The celebration continued above him.
Cheering.
Prayers.
Voices calling Hol a savior.
The sounds rose and crashed across the White Plaza like waves, growing louder with every passing moment.
But Shuan could barely hear any of it clearly anymore.
His body felt impossibly heavy.
Each breath scraped painfully through his chest, wet and uneven, as though his lungs were slowly filling with ice and blood together.
He lay motionless in the snow while crimson spread farther beneath him.
The wounds in his shoulder and side throbbed violently with every heartbeat still struggling inside him.
His leg no longer obeyed him at all.
And yet— he was alive.
That terrified him more than the bullets.
Why was he still alive?
Shuan’s eyes trembled weakly beneath half-closed eyelids.
The gray sky above him looked distant now.
Unreachable.
Snowflakes drifted downward slowly, melting the moment they touched his overheated skin.
At first, he thought it was blood loss confusing his senses.
But then another wave of heat surged through his body.
Stronger than before.
His spine arched slightly against the ice.
A broken gasp escaped his lips.
Pain spread through him instantly.
Not ordinary pain.
Something deeper.
Like molten metal being forced through his veins.
His fingers clawed weakly into the snow beside him.
Steam rose faintly from the ground beneath his palm.
Tiny at first.
Barely noticeable.
But growing.
Shuan’s breathing became faster.
He could feel his heartbeat now.
Not inside his chest— everywhere.
In his arms.
His throat.
Behind his eyes.
His skin burned so intensely that the freezing air no longer felt cold against him.
It felt distant.
Wrong.
His tears had stopped without him realizing.
The heat had dried them completely.
Another tremor passed through his body.
This time stronger.
His wounds suddenly burned with unbearable intensity.
Shuan cried out weakly through clenched teeth.
The sound was lost beneath the cheering crowd.
Nobody looked toward him anymore.
To them, he was already dead.
A corpse left bleeding in the snow while the settlement celebrated survival.
But Lemar was still watching.
Her smile had disappeared completely now.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she stared at the snow around Shuan’s body.
Melting.
Slowly.
Quietly.
The ice beneath the spreading blood had begun collapsing into dark water.
Thin streams moved outward beneath him.
Steam drifted upward into the freezing air in pale twisting lines.
Lemar took one slow step forward.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Meanwhile, Hol remained near the front of the platform, listening to the people shout his name with growing intensity.
“Hol saved us!” “The nightmare is over!” “We’re safe!” The old man closed his eyes briefly as the voices washed over him.
Years of fear.
Years of survival.
Years spent convincing people that monsters still existed beyond the snow.
And now— he had become their hero.
He never noticed the heat rising behind him.
Shuan’s body trembled violently again.
His fingers curled harder against the melting ice.
His mind had become chaos.
Fragments of sound.
Pain.
Heat.
Fear.
And beneath all of it— something else.
Something ancient.
Something awakening.
His breathing suddenly stopped for one terrifying second.
Then returned sharply.
Hot vapor burst from his mouth.
His eyes widened.
Because for the first time— he could actually see the heat leaving his body.
Steam poured faintly from his skin now.
Not only from his wounds.
From everywhere.
The metal chain around his neck began making quiet cracking sounds as frost covering it slowly dissolved into water.
Shuan stared blankly at the snow beneath him.
Melting faster now.
The white surface collapsed inward around his blood-covered body, revealing dark wet ice underneath.
And somewhere deep inside him— beneath the fear, beneath the pain, beneath the dying boy crying helplessly in the snow— something opened its eyes.
The cheering around the plaza continued.
Nobody understood what was happening yet.
Nobody realized the thing they feared most… had survived.