Seraphina's breakthrough attempt began the next morning, or what passed for morning in that place.
She stood in the centre of one of the larger platforms with her sword drawn and held in a ready guard. Frost moved along the blade in slow patterns that rose and fell with her breathing.
"I can feel it," she said quietly. Her ice-blue eyes were fixed on something past the chamber walls. "The connection I've been missing."
I watched from a safe distance as she began to move. Her forms were Mount Hua's, but her ice had threaded itself into them in a way I hadn't seen before. Each cut left a trail of crystal hanging in the air behind it—not fading, but building, line on line, into a shape around her.
"She's close," Ren said beside me, his eyes lit violet. "Her mana's shifting. Into something completely different."
