Crimson Goose tipped her chin to the sky. Moments ago, snow had come down in sheets, thick as torn goose-feathers.

“This snow… it’s wrong.” The thought came cold as a needle of ice, then her body answered—stiffening like sap in winter.

Unease bit first; then she noticed it for real. In trading blows with that shorty, her limbs were locking up—yet she was a Vampire honed for brute strength, a hammer of flesh and blood.

If a storm like this could drag even her down, anything below a quasi-god would freeze into a glass statue within a few breaths.

I can’t let this drag on. The urgency clamped like a vice; the decision fell like a blade.

“Night of Scarlet Calamity Shadows!”

Power burst from her core, a floodgate torn open by a red moon. Centered on her, the sky bled crimson and swelled outward like a tide. Snowflakes hissed to steam before they dared kiss her aura.

It was a domain wrought by burning her own bloodline, a field paid for with marrow-deep flame. Inside it, any creature couldn’t muster even half its strength, like a hawk fighting with bound wings. Every drop of an enemy’s spilled blood leapt to her like iron to a magnet, sank into her veins, and hardened her edge.

Within this domain she ignored all banes, like a rock under a storm.

Unless an enemy split the boundary with absolute might, these rules held as iron law.

She’d only learned it after breaking into the True God tier, so it carried a measure of Authority, cold and sovereign as a sealed decree.

“I don’t care who you are! Even a god dies here today!” Crimson Goose’s face twisted, a mask carved by rage. She flung away the slim rapier that had cursed her footing, and rushed Tangxue with claws forged from her own blood, hooked like oni talons.

Tangxue met her like before—wild as a river in flood, her long spear sweeping those giant claws like a gale through black pines.

Claw met spear. The impact roared like thunder and flattened the buildings around them. The palace, already a worm-eaten husk, collapsed for good under the shock, a sandcastle under a wave. Crimson Goose didn’t spare it a glance; all her world was the enemy’s throat.

Cough. The sound snapped like a twig in snow.

They didn’t bounce apart. They stayed chest to chest, beat to beat, trading bursts like drumfire in a canyon.

Crimson Goose wore almost no visible wounds, but her spirit dimmed, a lantern guttering in a draft. Tangxue looked worse—the body a map of cuts, a carmine line at her lip from the collisions.

This strange domain strangled wounds from knitting, like frost choking a spring.

Tangxue knew it. She chose to fight inside anyway, like a lone pine standing into the wind—because she knew, bone-deep, she couldn’t lose.

As the bout dragged on, Tangxue’s strength ebbed like a tide. She could barely catch the claws; her parries frayed like old cloth.

“It’s time.” Crimson Goose smacked the spear aside and clamped a blood-forged hand on Tangxue’s forehead.

“Any last words?” Her eyes narrowed to crescent blades; a smile of victory curled her mouth.

She’d drunk plenty of Tangxue’s blood mid-fight, and the surprise was sweet as stolen wine. She hadn’t spent much at all; her power had even climbed, a high she hadn’t felt since that last Vampire she drained dry.

If she could drink this shorty to the dregs, she might leap again. Vinoena Qianya slipped her net, but this prize fell from the sky like ripe fruit.

She felt her peak cresting again, dawn swelling behind a ridge.

“No? Silent now? Tch—at first, little shorty, you grated on my eyes. But somehow, the more I look, the smoother you sit, like jade washed by rain.” Crimson Goose’s smile grew lazy and cruel. “Maybe it’s your blood. It’s the finest I’ve tasted in a thousand years—sweet as winter plum. I almost hate to kill you.”

“If I could, I’d collar you as a bloodthrall and keep you by my side… but you’re too dangerous.”

“So—die, nameless shorty. Don’t worry. I’ll remember you.”

She smiled and tightened her claw, pressure sinking like a glacier’s weight.

Huh. Wrong. The feel wasn’t skull and skin—it was… hard ice.

A splinter of danger pricked her heart. She tried to recoil, but her body wouldn’t answer. Her bloodline and mana thickened inside her, congealing like oil in a midnight freeze.

“That’s about enough.” Tangxue’s voice drifted, soft as wind-bells in an empty hall, and it put a cold in Crimson Goose’s bones.

“If I keep self-abusing, a certain someone’s about to step in, right?”

“I’d rather she didn’t have to climb down here…”

“Or the whole city will pay for it.”

“You had your fun swinging. Now it’s my turn.”

Tangxue snapped a kick at the Vampire’s midsection—then paused when her foot cut air, short legs falling shy like a sparrow pecking a tiger.

…

In that blink of Crimson Goose’s speechless stare, a giant icicle dropped like a falling pillar and smashed toward her skull.

Tangxue shot after it like a fired shell. The wounds that had marred her seconds ago knit under frost-light, ice-thread drawing skin closed.

The domain did slow her mending, like mud in the gears. But for Tangxue, “slow” just meant a breath or two.

She planted on the icicle, then drove a fist down. The punch shattered ice to glitter and rattled half the bedrock under Solitary Shadow City, a bell struck in the deep.

She cocked her head and peered at the Vampire below, her skull a cracked bowl. “You’re not dead, are you? You drank so much of my blood. One punch shouldn’t put you down for a nap…”

“Fine. If you want to play dead, I’ll just keep hitting.”

She sheathed her pink fists in ice, clear as river glass, and hammered the half-formed head, tap-tap becoming drumbeats.

Strictly speaking, Tangxue was a mage. But the spells she knew were few, a handful of snowflakes in a storm. Most of her ocean of mana went to forging her body into a hammer.

Each punch made the city quiver, a heartbeat under stone. Even so, the Vampire wouldn’t die; her head was a lump of meat with no sign of life, yet stubborn as a weed.

Blood sprayed from Crimson Goose, but none touched Tangxue. A clear skin of ice lay over her like a second hide.

She loathed this kind of Vampire, steeped in the blood of too many. Better to roll in a mud pit than let that filth touch her snow.

“Up.” Her voice snapped like frost.

A spear of ice drove up and punched Crimson Goose into the sky. In the same breath, dozens of water-forged lances shot through her body, neat as needles through silk.

It didn’t end there. A great shark of water surged from the ground, jaws yawning wide like a canyon gate. It bit the Vampire in half, swallowed, and hurtled upward.

The blue shark froze midair into a sculpture, a temple offering—and then burst. The ice-burst boomed louder than the last, a white sun over the ruins. Even Solitary Shadow City beyond the palace took the blow, streets buckling like baked clay.

When the blast settled, Tangxue looked down at the mangled Vampire. The flesh crawled, reforming like worms under wet soil.

She wasn’t surprised.

“I let you drink more at first so you wouldn’t die too quick,” she said, voice even as snowfall. “From the start, I meant to make you pay for what you did. Your strength was too weak. I had to fake it and get hurt so you could sip.”

“Surprised?”

…

Then a red gleam flared from Crimson Goose. Her ruined body liquefied into a pool of blood, and the crimson light swelled like a brewing storm.

Tangxue’s face tightened, a cloud drawing over the moon. She seized space and blinked them both thousands of meters up, tossing the board into the sky.

A blast bloomed there, big enough to erase half the Duskmoon Empire, a flower of fire and ice opening above the clouds.

Even so, the shock rolled down and scoured Solitary Shadow City to rubble, a sandscape after a tide.