Ossify
1. to become bone or harden like bone
2. to become rigid or inflexible in habits, attitudes, opinions, etc.
And in that last heartbeat before the ice overtakes him, he wonders if he was the demon all along.
The words echo in his ears, even as the world goes still and silent and cold around him: iced shell.
His lips close around the last syllable as his tongue solidifies to the inside of his mouth. He can feel it already. The wind and magic whip around them, but as the words slip from between his lips, the world freezes over and plunges into icy stillness.
It starts in the tips of his fingers and toes—his blood congealing into crystals, his muscles stiffening, his skin hardening—and creeps up towards his chest. Quickly, although it feels slow. He's never been more aware of his body than he is in these last few moments. He feels every cell hardening, stiffening, freezing solid like bone gone brittle. Ice.
It's cold. It's been a long time since he's felt the cold so intensely. Even as his limbs harden to ice, the biting chill still wraps itself around him. He's a statue, frozen in time and space, life freezing solid.
It only takes another heartbeat or two for the frost to creep over his face and settle in around his heart before it sinks deep down into his marrow, but each beat is a small eternity as the chill slows his heart. He can feel it click-click-clicking, winding down to a slow stop before sputtering out and hardening to ice entirely.
In that last heartbeat, it occurs to him that he is not supposed to be a statue. Iced shell is supposed to destroy the caster's body and use it to encase the target in ice. His body should be blown apart and reformed, not solidifying into an eternal prison.
He looks for the demon standing across from him, the one he was willing to sacrifice his life to seal, but there's nothing. It's just him alone in the windswept tundra, fossilizing into a shell of himself. As if his opponent is the one whose body has dissolved into the ether and turned itself on him.
And in that last heartbeat before the ice overtakes him, he wonders if he was the demon all along.
Gray sits up with a start, gasping for air. The night hangs dark around him like a shroud, and he can just make out the outlines of Natsu and Happy and the girls in the shadows. When he clutches his hands to his chest, they're shaking. They're shaking, but he can feel the heart beating too-fast under his skin. His skin is clammy with sweat. Not freezing. Not frozen.
He stands on shaking legs and stumbles to the small window on the other side of the room. The moon is bright and full outside, bathing the village in silver light. Not purple anymore, thankfully. He can't see the ocean from here, but he imagines he can just make out the rhythmic lapping of the waves against the shore. Ur is there now. Alive, somehow? Or dead, like Lyon thinks? Gray wouldn't know. He has only ever imagined turning to ice, never experienced it himself outside his nightmares or imagination.
He presses his hand to the cool glass and takes a deep breath, steadying himself. When it doesn't work, he takes another and presses his hand harder against the window.
When he closes his eyes, he can see Deliora crumbling apart in slow motion. The demon had been trapped in Ur's ice so long that it had frozen brittle and cracked apart, eroding like weathered rock and snapping like splintered bone.
The demon is gone, but memories and nightmares and emotions aren't as brittle as ice.
Gray swallows hard and pulls his hand away. The glass is too cool from the night air, and the chill seeping into his skin drags him back down into the feeling of freezing solid.
He stares out at the night, willing himself calm, but he can't quite shake the ominous feeling hanging in the air. The night has grown teeth while he was sleeping.
"Didn't you hear my voice?" Natsu had asked.
And Gray had. He had.
But he also hears a small voice whispering somewhere deep in the back of his mind: Next time.
emmahoshi: Maybe it's getting a little old by now, but I still enjoy circling back to it from time to time. For such a seemingly simple idea, there's a lot to unpack and a lot of different ways it could go. Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing. Have a great day :)