My vampire speed kicks in with the particular intensity that comes from freshly consumed blood—Cassius's essence providing fuel that my depleted reserves desperately needed. The world blurs around me as I accelerate past what normal perception should allow, each platform appearing and disappearing with speed that makes individual movements impossible to track.
Zeke adjusts.
His ice platforms can't keep up with my acceleration—the delay between my need and his response becomes problematic as my speed continues to increase. But rather than forcing me to slow down, he adapts.
An ongoing path of ice stretches before me.
Not individual platforms but a continuous surface, a frozen highway that extends from my current position toward where Damien's hellhound form remains suspended in temporal chains. The ice carries texture that provides traction, ridges that guide my movement, structure that accommodates rather than impedes.
Brilliant.
He's absolutely brilliant.
How did I never appreciate what he's capable of?
Time is beginning to return.
I can feel it—the temporal suspension that Koishii created starting to release its hold on reality. The frozen figures around us begin to show signs of motion, micro-movements that speak to consciousness returning, awareness reasserting itself after whatever pause his magic imposed.
Running out of time.
Need to reach those chains before?—
I catch them.
My hands close around frost-and-silver links that connect to the binding wrapped around Damien's neck—the primary chain, the one that controls the others, the key to whatever system Koishii and Zeke have constructed to contain the hellhound's destructive potential.
The metal burns.
Burnswith cold so intense it transcends temperature into something that feels like fire, power so concentrated that contact causes immediate damage to flesh not designed to channel such energies. My palms scream with pain that I refuse to acknowledge, skin blistering against surfaces that should be impossible to touch.
Hold on.
Don't let go.
This is the only chance.
I skid across the ice path that Zeke created—momentum carrying me forward even as my grip on the chains creates drag that slows my progression. My feet slide along the frozen surface with the particular lack of control that comes from speed combined with an unexpected anchor.
I skid to a stop.
Right in front of the golden gates.
The massive structures loom before me with the particular weight of significance that Academy architecture always carries—ancient materials, powerful enchantments, barriers between current circumstances and whatever comes next. The gates carry symbols I don't recognize, patterns that pulse with energy suggesting they're far more than simple physical barriers.
The chains burn in my hands.
Vibrant power courses through the frost-and-silver links with intensity that makes my bones ache, magic so concentrated that merely touching it causes damage that my hybrid healing struggles to address. My flesh blisters and cracks and reforms in cycles that speak to the particular violence of what I'm attempting to endure.
But I hold on.
Tightly.
Desperately.
Because letting go means failure.
Time returns to full throttle.
