlaid with a steadily burning shroud of pale liquid light! All constricting shadow-magma tendrils touched the pale shroud and *sizzled* like snow in a furnace—instantly incinerated, devoured, becoming sustenance for the Cocoon!

The horrific putrid beam struck the Shroud of Terminus—and vanished like clay oxen in the sea! The viscous dark crimson energy was frenziedly broken down, consumed by the pale liquid shroud! The beam's destructive will was frozen, erased by the absolute "Stasis" power overlaying it! Not only did it fail to destroy the Cocoon, it was greedily absorbed!

*"SKREEEEE-GAAAA—!!!"* The Festering Source-Eye wailed with primordial terror! It *knew*! The tiny construct had completed its metamorphosis! It was no longer just a "scab." It had become... its **existential predator**!

The Cocoon hovered at the heart of the collapsing space, a cold sun born in the storm of destruction. Its obsidian core pulsed with veins of pale radiance, sheathed in the steady-burning liquid shroud. Each faint throb released a terrifying field that froze space and annihilated chaos.

Within the Cocoon, a new consciousness stirred to wakefulness in cold fire. Lu Chen's memories, Tang Xiao's will, exile's disgrace, guardian's obsession, runaway power, ultimate cold—all forged and fused into a blade pointed at Termination.

He (They?) slowly raised a "hand"—an outline of utter darkness sheathed in pale radiance, shaped by the Shroud of Terminus.

His gaze pierced the Cocoon, locking coldly onto the Festering Source-Eye below, pulsing in frantic terror.

Terminus had come.