The snow fell like ash from their cloudy caskets buried deep within the sky. Each touch on Frost's shoulder, face, hair, and clothes were a reminder to look through the thickened veil of moonlight and snow showers to the dark entity that stared back through her.
The shadowy mass that had revealed itself ten years past now stood before her, a sickle in his chest, and a shadow over his shoulder. The marrow in her bones froze and her veins shook like the ice in her had suddenly taken hold of her. The eyes of the dead, blackened and hollow like a husk stared her down through the snow she squinted to see beyond.
She dared not look away and she dare not move so rashly as she otherwise might. This was no ordinary fight, this was the shadow man, the brother of Sub-Zero. The wraith known as Bi-Han.
He reached with up for the handle of the sickle, six inches curved deep into his right shoulder and curved it out. The smoke that sizzled like water to a flame emitted an almost miasmic scent of death and radiated black, with purple lining.
Don't chase the dead.
Across the temple grounds the bodies lay still as ice. Lin Kuei scattered like fallen cherry blossoms stained in blood and frosted over with a thin veil of snow. One by one as time progressed a shadow would emerge from their cores. No snow dispersed, no air disturbed. The entities were almost a blackened greyscale, drained of all their colors, but still adorned in their living clothing and moved as they did in life. Just as Bi-Han stood across from Frost.
Inside, Frost knew Fujin, Kung Lao, and Sub-Zero were busy with the fight of their lives to rid themselves of the dead. Smoke, Sareena, and Ashrah were not accounted for in Frost's memory. She had seen them last only a day before, and now it felt like a lifetime away.
Had the grandmaster of the Lin Kuei known that his brother stood outside the walls of the temple, he would have joined her, or stood ahead of her to battle his brother, but here she was all alone.
Would she be like the shadows should she fall? Can he be killed?
Her blood boiled over the veins in her shoulders and down to her toes until the heat rose into her brain and rage, courage, and rash youth charged forth at the wraith. He had a weapon, she would create one, but it was not as solid as the sickle that waited for her.
First, she formed a quarterstaff of the snow that had covered her, all formed down her arm, her bracer of cloth and gloves until her hand gripped the hardened ice and she used the full six-foot length to block the curved strike of Bi-Han's swing. He flattened the blade against the jagged length of the staff and guided it up to try and cut her hand off, but she had planned this. Frost let go of the top half, and with her free hand below gripped it again, then once the blade slid off, gripped the high end, flattened it over her head and out toward the next overhand strike so that the sickle would shatter the ice and create two weapons.
Lighter and dual-wielding she glanced him with a quick scratch to free herself of their tight fighting measure and used a step drag to get out of his range. Unfortunately, it was not just Bi-Han she must fight, but the shadow he wielded. The entity of no known name that was very much the shadow of the wraith. It appeared behind her, grabbed Frost at the wrists and squeezed until the power in her hands relinquished the icicles.
Frost butted her head back, the pain would hurt her too, but she could daze the entity. She felt snow where a presence should be. The shadow had melted into the dirt beneath her feet. The pool of sticky miasma caught the ridges of her boots like a tar pit and threatened to consume her. Bi-Han had edged closer to her and back within measure to strike. A big black boot to the chest was enough to cripple Frost onto her back and the shadow did the rest as it reached out to drag her into the void.
She scrambled, squirmed and grabbed at straws only to find the edge of the world as the earth began to swallow her whole. Bi-Han stood still like a statue even as the young woman's hands clung to his boots. Only when the snow shattered above him and the ice dropped down like an avalanche upon him did he move into the shadow and her body spat from the core of the earth.
Sub-Zero and Smoke were first to the scene. Smoke dragged her free of the last muck and mud of miasma and faded into the temple with her, leaving on Sub-Zero to find his brother lost in the veil of snow along the tree line.
As their eyes met, the shadows faded and the bodies lay still around Kuai Liang with a peaceful finality.
"I challenge you Bi-Han!" Sub-Zero cursed over the distance between them. "To mortal combat!"
The shadow spoke no words. It stepped back into the darkness beneath the trees until he could no longer feel the weight of his brother's eyes on him. A muddy breath pushed out of Sub-Zero and fogged the air around him through the vents in his mask. One more night. One more attack.
Something had to give before the ice beneath would shatter.