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She looked at him like she knew him.
But he had never seen her before three days ago.
His eyes widened as they landed in the mirror of Agar Agar.
It should’ve been blue—icy, still, glimmering with the chill of Frost Queen Cookie’s magic. Or white, glowing with the blinding purity of frozen storms. But it wasn’t.
The mirror shimmered with a twisting current of green.
No, not green. Wind.
Fire Spirit Cookie clenched his fists, the heat radiating from his body causing frost to melt off the ship's railing. He knew what this meant. Wind Archer Cookie’s power—once untouchable, elemental—was now churning within the depths of the mirror like a storm trapped beneath glass.
“Oh you…” he growled under his breath.
The memory of the battle was still raw.
It began three days ago. The North trembled with Frost Queen Cookie’s sorrow, her palace cracked with ice spiraling in unnatural formations.
Frost Queen had collapsed first, her power siphoned in a final scream that split the skies.
Millennial Tree had warned Wind Archer. Of course, Agar Agar was attracted to Fire Spirit’s life energy more. The fire elemental had no idea that Wind Archer was attacked.
Fire Spirit Cookie stared into the mirror again, and this time it showed more than colors—it showed Wind Archer.
Collapsed. Pale. His once-glowing bow and arrow barely flickering as the wind inside him lay dormant.
“No…” Fire Spirit Cookie whispered, reaching out as if he could break through the glass with sheer will. “You can’t—don’t you dare disappear.”
But the image twisted again—Agar Agar’s silhouette rose from the mist like a serpent from the deep, her eyes glinting with the ruby.
She smiled.
Fire Spirit Cookie’s flames flickered lower at the sight of her. Not from fear, but fury.
“You shouldn’t have taken it,” he whispered, his voice strained with heat.
His fists clenched until embers sparked from his knuckles. “You shouldn’t have taken him.”
Fire Spirit Cookie had never confessed—never dared. Wind Archer was the sky, the current, always distant. They fought on the same side, yes, but there had been a wall between them made of pride and silence. But now, that wall was gone. Shattered. And in its place was only her—the cookie who had stolen the storm.
“No more fire?” Agar Agar’s voice came, her tone soft yet so greedy, so hungry.
The mirror glowed, and water surged upward from the pool like a serpent, lashing toward him.
Sea Fairy.
He raised both hands, roaring as flames shot forward, colliding with the surge of magic. Steam exploded into the chamber as fire met tide, the two forces twisting and writhing in a deadly spiral.
And all the while, Agar Agar watched with a calm that enraged him even more.
She wasn’t one of them.
But now, she was stronger than any of them.
The chamber shook with the clash of fire and water.
Steam hissed violently as Fire Spirit Cookie’s blazing inferno collided with Agar Agar Cookie’s conjured tide. His eyes narrowed, sweat beading on his brow despite the freezing cavern air. The surge of water crashed against his flames like a living beast, relentless and cold.
But he held his ground.
With a fierce cry, he twisted his arms in an arc, flames coiling around him like a phoenix. The molten trail slashed through the water, forcing it back in a blast of boiling mist.
Across the chamber, Agar Agar raised her mirror again, her movements slow and deliberate, as though she had all the time in the world. Her mirror gleamed with windlight—not her own, but his.
Wind Archer’s.
“You fight like you’re protecting something,” she said, her voice unshaken. “But you’re too late. Wind Archer’s essence is mine now. His power flows through me—through the Mirror. Your flame cannot reach what’s already sunken.”
“Don’t talk like you know him,” Fire Spirit Cookie snarled. “You didn’t earn that power. You stole it!”
He thrust his hand forward, summoning a pillar of fire that tore across the ground and erupted beneath her feet. Agar Agar leapt back, her form graceful, slipping just out of reach. The water around her surged upward to shield her, but his fire cracked through it this time, singing the edges of her robe.
She winced.
He saw it.
“You’re not invincible,” he growled, striding forward as the flames followed in his wake. “You’re just a thief hiding behind stolen strength.”
She slammed her mirror into the ground, and a wave of wind-laced water exploded outward. The gale hit him like a battering ram, flinging him across the chamber into a wall of jagged ice.
The impact rattled his bones, but he pushed himself up, blood trickling from his mouth. His fire sputtered—then flared stronger, hotter.
He wasn’t fighting for balance.
He was fighting for him.
Every second Wind Archer’s power stayed in her hands, the real Wind Archer faded further.
Fire Spirit Cookie let out a roar and launched himself forward, leaving a trail of fire in his path. He struck at her midair, fists ablaze, every motion a strike of desperation and wrath. Agar Agar blocked with water whips and spinning shields of frost, but this time, he pressed harder.
He ducked low, then burst upward with a flame-coated uppercut that broke through her guard and struck her square in the chest.
She stumbled, coughing from the blast, and fell back against her own mirror.
The mirror wobbled… and for a moment, the surface shimmered again.
Fire Spirit Cookie’s breath hitched.
Wind Archer’s face flickered across the glass—eyes closed, expression peaceful, fading.
“No—”
Agar Agar looked up, her voice hoarse now. “You can’t save him.”
“Yes,” Fire Spirit Cookie snarled, taking a step closer, fire pooling in his hands, “I will.”
He drove both hands forward and unleashed everything he had—his pain, his rage, his love—in a final torrent of fire that engulfed the mirror and her both.
The chamber filled with light.
The ice cracked.
The sea roared.
And everything went white.
…
When the light finally faded, the chamber was silent.
Steam rose in great hissing clouds, curling along the jagged walls of the cavern. The icy floor beneath Fire Spirit Cookie was slick with meltwater, his knees pressing into the damp stone. His flames flickered weakly now—spent from the final blast—but his breath came fast, alive, burning with urgency.
Across from him, the mirror lay shattered in a pool of water, its once-impervious glass fractured into glistening shards. The stolen winds and frost—no longer bound to Agar Agar—had escaped, fading into the air like a sigh of freedom.
And there she was.
Agar Agar Cookie slumped against the far wall, her robes scorched, her mirror hand hanging limp. The glow in her body had vanished. No more tides. No more windlight. Just a Cookie—small, broken, and stunned.
“You... you don’t understand,” she gasped, looking up at him. “I could’ve… made them eternal.”
Fire Spirit Cookie stood slowly, shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths. “You never knew them. You only wanted to own them.”
She looked away then, not in defiance, but in defeat.
He turned.
No time for anger. No time for triumph.
He ran.
The forest came into view by nightfall.
Fire Spirit Cookie tore through the trees, the wind howling through the canopy in wild bursts. For a terrifying moment, he wondered if Wind Archer’s domain had truly vanished—if Agar Agar’s corruption had reached this far.
But then he saw it.
Faint green light drifting through the leaves.
Not power. Not magic.
Hope.
He burst through a clearing and stopped, heart pounding.
There he was. Wind Archer Cookie.
Millennial Tree was practically struggling to help him, the life energy was drained to his core.
The winds stirred faintly around him—as if recognizing Fire Spirit’s arrival, they grew warmer, almost like a welcome.
“Wind Archer!” Fire Spirit Cookie dropped to his knees beside him, Millennial instinctively moving away. “Hey—wake up. I’m here.”
Wind Archer stirred, brow twitching. His eyes fluttered open just barely.
A breath escaped him. “You…?”
“I got her. The mirror’s gone. It’s over.”
Wind Archer blinked slowly, gaze searching his. “You came…”
“Of course I did,” Fire Spirit Cookie said, voice cracking. “You idiot… You always act like no one can reach you, but I—”
He stopped. The words were there, boiling in his chest, ready to pour out like fire.
But Wind Archer smiled, faint and tired. “The wind… still moves.”
Fire Spirit Cookie lowered his head, lips trembling.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “It does.”
He gently pulled Wind Archer up into his arms, holding him close as the forest winds wrapped around them—soft, alive, and free once more.
And in that moment, Fire Spirit Cookie realized something:
He hadn’t just saved the wind.
He had found where it belonged.