The hundred-meter Vermilion Fire-Dragon Hammer roared as it plunged from the sky, its blazing head wide enough to crush an entire siege tower.
Heat radiated from its crimson dragon-scales, scorching the air above the trench and turning loose pebbles on the battlements into glowing embers.
Twelve-year-old Mina Vance did not flinch.
As the giant hammer descended within thirty feet of her crown, she opened her eyes at Spirit Domain Early.
She held her translucent winter jade staff horizontally, tapping the lower ferrule against the stone parapet as she unfolded a five-kilometer Absolute-Zero Yin Domain. She angled the domain boundary carefully away from Kaelen’s Tea Garden so not a single cold draft would disturb her Third Brother’s hammock.
A soft, crystalline bell tone rippled across the moat.
From her small frame, a blinding wave of absolute-zero energy surged outward across five kilometers.
It did not manifest as a noisy storm. It moved as an invisible wall of pure thermodynamic cessation.
