Two jade plaques shattered between calloused palms before the black volley crossed the midpoint of the basin.
Sera Thorne snapped the first talisman with her thumb, while Mina Vance crushed the second against her small chest. The carved jade tablets turned to fine powder, releasing twin geysers of brilliant azure light.
The cold did not merely chill the air. It seized the canyon’s stagnant mist, pulling moisture from every reed, rock crevice, and puddle of marsh water.
Within a single heartbeat, an eight-inch-thick dome of translucent blue ice vaulted over the ox-cart.
The dome sealed against the gravel bed with a dull thump, completely enclosing the brown ox, the wooden wagon, and Kaelen’s hammock in a crystalline vault.
An instant later, fifty poisoned crossbow bolts slammed into the curved ice.
CLANG. CLANG. THWIP.
Iron tips shrieked as they glanced off the frozen surface, leaving shallow white scratches in the azure crust. Green droplets of corpse-venom hissed against the frost, boiling into foul black steam that drifted harmlessly into the canyon breeze.
