"How goes your rescue, hero?" Manfred asked.

The mocking words hurt. It had been at least two days, Phoenix was sure, but time was strange here. It could have been longer. Perhaps he'd been failing for a year, now. He was always hungry but never starving, even though there was no food in the palace, and after giving up more of Maya's spell he was always cold but never frozen. In a very different way than the prince, he was sliding along the edge of living. He missed the sun, he missed laughter, he missed the world.

That world was beyond his reach, now. There was no wind inside the castle, yet he was constantly wracked by shivers; stepping into the gale forces outside would kill him. The spell had masked how cold this place really was. Without his horse to speed his trip back south, he wouldn't ever make it past the twisted ice. He wouldn't make it thirty minutes.

Without my horse, Phoenix thought sadly. He'd felt bad when he suggested a mercy killing for a horse with a shattered leg; watching Miles slaughter a healthy, terrified animal just to make a point had hammered in how deeply the magic had warped him. Phoenix had talked to people in the castle after moving to Angelos, and although no one would ever call their prince affectionate, everyone thought him just. The kennel master said that he had a softness for the palace dogs, though even Phoenix's most dreamy-eyed assessments found it impossible to picture his prince ruffling a puppy's fur. That thing at the gatehouse had been von Karma, not the prince.

After their confrontation with the horse, Miles never talked to him and Phoenix found it impossible to get close again. The prince was like a ghost in the castle. In those rare times that Phoenix caught sight of him, a guard would form out of ice and block Phoenix's path. Even from a distance, it was clear that the man's coloring had faded further as time went on. His hair was nearly white, his skin close to crystalline. It was as much of a countdown as the gemstone heart.

That was where Phoenix was now, in the courtyard next to the silver pedestal. The heart was nearly diamond, with only a walnut-sized ruby lump at its center. It shrank further as Phoenix watched.

I don't know what to do.

"I see you cannot find adequate words to communicate the depths of your failure," Manfred said with a smirk.

Phoenix still said nothing.

"Will you kill yourself after your inevitable defeat, or before, to avoid watching the moment of his death?" Manfred folded his arms and studied the rotating gemstone with satisfaction. "It will be death, you understand. Everything about him will be lost forever. The body will still be here, walking around for as long as I care to keep it, but it will be as dead as any skeleton."

I wonder if I could kill Miles before that happens, Phoenix thought grimly, though his mind danced away from the notion as soon as he'd raised it. Still... hadn't he thought that Gregory's death was a kindness in comparison? Maybe this wasn't ever going to be a happy ending. How would I do it, though? It'd need to be a quick kill and his heart is gone. Could I take off his head? The analysis sickened him, and so he looked for anything else to anchor his attention.

That was hard. The most notable sight was the destroyed gatehouse, and that memory left him just as sick as this potential new mercy killing. The rest of the castle was grim, bleak, and unsettling to look at, and his gaze slid off the icy walls accordingly. Even the stars were fading, and that oddity made him want to look away from them, too. At first he'd thought there were infinitely more stars in the northern skies, countless diamonds scattered along bands of indigo and purple, but the number ebbed and flowed. The brilliance overhead had changed to only twice as many stars as he remembered from his hometown back in the green southern meadows.

"To be truly great," Manfred explained when he saw Phoenix staring upward, "one must rip out their feelings. The most perfect of my kind take that weakness within us and send it away. I assume some apprentice from another land has attempted to set himself on the same path as me. Eventually, the stars all come north, but some don't last long." He gestured overhead. "I've been in the sky for a century."

"You're wrong."

Manfred's smile was dangerous. "Do tell me, hero: how am I wrong?"

"First: you don't become stronger by ripping out your feelings." Phoenix trailed his hand along his sword, but Manfred didn't seem threatened by the weapon. "Carbon's an imperfection, but without it, iron's too brittle. Mix the two, and steel's stronger."

"A simple comparison, by a simple grunt on the battlefield." With a flick of his wrist, von Karma sent an icy blast across Phoenix's face, who'd resolved not to react but couldn't help but shiver. "Sorcerers do not operate within your limits."

"Second," Phoenix continued after gritting his teeth, "you still feel things."

After another blast, von Karma tilted his head. "Do tell me how I don't know my own self. I anticipate your wisdom."

"When everyone laughed at you, you got angry." Manfred twitched and Phoenix knew he was on to something. "You're not in control of your emotions at all. You've ripped out everything good inside yourself, but there's still room for feelings and you've let awful ones fill you up instead. There's absolutely no sense of balance, or—" Another blast buffeted him and Phoenix staggered back.

"I was not angry," von Karma said with obvious irritation. "I was simply reinforcing my perfection. As the premiere ice mage in the world, it would not do to have people question—"

"You were angry," Phoenix repeated emphatically, "and humiliated. At your failure. And you haven't gotten rid of Miles' feelings, either. He still loves his father. He misses him. He's hurting and if he ever learned the truth, his anger would burn so hot that the block of ice inside of him wouldn't just melt, it'd turn to steam." Was this the right thing to do? Phoenix didn't know, but that ruby looked closer to a chestnut, now, and it was time to press the sorcerer hard and see what weak spots emerged.

"He will never learn," Manfred said after a long beat. "Changing a heart is a master's work; muddling memories is child's play. He barely remembers having his heart ripped out on the dungeon altar. He thinks that what he does remember happened in his chambers in Angelos when magic was being forced into him. If he felt again, the pain of killing his own father would come back to him before any other emotions, Phoenix Wright. He wouldn't want to feel." His thin smile was more frightening than the show he'd put on back in Angelos' royal hall. "In fact, let me show you. Prince!" His voice bellowed, and soon Miles stepped out of the front doors. "I understand that this pathetic excuse for a guard has introduced uncertainty into you."

Miles looked between them. His eyebrows dipped. "You... you might say that, sir," he said after a long beat.

Almost lazily, von Karma raised his hand and an ice spear shot out of it. It arced across the courtyard and speared Miles through the chest. Unlike his father, he didn't bleed. It had struck him through the ice patch and so he shuddered at the impact but didn't fall. "You need to freeze solid again, boy," von Karma said and gestured at the spear. Frost tendrils snaked out of it across Miles' jacket, and he shook as the magic worked. "You won't feel any emotions, just like before. You'll stop hurting even though this man tried to put all that pain into you."

Phoenix gritted his teeth, but heartbreak was worse than his anger. The flickers of humanity in Miles' eyes were fading. When the ice spear crumbled to the ground, he looked as blank a slate as he had when Phoenix first woke up. "Thank you, sir," Miles said in a monotone. "I am no longer uncertain of my path."

"You always did need to be corrected," Manfred sneered. "If your worthless father had allowed me to chastise you as much as you needed as a child, perhaps I would not be doing this now to his worthless son." He tilted his head and studied Miles. "Does it anger you to hear me label you worthless?"

"No, sir. All I care about is restoring order and meting out punishment, by force if need be."

"Good," von Karma chuckled. "Go to your chambers, collect the jacket, and return here to await the final change. I plan to move quickly." After a second of hesitation, Miles inclined his head and left them. For a man who liked to brag that he'd ripped out his own emotions, von Karma certainly had mastered a gloating smile. Phoenix wondered for one brief instant if he could lop the man's head off before he could react, and just as quickly knew that he couldn't. Still, the act of trying would be very, very satisfying. "That jacket I told him to get?" von Karma asked. He flicked the intricate silver overlay on his own apparel. "It has far more than this. Between the amount of silver and the ancient runes they form, he will be the greatest weapon this world has ever seen. And that weapon will belong to me. Angelos will scream to see their prince return."

"That's... no." This couldn't be the end. "All I need is one piece of proof to show him that you ripped out his heart here, not there. Then he'll know that you killed the king, that he can't trust you, and so it's all right to feel things—"

"Proof?" Manfred's laughter was like twisting metal. "And when would you get this proof? Look at how little time he has left!"

Phoenix followed his bony finger toward the pedestal and swallowed at the sight of the nearly-clear heart. The man was right; he had no time. I don't know what to do.

The ruby shrank to the size of his thumbnail.

I don't know what to do.

"Watch," Manfred whispered against Phoenix's ear. "Watch your failure. Watch death, boy."

The words were barely out when ice the size of Phoenix's forearm erupted from Manfred's chest. Phoenix yelped and instinctively jumped back from whatever magic von Karma had called, then blinked when he saw the sorcerer's startled expression. That's... that's not his spell. Confused, he looked around the courtyard, sword raised. His knees nearly buckled when he turned toward the front door.

Miles was standing in his silver-worked jacket, one hand extended. A second ice spear ripped out of his palm, stabbed the air, and impaled von Karma through his gut. The man staggered, mouth open, and Miles began walking deliberately toward him with ice crystals swirling between his bare fingers. "With your own mouth, Manfred von Karma, you have proclaimed that you killed my father, King Gregory of Angelos, and abducted the prince-heir of the kingdom."

Manfred's fist closed around the spear in his gut. He wasn't bleeding, Phoenix noticed through his daze; at least, he wasn't bleeding anything red. Some silvery substance like mercury oozed out from the wound. "I did no such thing. That is a filthy lie that this pathetic guard has tried to feed you. Stand down, and I will not punish you too much, whelp—"

Ice crept up his ankles. He gestured and it scattered, but returned just as quickly. A look of very slight concern entered Manfred's eyes. Phoenix began to inch away, but Miles caught him in similar icy cuffs before he could get very far.

"The 'pathetic guard' testified as to a lack of evidence in the royal chamber." Miles shot out another spear. Not only did von Karma fail to block it, but it pierced his shoulder through. Manfred gasped and the noise sounded very close to a scream. "I remembered differently and did not trust his statement, but with your own words just now you admit to having manipulated my memories. Clearly, you did not recall my desire to view my heart nor recognize my proximity to the front entrance. You admitted that the magic entered me here, not in Angelos. There is no way for me to be my father's killer."

Teeth gritted, von Karma shot out a half-dozen ice spears toward Miles. They crumbled in mid-air and drifted away as snowflakes, and his mild concern was replaced by open fear. "Take off that jacket," he said tightly. "I command it!"

The jacket, Phoenix thought, barely daring to breathe. He could feel the cuffs at his ankles dissolving into snow; apparently, the testimony was all that was needed from him. Now, the confrontation only involved the two of them. Had all of those silver runes truly made Miles' novice powers stronger than the High Mage's?

"All that remains," Miles continued as if he hadn't spoken, "is to convict those who would dare to break the kingdom's law."

"I will destroy you, you worthless dog!" Manfred said as the ice crept past his waist. "I'll end you like I ended your father!" His hands traced complicated shapes through the air too quickly for Phoenix to follow, and for a few awful seconds it looked like expertise might overcome raw power. Ice struck Miles like spinning sawblades, and unlike the High Mage, his clothes were soon stained with red where the cuts had landed. He didn't react, but there was so much blood and the blows kept coming.

"You have no right to that jacket, dog, not until you are mine for all eternity, and I—" Manfred shuddered as a fresh blow erupted from his chest, and looked slowly down at the length of steel jutting from between his ribs. Phoenix twisted his sword, not caring as the cold made it shatter, and returned a fierce grin as Manfred stared in hatred at him.

That distraction was all Miles needed to complete von Karma's icy prison, past his mouth and nose and skull. "For the crime of regicide and abducting the heir," he said with no satisfaction or anger, "Manfred von Karma, you are hereby sentenced to death." His bloody hands sliced the air, and with a great shuddering noise like when Larry had broken through the ice, the prison tore apart and shattered von Karma with it. He swirled into snowflakes like Phoenix's mount had, but these flakes were not left to float idly toward the sky. With one great heave of power, Miles extended both hands and the snow arced through the sky like a shooting comet.

The snow disappeared over the southern horizon. At that speed, at that height, it would pass over the mountains within seconds. And then the summer sun will do its work, Phoenix thought, almost too stunned to feel joy. He breathed in, using the cold shock of air to clear his head, and rushed toward the prince. "Miles! You did it!"

The prince said nothing. He didn't even look satisfied, and he made no move to staunch the flows of blood staining his clothes.

"You... you did it," Phoenix repeated uncertainly. He glanced over his shoulder at the heart and felt his knees nearly give out. There was only as much ruby as the nail on his index finger, if that. "Take your heart. Take it back, you have to fix it now, there's no time left!"

Miles looked dispassionately at his heart.

"No," Phoenix whispered, sick, and thought back to that icy spear re-freezing the prince's chest. "No! I know you don't want to feel again, but if you don't get your heart back, von Karma is still going to win! You have to—"

"I will not be under his control as a weapon, and I have no wish to return to the pain of my father's death," Miles said in that same inhuman monotone. "No matter who caused it. Let it change."

In horror, Phoenix looked between the man ready to fall from the cliff and the rope he refused to grab. "You have to. We're so close. Prince Miles, please!"

Blood dripped on ice as the ruby shrank. Miles let it flow as he watched his death approach.

I don't know what to do, Phoenix thought, numb. As the blood landed, it froze as Gregory's had. I don't know what to do.