Soulbound: Dual Cultivation

Chapter 563: Henrietta’s arrival

The sky above Rus had already become a fractured war zone of shifting cold and pressure when Henrietta finally arrived.

She didn’t announce herself.

She simply entered the battlefield.

A sharp surge of controlled energy tore through the air from the side as she pierced into the ongoing clash, stabilizing her trajectory instantly mid-flight. The celestials reacted immediately, adjusting formation, but Henrietta didn’t engage them head-on.

Her eyes locked onto the Ice Belle first.

Then Lucas.

Without hesitation, she moved.

A precise burst of force displaced the air between them, and in the split-second gap it created, Henrietta reached forward and took Lucas from the Ice Belle’s arms.

Lucas’s weight shifted instantly into her hold.

Barely conscious.

Still suppressed.

Still bleeding.

The Ice Belle didn’t resist the transfer.

Not because she couldn’t.

But because she allowed it.

Her focus had already shifted the moment Henrietta arrived.

Now her hands were free.

Now her full attention turned outward.

The temperature in the air dropped sharply.

The Ice Belle stepped forward in mid-air, placing herself between Henrietta and the incoming celestials without breaking altitude. Frost gathered around her fingertips, subtle but dense, like reality itself was beginning to crystallize in response to her presence.

“Take him and go,” she said calmly.

Henrietta tightened her grip on Lucas slightly. “You’re not staying behind alone.”

The Ice Belle didn’t look back at her.

“I said go.”

Her voice carried a finality that didn’t invite argument.

Behind them, Ken’s expression shifted slightly as he registered the change in formation.

The Ice Belle was creating separation.

Ken’s gaze sharpened immediately.

“No,” he said quietly.

That single word carried through the battlefield with weight.

He moved.

A blur of motion—faster than the previous exchanges—cutting directly through the air toward Henrietta’s position. His intent was clear: stop the transfer, reclaim Lucas, collapse the separation before it could stabilize.

But the Ice Belle reacted instantly.

She pivoted mid-air.

And the space between Ken and Henrietta froze.

Not just temperature.

Movement itself.

A sudden expansion of dense frost energy erupted outward in a precise corridor, not spreading randomly but forming a controlled barrier that intercepted Ken’s path exactly at the point of impact.

Ken struck it directly.

The collision sent a shockwave rippling outward through the sky, distorting air currents violently as the frozen barrier cracked under his force—but it held long enough to interrupt his trajectory.

His eyes narrowed sharply.

“Interesting,” he muttered.

Behind him, one of the celestials attempted to bypass the Ice Belle’s field, but she was already moving.

She stepped into their angle of attack before it fully formed, releasing a sharp pulse of cold that disrupted their coordination mid-execution. The attack collapsed prematurely, scattering into harmless elemental fragments.

The Ice Belle didn’t chase.

She simply controlled space around her.

“Move,” she said again, this time directly to Henrietta.

Henrietta glanced at her for a fraction of a second, then at Lucas in her arms.

She understood immediately.

This wasn’t hesitation.

It was strategy.

The Ice Belle wasn’t trying to win this fight anymore.

She was holding it.

And she was doing it alone.

Henrietta exhaled once, then adjusted Lucas securely.

“Don’t die,” she said quietly.

The Ice Belle’s eyes remained forward.

“I won’t.”

Henrietta shot backward immediately, accelerating away from the battlefield with Lucas in her arms, breaking away from the central clash.

The celestials reacted instantly, trying to pursue.

But the Ice Belle moved again.

A sweeping arc of frost expanded across the sky, not attacking directly but segmenting space, forcing the pursuing celestials to split their paths or risk entering lethal freeze zones.

Their formation broke.

Their pursuit slowed.

Ken’s expression darkened as he watched Henrietta gain distance.

And then his gaze returned fully to the Ice Belle.

Now it was clear.

She hadn’t been protecting Lucas alone.

She had been creating an exit window.

Ken exhaled slowly.

“So that’s your objective,” he said quietly.

The Ice Belle finally met his eyes.

And for the first time, there was no calm neutrality in her expression.

Only resolve.

“Try and stop me,” she said again.

The sky around them trembled.

The true phase of the battle finally began.

The battlefield in the sky shifted again the moment the Ice Belle stopped holding back.

There was no warning flare, no grand buildup—just a sudden compression of cold so intense the air itself seemed to tighten.

The two celestials closest to her moved first, attempting to re-establish pressure from opposite angles. One came in low, carving a crescent of destructive wind through the air, while the other descended from above with a concentrated elemental strike meant to crush her position entirely.

The Ice Belle didn’t retreat.

She stepped forward.

A single motion.

Her hand lifted slightly, and the space between her and the incoming attacks fractured into layered frost barriers—not walls, but staggered planes of cold density that distorted force on contact.

The wind strike hit first.

It didn’t explode.

It slowed.

Momentum drained instantly as the attack entered the frozen field, turning violent wind into a sluggish spiral of collapsing pressure. Before it could reform, the Ice Belle twisted her wrist slightly and the frost field inverted, redirecting the force downward instead of outward.

The attacking celestial lost control mid-air.

He barely had time to react before she appeared beneath him.

A sharp upward palm strike met his core.

No explosion followed—just a concentrated burst of freezing force that penetrated his energy flow directly.

His body locked mid-motion.

Then he was hurled downward like a broken projectile, crashing through layers of air pressure until he disappeared into the ground far below.

The second celestial reacted instantly, attempting to retreat instead of pressing forward—but it was already too late.

The Ice Belle had already turned.

Her gaze locked.

A thin layer of frost spread outward in a straight line.

Not wide.

Not dramatic.

Precise.

The celestial tried to break away, but the frost line tracked his movement, adjusting like a living boundary until it intersected his path. The moment he crossed it, his movement froze completely for a fraction of a second.

That fraction was enough.

She arrived behind him with no wasted motion and struck once.

A clean, controlled release of cold energy.

His body was launched downward immediately, spinning helplessly as his aura destabilized mid-fall before he vanished beneath the clouds, crashing out of the aerial battlefield entirely.

Silence returned for a heartbeat.

Two gone.

The remaining air above Rus felt heavier.

Now only three remained in the sky.

The Ice Belle hovered still for a moment, her breath steady, her gaze locked forward.

Henrietta was already gone with Lucas.

That part was done.

The two remaining celestials shifted slightly, instinctively forming a tighter formation around him, as if proximity alone would grant them stability against what they were facing.

But Ken lifted a hand.

Not to attack.

To stop them from overextending.

His voice was calm.

“Don’t engage carelessly.”

The remaining celestials hesitated.

The Ice Belle’s cold aura spread slightly wider, sensing the shift.

Ken finally moved forward meeting her directly. He stepped fully into the space between the remaining celestials and her.

Now he stood as the center point.

The anchor.

The real threat.

“I will acknowledge something,” Ken said calmly.

His eyes sharpened.

“You are stronger than before.”

A faint pause.

“But you are still alone.”

The temperature dropped another degree.

And above Rus, with two celestials already down and Lucas safely removed from immediate pursuit…

The real confrontation between Ken and the Ice Belle finally began to take shape.