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Sagira's shell expanded, her tiny metal form starting to glow.
A deep, ice cold terror stabbed into Osiris.
He reached for the Light but found nothing, and the freezing fear turned to fury.
"Sagira, NO!"
The air turned biting blue, sharp.
Osiris roared as power exploded from his body. He wrenched his arms free and swung out his sword. Except, no, it wasn't his Dawnblade. He was holding a crystalline staff.
Indigo ice laced through the chamber, chasing the now alarmed Hive, crawling along their chitin and solidifying into unsettlingly beautiful crystals. They shattered into dagger-sharp splinters that stabbed through fleeing Hive, spreading the ice through them.
Osiris stood shaking. His hands were covered in frost and his breath clouded in the freezing air.
The silence following the deafening bursts of exploding ice was screaming, howling, cackling.
Osiris' dark eyes stung from the cold as he stared stunned at the glacial destruction in front of him.
What had he done ?
He stepped forward slowly, boots crunching on frozen shards of chitin and bone. Sharp angles of frost coated the entire chamber, faint indigo wisps drifting into the lack of air.
Shadowy figures looked at him from the walls. He felt as though they were grinning.
He crouched down and gingerly picked up a fragment of ice. He turned it slowly in his fingers. Water didn't crystallize like this.
The patterns within were sharp. Angled.
Triangular.
Osiris dropped the ice. It shattered into splinters and scattered across the floor as he backed away.
He reached for the Light and found only the cold, open arms of Darkness.
Osiris gasped and whirled around, panic flooding him. "Sagira! Sagira, where are you?"
Gone. Gone.
He reeled back.
A tiny glint caught his eye. A spot of gold hidden in the dark blue ice.
Osiris scrambled for Sagira and frantically searched for weakness in the ice entombing her. He took a breath and moved more cautiously, despite the roaring fear in his chest. Slowly, he pried a chunk of the ice free. She was trapped inside, and he couldn’t breathe for a moment--
No. No. Relief made his knees weak.
She was alive. He could feel her, her Light. Faint, dormant, but present. It wasn’t unlike how he had felt her when he had flung her from the Infinite Forest after the Traveler’s awakening.
But this was his fault.
Osiris clutched his frozen Ghost to his chest and staggered upright.
The Nightmares whispered as he blindly made his way through the tunnels and caves, pleased sounds, welcoming him, congratulating him, encouraging him.
Osiris slammed down the Darkness inside of him.
Because he knew, he could feel it, that was what he had done. The prospect was something he had contemplated before, but to actually do it, to wield the Darkness himself…
He couldn’t control it.
He rubbed at his burning eyes and held Sagira close.
He needed help.