Polar Day And Polar Night

*BOOOOOOM—!!!*

The roar of annihilation tore through the ice cavern! The Abyss-Devourer—the colossal monstrosity wrought of filthy shadow and incandescent magma—had fully shattered the ice-dome's restraint! It had no fixed form, its massive, amorphous body resembling churning, murky crimson sludge, its surface boiling with countless agonized shadow-faces and magma-spewing vents. A tentacle of pure, viscous shadow, its tip split into a festering maw, slammed down like a siege hammer! Laden with soul-freezing malice and incinerating heat, it tore through the air, aimed squarely at Tang Xiao, kneeling on one knee, his aura fading fast!

The shadow of death, icy and searing, enveloped him instantly!

Tang Xiao snapped his head up, his ice-blue right pupil shrinking to a pinprick! The writhing azure ice on his face dimmed from exhaustion, while the obsidian Abyssal Taint pulsed excitedly with a filthy crimson glow at the Devourer's presence. He willed himself to move, to gather the last dregs of cold, but his body felt nailed to the ice. The backlash and erosion made every muscle spasm agony. Despair, thick as the cavern's deepest dark, flooded his icy eyes for the first time with chilling clarity.

*Finished…*

Just as the festering maw was about to consume Tang Xiao—

***"GET BACK!"***

A hoarse roar erupted beside Tang Xiao! Lu Chen!

He had somehow struggled upright, his left arm hanging low, the cluster of *Abyss-Devouring Flame* in his palm burning with unprecedented intensity! Its azure icy core was fathomless as the void; the pale flame burned with a cold, newfound stability; the etched runes of dark crimson and pitch black pulsed like living veins! An aura—cold, ravenous, devouring chaos—exploded outward from him!

Facing the descending shadow-magma tentacle, Lu Chen didn't evade. Instead, he sank into a bow stance and thrust his flame-wreathed left palm defiantly towards the festering maw!

Not to block, but to… *devour*!

*SKREEEEE—!!!*

The Abyss-Devouring Flame met the shadow tentacle!

No cataclysmic blast. Only a sickening, teeth-grating hiss, like white-hot iron plunged into viscous sludge!

The frost-flame flickered violently! Azure ice instantly corroded by the shadow's filth and magma's heat, sputtering piteously, its surface webbed with charred cracks! The pale flame boiled and dimmed like metal in strong acid!

Yet, the dark crimson and black runes etched onto the flame's core erupted with a baleful radiance! They acted like awakened maws of the Abyss, generating a terrifying suction!

The viscous shadow-matter forming the festering maw at the tentacle's tip was forcibly *ripped* away, strand by strand, drawn into the frost-flame! Searing magma sludge followed! The flame was a monster starved to madness, savagely tearing chunks from the Devourer itself!

*"HSSS-GAAAA—!!!"*

The Devourer's colossal form shuddered violently, emitting a bizarre shriek of mingled pain and fury! The descending tentacle recoiled like a bitten serpent, its tip collapsing and dispersing! Sensing threat, countless more shadow-faces on its amorphous bulk contorted in silent screams; more magma vents swiveled, locking onto Lu Chen!

Lu Chen grunted. The colossal impact sent him staggering back several steps, each footprint a mix of char and frost on the ice. Agony like tearing ripped through his left arm. The tainted energy devoured by the flame warred and fused violently with his internal light-fire and cold, subjecting him to torment like alternating ice and fire. Blood streaked with ice crystals seeped from his lips, but his eyes burned with fierce intensity, locked on the wounded Devourer.

*It worked!* The *Abyss-Devouring Flame* could truly bite into this monster!

"Urgh…" Tang Xiao stared at the figure who had interposed itself, taking the Devourer's blow. His ice-blue eye churned with complex light—shock, disbelief, the humiliation of being shielded by an exile… and a flicker of desperate, anomalous hope kindled in the abyss. He struggled to rise, but his body felt filled with frozen lead.

The Devourer's fury peaked! Its massive form contracted violently, then exploded outward like a volcano! Countless *spikes*—cores of white-hot magma sheathed in filthy shadow—rained down like a tempest upon Lu Chen and Tang Xiao! Each spike carried the terrifying power to pierce ice and corrode souls! The area of effect was vast—*inescapable*!

Lu Chen's pupils constricted! Blocking one blow had been his limit; this deluge of destruction was impossible to withstand! The power within him, chaotic and wild after the devouring, threatened to shatter its fragile cycle!

At this critical moment—

***"With ice... as thy tomb…"*** A voice, low, fractured, squeezed from a frozen throat, rasped behind Lu Chen.

Tang Xiao!

By sheer, impossible will, he had raised his right arm—the one fouled by his own shadow, charred and rotting! The writhing azure ice on his face flared with a deathly brilliance, while the Abyssal Taint on his left cheek pulsed with an unwilling crimson filth! He no longer tried to suppress the Taint. Instead, he wrenched forth his last, shadow-polluted life-force and final wellspring of cold!

***"Seal... thy fading echo!"***

His bloodied right hand, fingers splayed, thrust forward in a grasping motion aimed at the cone of attack!

*HUUUUM—!*

A wall of ice, not grand but thin, veined with murky crimson shadow-runes, erupted from the ground, shielding Lu Chen!

*THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD—!*

The barrage of shadow-magma spikes hammered into the ice wall!

The wall convulsed violently! Azure ice shattered and melted in great swathes under the horrific impact and dual corrosion! The murky crimson veins within the wall writhed like ravenous leeches, devouring portions of the shadow energy within the spikes, *delaying* its collapse! Yet the wall visibly thinned, cracking everywhere!

Tang Xiao's body spasmed with each blow the wall absorbed. What surged from his mouth was no longer blood, but a foul slurry mixed with ice crystals and black, tarlike matter. The writhing azure ice consumed his entire right cheek, while the obsidian Taint seized the chance, crawling down his neck! His aura, like a guttering candle, faded rapidly.

"Go... Rift…" Tang Xiao's voice was a moth's whisper, shattered. His ice-blue eye locked onto Lu Chen, not with command, but with an imploring, absolute finality. "Source-current's... lament... deep... core... find... it... *truth*…"

He coughed violently, a gout of black-red filth erupting. His body could hold no longer, crumpling backward.

Simultaneously, the battered azure ice wall shattered under a renewed barrage of spikes from the Devourer!

Shards of ice and disintegrating crimson veins scattered like deadly snowflakes!

Barrier gone, the lethal shadow-magma spikes, like sharks scenting blood, converged instantly on the fallen Tang Xiao and Lu Chen nearby!

Lu Chen's heart nearly stopped! Tang Xiao's final act—a shield of flesh and fading echo—seared into his mind! The broken words "Go Rift" and "truth" struck his consciousness with icy weight!

No time to think!

Instinctive survival and a strange compulsion born of Tang Xiao's dying plea overrode his agony! Lu Chen roared, a guttural, animal sound! The Abyss-Devouring Flame in his left palm contracted, *condensed*! He didn't try to block. Instead, he slammed the flame's power *down* onto the ice!

***"DEVOUR!"***

*CRUNCH!*

Where the frost-flame struck, azure light exploded! A massive, jagged pit yawned instantly beneath Lu Chen's feet! Its walls were smooth as glass, coated in rapidly forming azure ice! As the spikes descended, Lu Chen's body, dragging the fallen Tang Xiao beside him, plunged with the collapsing ice into the abyss torn open by the flame!

*THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!*

The spikes impaled their former position, blasting the ice into shards! Searing magma splattered, melting ice into hissing muck.

Below, the pit didn't hit solid ground. It opened into a steeply descending, azure ice-coated slide! Lu Chen gripped Tang Xiao's arm, cold and stiff as ancient stone. They plummeted like rocks down the slick, frigid incline! The Abyss-Devouring Flame flickered weakly in Lu Chen's palm, its faint glow illuminating the jagged, eternally frozen azure walls rushing past. A biting wind, thick with sulfur and blood, howled up from the depths like a spectral wail.

Above, the Devourer's roar—a blend of fury and annihilation—rumbled like subterranean thunder, shaking the slide. Its colossal bulk seemed unable to squeeze into the narrow fissure—for now.

Lu Chen clung to Tang Xiao, feeling his arm cold as glacial bedrock, his breathing so faint it was almost gone. Only the writhing azure ice and spreading Abyssal Taint on his face reflected the frost-flame's glow with a cold, eerie sheen. Tang Xiao's ice-blue eye was half-open, pupil dilated, reflecting only the churning darkness above and the faint, destructive crimson glow of the Devourer—a void of utter stillness.

The slide seemed endless, plunging them deeper into the Perpetual Frost Wastes' darker, unknown depths. Only the Source-current's ancient, sorrowful lament pierced the thick rock and ice, echoing faintly in the chasm below. This time, the hum seemed to carry a faint thread... of guidance?