The chamber was colder than the corridor that led to it.
Moana closed the door behind them.
Four flames burned blue in the corners of the room, low and steady.
The ice sarcophagus stood at the center, lifted upright and leaned back against a support behind it.
And to Vel's surprise, Tomas was already here. Not in uniform. He wore something closer to what he'd wear back home.
He looked at Vel, like he hadn't expected to see him here either. Then dropped his gaze to the side.
"What's wrong?"
"I... I don't know." Tomas fiddled with his hands. "Can't help but feel like it was my fault."
Tomas's fault. Lyvenna's. His own. The cult. The Demon Lord.
Vel couldn't tell anymore. Whether it was one person who put Celia in that coffin, or all of them at once.
So he said nothing.
But Tomas seemed to take the silence for something else. His jaw tightened. One hand curled into a fist, then slowly let go.
Vel turned back to Celia.
She looked exactly as she had that night in her room.
Peaceful. No fear. No pain.
Her hands rested folded in front of her.
Someone had arranged them that way. But that wasn't possible. No one could have reached her through the ice.
Which meant he had done it himself.
He didn't remember.
His gaze drifted lower.
Faint chalk and carved sigils covered the floor beneath the sarcophagus, most of them half scrubbed away, pale marks crossing over one another.
"What was this room before?" he asked quietly.
"Runecraft practice."
Moana stepped forward and motioned at the floor.
"Students used it for engraving exercises, testing formations, running experiments." He swept a hand around the room. "We cleared everything out to make space for her."
His finger lifted toward the walls.
"See those?"
Vel followed it. An orb sat embedded beneath each blue flame.
"Part of the ward system. They reinforce the structure itself."
Moana shrugged.
"You could throw a spell at this building from outside and level half the hallway." He nodded at the walls around them. "This room would still be standing."
"Designed to hold whatever some student's explosive experiment threw at it."
He looked at the walls a moment longer.
"That's not all." He folded his arms. "One command from the Archmagister and this entire chamber can be sealed off and converted into a vault."
He turned to Vel.
"So rest assured. Whatever happens, she's undoubtedly well protected."
That answered one of Vel's concerns.
His eyes moved to the door.
"How many people can access this room?"
"Not many." He counted them off on his fingers. "The Archmagister. Me. You and your little group. A handful more she picked herself, and no one she didn't."
He let the hand drop.
"Wouldn't have it any other way. Not after the mess this place just lived through."
The sureness from before had gone out of his voice.
"Now. If an old man can ask."
His eyes went to the sarcophagus, and to the girl held still inside it.
"I've heard what happened at the arena. Heard it twice over, by now." A slow shake of his head. "But that doesn't tell me what I'm looking at. Why she's like this."
Something changed in the old man as he studied the ice. His voice, his eyes, the set of his face, all of it sharpened into the scholar, the same way Vel's own did when a problem caught hold of him.
"It isn't weakening. It isn't collapsing. And nothing is feeding it." He leaned closer to the sarcophagus. "It's as though the world itself agreed to keep it running."
His eyes moved over the coffin, slow, taking in all of it.
"Remarkable."
Vel looked at his own handiwork, and only now, with a clear head, did he see the shape of it.
He'd cast it on instinct. But the layers weren't random. Somewhere beneath thought, his mind had built this carefully.
The first was Stasis.
Not merely stopping movement, but preventing change itself. Every process inside Celia's body had been halted. Blood no longer flowed. Cells no longer divided. The very thing that made a person age by every second, the spell stopped it.
Around it sat the Ice Tomb.
A physical shell. Nothing could reach her through it. And cold enough to keep everything inside slowed, reinforcing what the stasis had already done.
And beneath both, the last layer.
Restoration. A continuous regeneration effect, running beneath everything else. Without it, extended stasis would cause irreversible damage. Most of the body could recover on its own. The brain couldn't. What it lost, it lost for good.
Together, they created one crucial distinction:
The spell was not preserving a dead body. It was preventing her from becoming one. It held Celia exactly where she was, refusing to let time decide the rest.
Moana's eyes stayed on the ice.
"So what happens to her now?"
Vel began to circle the coffin, slow.
"The preservation is complete. But bringing her back won't be as simple as melting the ice."
He laid a palm against the frozen surface. Then drew it back, and kept walking.
"The moment the ice goes, everything has to start again at once. Her heart beating. Her lungs pulling air. Blood reaching her brain, then the rest of her."
"And do you know how to do all that?" Moana asked.
Unlike magic, this was not a subject he truly understood. Not in this life, nor the one before it. He understood systems, not the human body. Trying to weave the two together without trial and error was simply impossible.
One mistake could turn preservation into permanent death.
"No."
From where she stood near the door, Hileya watched him in silence. Whatever she felt, she kept it to herself.
"Too many moving parts. Too many ways for it to go wrong."
He wasn't going to stake Celia's life on a chance.
"Not until I can prove the revival will work. Every piece falling exactly where it has to."
"For now, it's safer to leave it untouched."
And trust that whatever he'd forged with Zephyr would go on keeping her safe.
Their gazes slowly converged on the ice.
Wait for me, Celia.
"Vel."
He looked over. Tomas had been staring at the floor. Now he met his eyes.
"If you need anything..." He hesitated. "Anything at all."
His hand tightened at his side.
"Please. Tell me. Let me help."
For a moment nobody spoke. And Vel saw the guilt sitting behind the words. Not guilt for failing.
Guilt for surviving.
"I will."
Moana had watched the exchange without a word. Now he stirred, stepping away from the coffin.
"There might be something you can do sooner than that."
Vel glanced toward him.
"The other girl."
Clara.
"She's alive. Though I'm not sure that's the right word for it." He met Vel's eyes. "The Archmagister thought you might want to see her, once you're done here."