4.3.25 - The Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy pt 7
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Chapter 7: The Choice Beneath the Ice
[Image: The trio standing before Ice Witch Elsanna in the glowing crystal chamber, the Loquata Fruit suspended between them.]
The room was still.
Not quiet—frozen. Sound itself seemed hesitant to move, trapped beneath the hum of ancient enchantments.
Zsolista, Boka, and Baby stood side by side, hearts racing beneath their cloaks, breaths puffing in gentle clouds of steam.
Before them hovered Ice Witch Elsanna—her body suspended in air, robes swaying as if underwater, her face unreadable.
Elsanna:
“Warriors. I know why you’ve come. But there is nothing to discuss.”
She held out her palm, trembling.
“I need… only a single drop. To save my sister. Please… heroes.”
Zsolista’s eyes narrowed.
“Sister…?”
They turned toward the crystal.
[Image: A close-up of the frozen twin inside the crystal, gentle magic pulsing from her form.]
Suspended inside was a young woman—barely older than they were.
Her form shimmered in sleep, as if held between breaths. Her hands were clasped like she’d been praying when the ice took her. A faint glow radiated from her heart, pulsing with hope... or memory.
She looked just like Elsanna.
The trio blinked—then understood.
This was not a tyrant guarding treasure. This was a sister who had been waiting too long. A guardian not of power, but of memory, trying to stitch the past back together with pieces too fragile to hold.
Boka:
“I… understand… Boka-boka~”
His voice was quiet, filled with more sympathy than surprise.
Baby:
“But hurting others isn’t the way. There has to be another path. Its-a-baby~”
She floated a little closer, not as a challenger, but as someone offering grace.
Zsolista stepped forward.
Her voice was soft. Strong.
“Take one drop of the fruit. Help your sister. But give us the Unmelting Ice. No more lies. No more harm. Let this be the moment everything changes.”
Elsanna hovered in silence.
A tension passed through her like wind curling around an unopened door.
Then—she lowered her hand.
And smiled. Not coldly. Not cruelly. Just faintly, like someone who had once known how to hope.
She floated to the Loquata Fruit, which still shimmered in its icy cradle.
She touched it.
A single golden drop bloomed at the stem.
[Image: A glowing bead of nectar falling from the Loquata into the crystal, which begins to thaw around the sister’s chest.]
The drop fell—slow motion, sun-warm—and landed gently upon the crystal.
It hissed.
Crackled.
The ice around her sister’s chest melted, just slightly.
A pulse of magic spread through the room.
The moment was sacred.
But then—
Elsanna’s fingers tightened.
There was a flicker in her eyes—not malice, not hatred, but desperation sharpened to a breaking point. Her smile faltered, just slightly, as if she mourned the path she was about to choose.
She snatched the Loquata and the unfinished drop into her own Bag of Wonderment with the precision of someone who had practiced this moment a thousand times in silence.
Her eyes—once tired, once pleading—flared with glacial power. It wasn't a flare of triumph, but of survival.
Zsolista:
“…No.”
Boka:
“She tricked us!”
Elsanna didn’t attack.
She absorbed the spell cores, the Loquata’s energy, and with a gust of cursed wind—
She leapt from the tower window.
Midair, she cast a single spell—a sigil woven from frost and sorrow, its runes ancient and fragile as bone.
[Image: Tower stones crumbling, glowing glyphs activating as the Frozen Castle begins to collapse around the trio.]
The entire castle shuddered.
Cracks formed in the floor, spreading like lightning scars across frost-covered stone. Frozen chandeliers crashed into the banquet hall. The murals on the walls—once shimmering scenes of history and glory—shattered into mosaics of falling ice and forgotten stories.
Glyphs ignited, flickering with desperation. They pulsed red, then violet, then dimmed into fading blue, like breath leaving a sleeping beast. They weren’t just lights. They were the castle’s last words.
Baby:
“She’s destroying it all! The trolls! The monkeys! Her own creatures!”
Zsolista’s fists clenched.
Zsolista:
“She’s not escaping—she’s erasing it. All of it.”
The trio didn’t hesitate.
Zsolista dove for the pedestal, snatching the Unmelting Ice with one arm and casting a ward with the other.
Boka and Baby scrambled to retrieve the Loquata, its glow pulsing with fading warmth and unfinished promise.
The ceiling cracked. Ice beams moaned.
They ran—up the staircase, through a collapsing corridor of echoing ruin—
And jumped.
[Image: The trio falling through the air, arms wrapped around the treasure, snowy mountains and glowing sky behind them.]
They soared through the icy sky.
Snowflakes scattered like confetti.
Their capes whipped behind them as they plummeted down the mountain, glowing treasures clutched tight to their chests.
They hit the snow hard—rolling, sliding, laughing, crying, alive.
The castle cracked behind them, then vanished into frost and dust.
The Loquata pulsed weakly.
Zsolista:
“We have to move. Now.”
Only one mission remained:
Get back to Forest King Rizzoff.
Restore the land.
And protect the fruit… before it fades.
[Image: The trio racing across snowy ridges with the Loquata glowing in Zsolista’s satchel, a golden shimmer in the cold.]
But time was short.
The Loquata could only be juiced three times before the seed within it loses its memory and must be planted anew.
The first drop had gone to love twisted by grief—a choice born from sorrow, laced with longing.
The second would go to life uncoiled by hope—to the forest that dared to dream again.
The third... the third was a whisper in the wind, an unwritten line in a spellbook no one had dared to finish.
It would not merely heal or harm.
It would echo through every realm where ancient magic still whispered in gardens, in kitchens, in lullabies. Through every child who held a dream tight in their fist. Through every soul that still believed a story could change the world.
The next choice would not just change the forest.
It would decide who was worthy of remembering what magic truly tasted like.
Chapters for Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy
Chapter 1 of 8: The Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy
Chapter 2 of 8: The Slobbery Squirrel Stampede
Chapter 3 of 8: The Loquata of Desire and Fire
Chapter 4 of 8: The Curse of Forest King Rizzoff
Chapter 5 of 8: The Castle of the Frozen Mountain
Chapter 6 of 8: The Heart of the Frozen Castle