Fire and Ice

“Breathe,” someone said above the roar. “In. Out. Don’t black out.”

Wind slapped my face.

I opened my eyes.

"What the—"

The sky was too close.

No ceiling. No walls. Just open air, shredded clouds, and a sickly blue light along the edge of my vision.

Every direction that wasn’t “inside the skiff” was sky.

This was not an ideal place to be dizzy.

I grabbed the nearest railing and forced my head to stop spinning.

"Don't move," a voice snapped from the front.

Cha Eun‑ha.

Of course.

She sat in the pilot seat, both hands locked white‑knuckled on the controls. Her hair was plastered to her face, dripping. Her shirt clung to her like she'd walked out of the ocean.

She had.

To fish me out after she'd thrown me in.

"You tried to kill me," I said.

“Don’t move,” she ignored and shouted over the wind. “We’re not clear yet.”

I looked back.

Behind us, the dark sky rippled.

It wasn’t clouds. It was a massive, extending claw of shadow, stretching out from the horizon we’d just left. It grasped at the air, missing the tail of our skiff by metres, then dissolved into mist before reforming closer.

Yeonhwa.

She was chasing a flying vehicle across the ocean with sheer will and shadow-steps.

“She’s persistent,” Eun-ha spat.

She yanked the stick hard to the left. The skiff banked violently. I grabbed the railing to keep from falling into the void.

“You drowned me,” I yelled over the engine.

Another spear of darkness stabbed toward the tail. Eun‑ha jerked the stick hard left. My body slid across the deck until I hit the opposite railing.

The mana core beneath us whined like a dying cat.

"She wanted to marry you," Eun‑ha said. "In front of me. Do you understand how insane that is?"

"More insane than yanking me into the Mediterranean?" I asked.

"Yes," she said flatly.

Another impact. The skiff shuddered.

"How far can she reach?" I asked.

"As far as she wants," Eun‑ha said. "Shadow‑users don't tire the same way. She'll jump anchor to anchor until we're in her hands or we're dead."

"Fantastic options," I said.

Or I could just leave her. Not possible though.

Eun‑ha slammed her palm onto a glowing rune on the console.

The engine didn't just rev. It shrieked.

Blue mana flared out the back in a blinding sheet. The acceleration crushed me flat against the deck.

Behind us, the reaching shadows hit the flare and disintegrated like paper in a furnace.

The darkness thinned.

Slowly.

Too slowly.

But it thinned.

The roar of wind filled my ears as my brain stopped listing ways I could die in the next thirty seconds.

"We lost her," I said.

"For now," Eun‑ha replied. "She'll find us again. She always does."

Ahead, a faint red line shimmered in the air. Glyphs hovered along it like warning signs.

"Border ward," Eun‑ha said before I could ask. "EU‑Russia divide."

I blinked.

"Russia," I repeated.

"Yes."

"The Russia that doesn't exist anymore?" I said. "The one where the first Tower broke through and ate the population? That Russia?"

While gathering information about this world..I read on the internet that there was no Russia here.

"You know another one?" she asked.

"Why the hell are we flying into it?"

"Because," she said, "Yeonhwa won't follow us past the barrier. It's suicide."

I have a feeling that she would.

"And we're different how?"

"I have my flames," she said. "You have me."

The skiff hit the barrier.

My entire body lit up like I'd touched a live wire. Every nerve fired at once. My vision went white.

Then it passed.

The air changed.

Warmer became frozen. Wet became dry. The faint ambient mana that hummed everywhere in civilized airspace just stopped.

Below us, darkness stretched in every direction.

Not ocean darkness.

Land darkness.

Dead cities. Broken highways. Forests that had turned skeletal and stayed that way.

"Welcome to the end of the world," Eun‑ha muttered.

The vehicle’s mana core coughed.

Her head snapped to the console.

"Not yet," she hissed at it. "Just a little more."

It coughed again, louder.

Smoke leaked from the vents.

"Eun‑ha," I said.

"I know."

The engine gave one last, defiant whine.

Then it died.

Completely.

The thrust cut off. The skiff stopped screaming and started falling.

"Hold onto something!" she yelled.

"Like what?!" I yelled back.

The ground rushed up.

Snow. Endless white. A few black spines of dead trees poking through like ribs.

We hit.

The skiff ploughed into a snowbank, tore through it, clipped something solid, spun sideways, and slammed to a stop half‑buried.

My ribs ached. My head rang.

When the world stopped moving, I just lay there for a second and appreciated the lack of acceleration trying to turn my organs into paste.

"Si‑woo."

Eun‑ha's voice, strained.

I turned my head.

She was still in the seat, bent forward slightly, one hand pressed to her side. Blood seeped between her fingers.

"You're hurt," I said.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You're bleeding."

"I said I'm fine."

She unbuckled with her free hand, stood, swayed, caught herself on the console.

Then she climbed out of the wreck like nothing had happened.

I dragged myself up and followed.

The cold hit me the second I cleared the hull.

It wasn't Seoul winter cold. It was the kind of cold that made you understand why people used to think hell froze over.

My wet clothes turned stiff in seconds. My lungs tried to close. My fingers stopped responding to basic commands like "move" or

"hold onto things."

Eun‑ha dropped into the snow.

It came up past her knees.

She didn't flinch. Just turned and looked at me still half‑draped over the skiff's edge, shaking.

"Get down," she said. "We need to move."

"Where?" I asked through chattering teeth. "The tourist bureau?"

"Somewhere safe, with walls," she said. "Before the Monsters notice."

I slid off the hull and sank into snow up to my shins.

Cold bit through my summer pants like they were tissue paper.

Eun‑ha started walking. Heat shimmered faintly around her, melting the snow under her boots just enough that her steps didn't sink as deep.

I followed because standing still was how you became an ice sculpture.

Ahead, through the blowing snow, a low concrete structure squatted half‑buried. Old gas station, maybe. Roof caved in on one side. Walls still standing.

Better than nothing.

We ducked through a gap in the collapsed wall into what used to be the office.

Three walls. Half a roof. Wind howled through the cracks.

I hugged myself.

My hands had stopped shaking. That wasn't a good sign.

Eun‑ha stood near the doorway for a moment, scanning outside, then turned back to me.

"Take off your shirt," she said.

"It's frozen to me," I said.

"Then peel it off," she said. "Wet fabric will kill you faster."

"So will hypothermia."

"I'm handling that part," she said.

She stepped closer.

Heat rolled off her in controlled waves, like standing near a radiator someone had turned to "don't burn the house down."

"Come here," she said.

I didn't move.

"Si‑woo," she said. "If you stand there being stubborn, you'll be dead in fifteen minutes. Your call."

"My call would've been 'not Russia,'" I said.

"Your call would've been a ring on your finger and a shadow in your lungs," she said. "I saved you from that."

"You drowned me."

"I relocated you."

"Still don't—"

She grabbed the front of my shirt and yanked me in.

She cast her flames.

Her arms wrapped around me, tight and hot. The cold that had been carving into my bones retreated like it had been slapped.

I sucked in a breath.

It didn't burn anymore.

"There," she said. "Better?" She didn’t say it, but her eyes told me everything: the only warmth she would ever allow me was hers.

Out of all the goddamn places in the world, she bought me here.

Ice and fire. Of course it was because if I wanted to survive here, I had lean into her flames.

“All this,” I said into her shoulder, “just to cage me again.”

"In the basement, you were chained," she said. "Here, you are free and you can leave anytime. Although, you'll just freeze to death."

"So my options are you or death," I said.

"Finally," she said. "You're catching on."

I pulled back just enough to look at her face.

Up close, the damage was worse.

Dark circles. Red veins. A faint tremor in her jaw like she was grinding her teeth even while talking.

Only then did I notice what I’d overlooked since waking up: her hair. It was no longer red. It had turned white.

"Your hair," I said.

"What about it?"

"It's white," I said. "You're not old enough for that."

Her mouth twitched.

"It's the price I paid," she said.

"For what."

"For finding you."

I went still.

"What kind of price turns your hair white?" I asked.

"The kind you pay a shaman in a basement under Gangnam," she said. "Years. Vitality. The usual."

"How many years." I asked. Maybe there was still some hope for me.

"Enough," she said.

"That's not a number, Eun‑ha."

She looked at me.

"Twenty," she said. "Maybe more. He wasn't specific after I told him to take what he needed."

The air left my lungs.

"You sold twenty years of your life," I said slowly, "for a tracking spell."

"For you," she corrected.

"I didn't ask you to do that."

"You didn't have to," she said. "You were about to marry her. I had to intervene."

"So you traded your lifespan and kidnapped me to Russia."

"Yes."

She said it like it was the most reasonable plan in the world.

I stared at her.

"You're insane," I said.

"I know," she said. "You've mentioned."

Her hand came up, cupped my cheek. Her palm was still warm.

"What good are forty more years," she asked quietly, "if you're not in any of them?"

My throat closed.

For a moment, I couldn't think of a single sarcastic thing to say.

This bitch was just too insane.

She smiled, small and bitter.

"You always go quiet when I'm honest," she said. "I hate that."

"You hate a lot of things," I said.

"I hate her more," she said.

Her thumb brushed my jaw.

"I saw you on that pier," she went on. "Reaching for the ring. You looked like you were about to say yes."

"I was about to say a lot of things before you decided to 'drowned' me into depths of abyss," I said.

"You hesitated," she said, ignoring that. "Your hand shook. I saw it even through the lens."

"Lens?"

"Magical Device," she said. "I watched you for two days."

Of course she stalked me.

"And you waited until the proposal to make your move," I said.

"No, at first I was going to leave," she admitted. "I was. You looked… happy. I thought maybe I should just go back to Seoul and let you rot in peace."

Her fingers tightened on my face.

"Then I saw her touching you," she said. "And I couldn't."

"So you yanked me into the ocean."

"So I took back what was mine," she said.

Not "saved." Not "rescued."

Took.

The wind outside howled.

Inside this tiny bubble of heat, we were pressed too close for lies.

"I almost killed you in Seoul," she whispered. "My flames. If she hadn't pulled you under, you'd have been ash."

Her eyes dropped.

"I see it every time I close my eyes," she said. "Your face. Right before the flames hit."

"Eun‑ha—"

"I can't use my fire around you anymore," she said. "I don't trust myself. So I bought that fire‑binding artifact. I paid in gold, favors, and probably my soul. I did it just so I could warm you without turning you to ash."

She looked up.

"And you still think I'm the villain here," she said.

I met her gaze.

“Your flames or the artifact’s fire...it doesn’t matter. A cage is still a cage, no matter the temperature. Oh, did you forget what you did to me? You faked my death and chained me in the dark. As if that wasn’t enough, you even tried to kill me.”

“You didn’t buy this artifact for me; you bought it so you could feed into your own fantasies. If you’re waiting for an ‘I love you,’ you’ll be waiting an eternity.”

Her lips trembled.

Then she laughed.

It sounded wrong. Cracked in the middle.

"Yes. That can wait," she said. "I just want you alive and here."

“Somewhere she can’t—” she cut off.

Something scraped faintly outside.

We both went still.

The sound came again. Soft. Deliberate.

Not wind.

Eun‑ha's mana flared instantly. The small flame in her hand snuffed out, replaced by heat radiating from her entire body in a tight shell.

So much for not using her flames.

"She shouldn't have caught up this fast," she muttered.