As the creature stood frozen in shimmering ice, its claws just inches from Amelia, the chamber was silent.
Only the soft crackling of the frozen sculpture echoed in the silence, but despite how it looked, the creature was far from defeated.
Amelia's gaze stayed calm, her breathing steady. This was one of her passive abilities; a protective energy field around her that froze anything or anyone that got too close without permission.
The creature had learned to move faster than most could follow, disappearing from sight.
But even though it could vanish from the naked eye, it couldn't escape Amelia's senses. At her level, locking onto this creature's aura was as easy as breathing.
Though frozen, the creature pulsed with energy, its form shifting slightly within the icy prison.
Once sleek and menacing, it was now an ice sculpture, but its struggle to break free was clear.
Small cracks appeared along its limbs as it strained against the ice that held it. The golden aura from its earlier transformation pulsed faintly under the surface, desperately seeking a way out.
Amelia watched the creature, her gaze as cold as the ice that trapped it.
She could feel the flicker of the creature's life force still strong within. "Oh, breaking out?"
Before the creature could even attempt to break free, Bronn arrived with a booming force, his fist crackling with thick blue energy.
He swung with everything he had, and his punch connected with the frozen creature.
The impact sent a shockwave through the chamber, and the ice shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
One of the creature's hands flew off with the shattering ice, tumbling across the chamber, lost in a cascade of frozen fragments.
"That's one way to end it," Bronn muttered with a grin, standing amid broken ice.
But Amelia wasn't smiling. Her eyes stayed fixed on the pile of shattered ice. "It's not over."
As if responding to her words, the golden aura around the remains of the creature flared violently.
The scattered ice fragments trembled, and piece by piece, the creature's body began to pull itself back together.
The golden liquid flowed like molten metal, reforming its missing limbs and pulling the broken pieces of ice toward it.
Bronn stared wide-eyed. "Again?"
In moments, the creature was whole again. Its form, now even sleeker and more dangerous, stood tall.
Just as they thought it was over, the atmosphere around the chamber changed once again.
The air grew heavy, and thick with an ominous presence.
A dark, oppressive miasma began seeping from the walls and floor, swirling toward the shattered remains of the creature.
The stillness in the chamber was replaced by a low, eerie hum that crawled under their skin, signaling that something far worse was stirring.
Amelia's eyes narrowed as the dark miasma swirled around the creature's corpse.
"Another transformation?" she muttered, a hint of disbelief in her voice.
She could sense the dark miasma energy that had covered the mountain outside was now flooding into the heart of the chamber, pouring into the remains of the dead creature.
The miasma moved like it had a mind of its own, twisting and coiling as it was sucked into the creature's broken body.
The golden shards of ice that had glittered on the floor darkened as the mist touched them, corrupting everything it reached.
In moments, the pile of frozen limbs began to twitch, as if something even worse was waking up inside.
Currently, the force gathering in the chamber was far more sinister than the creature's earlier transformations.
The miasma had fully consumed the corpse now, and the creature's body began to reform piece by piece.
Its head, once obliterated, reappeared with a sickening crackle, followed by its chest, reshaping as if the earlier ice attack had never happened.
But something was different.
The golden glow was gone. Instead, the creature now radiated a darker, more terrifying energy.
Its skin was pitch black, exuding an unnatural darkness. Its posture, once proud, had turned wild and feral.
The creature's eyes, now burning with an abyssal glow, fixed on Amelia with a focused, predatory intensity.
The creature stood taller and more twisted than before, like it had been reborn in a deathly resurrection.
The dark miasma clung to it like a second skin, radiating an oppressive weight.
The air in the chamber shifted, a strange mix of biting cold and suffocating darkness.
Amelia, her eyes locked on the creature, muttered. "Is this what he meant by an 'immortal being'?"