Part 50: His Ice, Her Light, Their Victory

The air snapped.

The crackle of lightning was no longer just a sound—it was a scream. The throne room's ceiling was barely holding now, thunderbolts burning holes through the stone as Electrica hovered like a wrathful goddess, her hair wild, eyes glowing white.

"I'll erase your existence!!" she shrieked, summoning her most powerful strike yet—a vortex of electricity coiling around her like a celestial serpent, roaring to life.

Below her, Glacius stood, knees slightly bent, his arms supporting Peggy's legs as she clung tighter to his waist. Frost swirled around them in a sphere of defense, but even his perfect calculations were faltering.

He whispered to himself, "This blast... might shatter everything."

Peggy, sensing the rising danger, leaned her forehead against the back of his neck. Her voice was weak, yet steady.

"Then let it shatter everything," she said softly, "if that's what it takes... to stop her."

Glacius blinked. That warmth again—that reckless, radiant courage.

She continued, "I know what it's like to be betrayed... to be left alone. But she's not doing this for love anymore... she's doing this to destroy."

Peggy raised her hand slowly, and a small orb of fairy light began to form, flickering like a dying star. "Use me," she whispered. "Channel it. I trust you."

Glacius didn't respond at first. His logic screamed no. She was too fragile. Her light too faint.

But something inside him—something beyond calculations—tightened.

He trusted her.

He shifted his stance, letting his core absorb the light Peggy offered. Her magic seeped into his frost—infusing his next attack with a purity and clarity he'd never wielded before.

Above, Electrica unleashed her storm.
A scream. A burst. A full on thunderstrike.

"NOW!!" Peggy cried.

Glacius hurled his arm forward, and from it exploded a spiraling Spear of Frozen Light—a fusion of his ice and her fairy glow. It sliced through the air like a comet, cutting directly into the heart of Electrica's storm.

There was a detonation unlike anything before—thunder and frost colliding, light and chaos erupting in a flash that turned night into day.

The force flung Glacius and Peggy back across the chamber, his ice shielding their fall. Dust and shards of marble rained down, and the silence that followed was deafening.

From the air, Electrica descended—her armor scorched, her hair in disarray, eyes bloodshot with disbelief. She stumbled, coughing, her once-thunderous aura flickering.

"You... you fused your powers..." she muttered. "That's impossible..."

Glacius, barely standing now, looked up coldly. "That's what preservation looks like... when joined with light."

Peggy tried to lift her head, resting on his back still, whispering, "We're not done yet."

Electrica screamed in rage, summoning one final surge—but this time, her own lightning recoiled, cracking against her body as the overload from their combined blast disrupted her inner current.

She fell to one knee.

Beaten—not by sheer force, but by the unity she could never understand.

Glacius slowly lowered Peggy from his back, gently letting her sit against a broken pillar. He turned to Electrica, his breath frost in the air.

"It's over."

And for the first time...
She didn't argue.

Her tears crackled down her cheeks like molten sparks as she collapsed to the floor, defeated.

Electrica's body trembled as sparks danced around her fingers—not out of strength, but from the broken remnants of power once fueled by fury and betrayal. She clutched the floor beneath her, nails scraping stone, her breaths ragged and shallow.

"You... both..." she choked, her voice no longer thunderous, but fragile.

Glacius took a slow step forward. "You lost... because you never understood," he said coldly. "Preservation isn't silence. It's choosing what must endure. Destruction... chaos... sadism... doesn't belong in the world I envision."

Electrica looked up at him, the grief in her eyes finally rising to the surface. "I... trusted you," she whispered. "I wanted to build a storm with you... not die in one."

"You wanted power," he replied. "You didn't want peace—you wanted dominance. That's not trust. That's obsession."

She lowered her head.

There was no more resistance left in her.

Peggy, watching it all, felt a strange ache swell in her chest. She was barely conscious, her hand resting weakly on her lap. The heat from her magic was almost gone, and yet the emotional intensity of the moment held her awake.

"Maybe," she whispered hoarsely, "she just... didn't know any other way to feel something real..."

Glacius turned his head slightly. He didn't respond, but her words sat with him—deeply.

He walked toward Electrica and stopped just in front of her. Icy mist surrounded him, but no spear formed. No finishing blow came.

"You'll live," he said simply. "That's your punishment."

Electrica's lips parted in disbelief. "What...?"

"You'll live knowing everything you had was an illusion. You'll live with the memory of being defeated by a dying fairy and a prince who never loved you."

She sobbed once, bitter and broken.

Glacius turned his back to her.

He walked over to Peggy, who had tried and failed to push herself upright. He knelt beside her, arms gently wrapping around her small, shaking form.

"I told you to run," he muttered.

Peggy smiled faintly. "And I told you I won't."

He looked at her for a long time, then finally said, "You're reckless. Irrational. Illogical."

"And warm," she whispered.

He closed his eyes.

The storm outside had begun to die. The shattered throne room echoed only with the distant rumble of thunder, fading like a heart learning to calm.

Behind them, Electrica didn't move. She lay there, broken—not dead, but lost within her own failure. She had poured all her cruelty and desperation into the storm, and it had given her nothing but silence in return.

Peggy, now barely holding on, leaned her head against Glacius's shoulder. "You said love is a weakness..."

He didn't answer immediately. The silence lingered before he whispered, almost reluctantly:

"Maybe... it's something I miscalculated."

And as the cold wind swept through the broken halls of the palace, two figures—light and frost—sat together, battered but not broken.