Transmigrated Into a Cannon Fodder Phoenix, Stuck With the Ice Dragon-Chapter 114: Seal Inside The Window

The room was quiet in the strangest way.

Celeste lay in the center of the room, her body pale beneath pale sheets, looking more like someone asleep than someone whose soul had been stolen. Seraphina stood beside the bed, her hands hovering just over Celeste’s chest, where a soft flame burned through her palms like a living pulse.

It was not a fire.

It was warm.

A small, steady phoenix glow wrapped around Celeste’s heart in a thin ring of gold, stabilizing what little was left behind.

"I won’t let your body forget you," Seraphina whispered, her voice barely louder than breath. "Just... come back."

Across from her, Auren knelt on the floor with the marble sphere and the pale blue feather laid out side by side. The marble no longer shone the way it once did. Thin cracks webbed across its surface, dull light leaking through like a dying heartbeat.

The feather, however... glowed.

Auren placed two fingers against it and closed his eyes, breathing in slowly as quiet energy began to ripple through the air like unseen wings.

"This isn’t extraction," he murmured, voice low with focus. "It’s calling. If she hears this... if she gets the signal... she’ll follow it."

Lucian stood at Seraphina’s side, silent and rigid, his presence like a wall of ice against anything that dared come near her. His fingers curled just slightly, the dragon in him awake even while the man held his breath.

Auren lifted his hand slowly, "I’ve got her..."

The air shifted.

It felt like something exhaled inside the room that had never been breathing before. The feather in his grasp grew warmer, its pale glow pulsing faintly against his skin as if responding to a heartbeat no one else could hear.

Lucian straightened, every nerve in his body snapping into awareness.

Seraphina felt it too.

The flame under her palms wavered suddenly, reacting not to heat but to presence. Something moved beneath the surface of Celeste’s still body, like a tide pressing against glass from the inside.

"She’s trying," Auren murmured, breathing shallowly with concentration. "She knows where to go... but something’s blocking her way."

The room had gone so quiet it felt unreal, like even the air was afraid to move. Every breath, every heartbeat seemed too loud as Seraphina held the flame steady, terrified that the slightest distraction would tear everything apart.

Then a voice broke through the silence.

"Be careful, Seraphina..."

Her hands faltered and her head snapped up, eyes searching the room instinctively, heart slamming into her ribs.

"Who—?"

Nothing stood behind her.

The voice came again but this time sounded closer.

From the window.

"She’s here..."

Seraphina stumbled back a half-step, her breath catching hard in her throat. Pale light seeped through faint cracks along the glass window, shadows bleeding into places they shouldn’t belong.

"Vivian..." she whispered, dread flooding her chest. "That’s you, right?"

Lucian turned sharply, frowning.

"What is it?" he demanded. "Who are you talking to?"

Seraphina swallowed, eyes still locked on the trembling window.

"My friend," she said softly. "She followed me here... she warned me before. She—"

The glass groaned.

A thin fracture crawled through the center of the window, splitting the pale light like a wound opening across the sky.

Auren’s breath hitched, "Sebastian!"

"I’ve sealed you, Lord Auren!" Sebastian responded instantly, already drawing a containment array into the air with sharp, practiced movements. "Nothing could interrupt your feather to bring Lady Celeste out." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

"Use your flame for defense," Vivian’s voice urged again, strained and thin, like it was being forced through layers of glass and distance. "I can’t hold her long, but I’ll drag Elyndra here—inside. All you need to do... is grab her when she appears—"

"How?!" Seraphina cried, panic finally breaking through her composure. "How am I supposed to grab her when I can’t even feel her? I can’t see her, I can’t sense her—she’s nowhere!"

The fractures across the window spread wider.

The glass let out a low, unnatural groan, as though something on the other side were pressing against it from a world that didn’t belong here.

Vivian’s voice came again, strained now, no longer calm.

"She isn’t nowhere," she said urgently. "She is circling. Waiting for an opening. And right now—your flame is creating one."

Seraphina turned sharply toward Celeste’s body.

The soft golden fire around Celeste’s chest flickered, no longer steady. It wavered as if something unseen had brushed against it.

"That body..." Vivian breathed. "It remembers her. Elyndra wore it for too long. She spilled rage into it, breath into it, hatred into it. And wherever a soul lives long enough..."

Her voice trembled, "she could return..."

Lucian stepped closer to Seraphina instinctively, the frost in the air thickening as his power responded to her rising fear.

"She tries to get into her again," he said coldly.

"Yes," Vivian whispered. "She already is."

A sudden pressure crashed through the chamber.

Celeste’s body arched, not violently, but unnaturally, as if something had slipped halfway inside her and hadn’t decided whether to stay.

Seraphina rushed forward, flame flaring instinctively as she pressed both hands harder to Celeste’s chest.

"No," she gasped. "You don’t get to take her again!"

The phoenix fire around Celeste suddenly flickered.

Then it changed.

The soft gold glow thickened, like smoke being pulled into one place, and right above Celeste’s chest, a shape slowly appeared inside the flame.

At first, it was faint. Just a darker patch inside the light. Then it grew clearer.

A shadow, something shaped like a face and a head.

Seraphina sucked in a sharp breath.

"I can... see her," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Vivian... I can see her..."

"Hold her," Vivian’s voice sharpened, slicing through the chaos in the air. "Hold her tight, Seraphina. Lucian, I need you too. Pull her out and throw her here... I will take her from your side and seal her with me."

Lucian turned immediately toward Seraphina, his breath caught tight in his chest.

"Where?" he asked.

Seraphina didn’t answer out loud.

Her eyes flicked downward to her own hand, where her flame burned brighter than the rest... where something dark writhed inside it.

Elyndra.

Lucian understood instantly.

He stepped forward, seized the shadow where Seraphina held it, and wrenched it free with all the strength in his arms.

The shadow twisted violently in the air, dragged toward the fractured window as Vivian’s pull turned savage and inescapable.

The scream cut through the room, raw and furious.

"NO—!!!"

The glass could not hold it.

The fracture exploded outward in a violent burst, shards flying like frozen rain as the window shattered completely, light swallowing the shadow whole.

And then... Silence!