The moment the introductions ended, the armored man—Arthas—struck like thunder cleaving a stormcloud.

He had no plan to listen to Alicia or anyone else; his blue-lit eyes wavered like cold lanterns, then wildfire swallowed the light.

Maybe in his sight, Alicia had become a clump of filth, a swamp-thing to be cut down and purged with a falling storm-blade.

CLANG—!!

It happened in a heartbeat, lightning biting a flat horizon.

Arthas moved with hawk-fast speed, but the falling sword got caught by the small shadow who should’ve hidden behind Alicia, like a swallow snatching a falcon’s dive.

And she caught it bare-handed, like white jade pinching raw iron.

Soft skin met a winter-bright edge, and an impossible bell-note of metal rang out in the cold air.

A blade meant to drive straight like a river found itself dammed by a pebble, stopped without drawing so much as a drop of blood.

Arthas tried to rip the sword back, but an undertow seized the steel like an anchor in deep water.

That petite palm wrapped the edge like silk around iron, and the weapon froze in her grip like a nail pinned by a butterfly.

Edmund blinked, then the fog lifted; seeing Ling had the giant halted, he drew the sword from his back and surged forward like wind through grass.

“Stop!”

He’d just started to dash, but her voice struck like a bronze bell, and he froze like ice on a winter river.

“Don’t come yet!”

Her words lashed him again, a taut rein snapping like a bowstring.

Edmund hesitated a heartbeat, then stepped back like a shadow retreating before dawn.

His hand stayed on the hilt, a drawn bow kept quiet so he could spring forward the instant the storm broke.

Feeling Edmund settle behind her like a tether knotted firm, Ling turned her moon-bright focus back to the big wolf before her.

“Yo—sorry, memory’s kinda foggy, didn’t recognize our Mr. Lich King at first, through all this mist on the old bridge.”

She kept her grip on Arthas’s sword like frost on a blade; the meaning was plain as a toll gate—drop the weapon or talk.

And now was no time for Arthas to lower his flag before the storm.

“I don’t recall being called the Lich King,” he said, confusion rising like fog from a cold river.

“Hee-hee, that’s exactly what you said the first time we met, an echo down the canyon—you’re that thorn-in-the-sleeve I hate.”

The blue in Arthas’s eyes flickered like foxfire, and the blade breathed denser ice-mist, a glacier’s breath rolling out.

A clear sheet of frost glazed Ling’s skin like ice on a lotus, and she casually scraped it off with her other hand like peeling rice paper.

“So—by your say, you were sent by the World after all? You really plan to hunt me to the last ember, like a net closing at dusk?”

“Nono—nope, we’re not with the World; our first meeting was on the surface ring, under that noon sun and dust.”

At the word “surface,” Arthas drew breath to speak, but Ling cut the thread like a knife through silk.

“I hold grudges like iron holds cold. You blew me up on that ring. Now I’m not the same; I’ll grind you into despair like a millstone.”

“Hey, wait! Get this straight and don’t make up excuses to righteously erase me. I’ve never even been to the surface, like roots that never see the sun!”

That defense made Ling blink, and in that blink a hooked fish slipped the line; Arthas tore the blade free and stepped back into shadow.

Ling stared wide-eyed, like thunder under a clear sky, her hand reaching out on reflex like a willow branch toward rain.

“You… you’re saying… you’ve never been to the surface?!”

Even Arthas couldn’t grasp why this little one was so shocked, like an owl blinking at daylight.

Hadn’t he already said he stayed underground, a turtle in its cave, a seed asleep in soil?

As he tilted his head in puzzled wind, Ling’s gaze hardened like ice, and her body launched like an arrow leaving the bow.

So fast—like a swallow cutting rain!

Arthas couldn’t see how she arrived; before he could lift a guard, a sudden force hammered him like wind toppling a pine, and he fell back.

Thank the iron helm for guarding his skull like a pot over an egg, or her wild move might’ve opened him up.

His head was safe, but his belly paid for it, a drumskin thumped by an impatient stick.

Did this little terror know anything about boundaries between men and women? She plopped down on his stomach, rude as a stone on a bell.

Good thing I’m not into little girls, he thought with a winter-dry sigh.

“Hey! You—explain what you mean by ‘you never went to the surface’!” Her demand beat like a war drum, a torch shoved into his visor.

She reached to grab his collar, but he was all shell, a crab in full plate with nothing soft to seize.

So she just stabbed two fingers through his breastplate like a bamboo needle through paper, hooked inside, and yanked him up like chopsticks catching a crab.

“Whoa, whoa! Easy, little one! I said I’m done with those wars, the blade’s back in the sheath! The surface is a hornet hive of monsters—why fly up to be a moth to the flame?!”

“Then tell me—what’s your sword called?” Her voice was a seal pressed in wax, the true name a moon in a well.

She pointed at the blade, hoping for a brand-mark of truth that would tie him to the Lich King like fate on a red thread.

“Frost… Frostmourne,” he said, the word cold as night, “opposed to that goat-headed monster’s Fire of Happiness, like ice against flame.”

Ling heard only the first half, and let the business about Edmund’s sword fall like leaves into a stream.

She pointed at Arthas, finger shaking like a reed in wind, and certainty burned through the fog like sunrise—he was the Lich King.

But the one who’d beaten her once said he didn’t remember the fight, like a mirror showing no face.

Her hands went slack; the knot of revenge loosened on its own, smoke thinning after rain.

If your enemy doesn’t even remember you, what blade do you raise over still water, and where does its shadow fall?