Book Five: Chapter Eleven What the Ice Takes

On a shelf of slick stone high in the cathedral, Tom, Finn, and Jim clung to the wall while twilight bled lavender through a fissure in the ceiling. Far below, in that ocean of blue-lit frost, Ilias James looked terribly small—arms half-raised, shoulders quaking under words that cracked the air like brittle glass.

Finn’s fingers locked on Tom’s sleeve.

“There,” she breathed, and everything beyond that single word slowed.

Ilias lifted his head to the towering wall of crystalline circuitry. “Army of Ice!” His voice ricocheted from pillar to pillar. “Bear witness! Judge those who fled!”

The ground answered with a shuddering boom. A fissure snapped open under his boots, spraying shards that skittered away like startled insects. Another fissure split off, then another, etching glowing fractures across the cavern floor.

Tom’s pulse hammered in his throat.

“He’s not summoning,” Finn whispered. “He’s on trial.”

Below, Ilias tried to steady himself. The blue glow beneath the ice surged into blinding white. A jagged spine of frost erupted, piercing up through the floor and ripping his thigh. He cried out, stumbling as blood bloomed and froze in the same heartbeat.

Far across the rim, Mary Mason vaulted the rock rail. Boots skidded on scree as she plunged down the embankment.

“Ilias!”

The ice was not finished. More spires burst like monstrous teeth—each larger, crueler, aimed with eerie precision. One slammed into his ribs, lifting him off his feet. Another curled around his calf, gluing him in place. Crystalline claws sprouted from the floor and ceiling, interlacing—building a cage that tightened with every second.

Ilias thrashed, panic overtaking rage. “It’s not listening!” he screamed. “It’s not mine!”

He reached for Mary, who was sliding the last meters toward him, knees cutting a groove in the frost. She caught his wrist—bare skin against her gloved palm—just as a filament of ice snaked up his arm, sealing flesh to glass.

“Fight it!” she cried, bracing with both boots, shoulders trembling. “I’ve got you!”

The ice, now thrumming like a colossal organ, shifted tactics. Instead of spearing, it began to encase—ribbons of translucent blue coiling around Ilias’s torso in a slow, serpentine wrap. Fractal patterns bloomed across his chest and neck, each filament branching like winter on a windowpane.

Mary pulled, tendons straining. The air tasted of copper and snow.

“You remember the garden dome?” she gasped. “The home we dreamed about? You said we’d plant tamarisks—watch them bloom pink in the Martian dusk. Hold on to that, Ilias!”

For a heartbeat he did. Their eyes met—hers ablaze with tears, his wide circles of terror and awe.

“That could’ve been real,” he choked.

“Why this?” Mary demanded. “Why now?”

“Because no one else would,” he rasped. “No one believed!”

The ice crawled higher, sealing his shoulders, forming a collar at his throat. Frost crept across his lips, silencing the next word. He tried to mouth *Mary*, but it crystallized on his tongue. His free hand clawed at the air, searching for purchase that wasn’t there.

With a crack like splitting granite, the floor opened, and the ice-yoke jerked him downward. His arm slipped from Mary’s grip; her gloves scraped skin, leaving blood and frost on her fingers. He plunged waist-deep into the shimmering void.

Mary lunged, both hands slamming onto the slick rim. “I believe in you!” she shouted, voice breaking as she leaned dangerously over the maw. “I always did—”

But the ice surged again, swallowing his chest, then his neck. Only his face remained—eyes glossy with regret, nostrils flaring against breath that crystallized and fell as snow. In that last second, he seemed so young—no general, no prophet, just a man terrified of being forgotten.

A final spire arced up like a scorpion’s tail and drove through the gap above him, sealing the hole with a sound like a cathedral door slamming shut. The cavern went deadly still.

Mary pitched forward on her knees. Her fists pounded the sealed surface, dull thuds echoing inside her helmet. She screamed his name, but it bounced back empty. Shivers wracked her as she pressed her forehead to the ice that moments ago had devoured the man she remembered kind.

High on the ledge, Tom’s words emerged on a ragged breath.

“He… drowned.”

“He asked for judgment,” Finn said, voice shaking, “and the ice obliged.”

Jim’s sensors flickered. “The substratum shows no remaining biological trace. Retrieval probability: negligible.”

Tom squeezed the ledge rail. “That’s not justice. That’s annihilation.”

“Justice and annihilation can share a border,” Jim replied.

Finn looked down at Mary—a lone figure kneeling in the radiant ruin, sobs barely audible beneath the hum that now faded back to subterranean silence.

“Whatever that was,” Finn said, “it decided.”

In the hush, the cavern felt bottomless. Light pulsed once more under the glassy floor—subdued, almost gentle—then extinguished, as though bracing for another thousand years of sleep.

Tom reached for Finn’s hand. They stood with Jim, three silhouettes on a narrow ridge, certain only that the rules of their universe had just shifted. Far below, Mary Mason remained bowed over the sealed ice, a small shape haloed by the last ghostly shine—left to mourn a man swallowed whole by the truth he’d tried to raise.