Chapter Text
The frigid air of Cloud Tower's highest spire suited Icy's mood perfectly. Frost coated the ancient stone beneath her fingers as she leaned against the window, staring out at the three moons of Magix. Her reflection stared back at her from the glass—pale face, silver-white hair, and eyes that burned with humiliation and rage.
Three days had passed since her latest defeat. Three days since that fairy—that nobody who had stumbled into her powers like a child finding a loaded weapon—had blasted Icy and her sisters out of the sky. Again.
Icy's fingers curled against the stone, ice crystals spreading from her touch.
"I should have ended her when I had the chance," she whispered, voice low and dangerous. "Before she learned to control the Dragon Flame."
The memory burned fresh in her mind: Bloom, surrounded by a corona of fire, eyes glowing with power that should have been hers. Power that was Icy's birthright as a descendant of the Ancestral Witches. And then that cocky smile as Bloom's attack sent Icy plummeting from the sky, her own ice powers useless against the primal heat of the Dragon Flame.
A knock at the door interrupted her dark thoughts.
"What?" she snapped, not turning from the window.
The door creaked open, and Darcy's slender silhouette appeared in the reflection.
"You've been up here for hours," Darcy said, her voice uncharacteristically cautious. "Stormy's getting worried."
"Stormy doesn't worry," Icy replied flatly. "She breaks things."
"She's broken three of Griffin's artifacts already. If you don't come down soon, there won't be a Cloud Tower for us to come back to next semester." Darcy paused, then added, "You know, after our suspension ends."
Icy turned, her pale lips curling into a sneer. "Suspension. As if we're naughty schoolgirls who passed notes in class. We should be ruling this school, not being punished by it."
Darcy stepped further into the room, closing the door behind her. "What are you planning, Icy? You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one that usually ends with us in detention. Or exile. Or turned to stone." Darcy crossed her arms. "I'm all for revenge, but we need to be smart about this."
Icy's laugh was as cold as her name. "Oh, I'm through with playing games, Darcy. I'm going to end this—permanently."
She gestured to the ancient book lying open on her bed, its pages yellowed with age, the text written in a spidery script that seemed to shift and move in the dim light.
Darcy's eyes widened as she approached the bed. "Where did you get this? It's from the forbidden archives, isn't it? If Griffin finds out—"
"Griffin won't find out," Icy cut her off. "And even if she did, it wouldn't matter. Not after I cast this spell."
Darcy leaned over the book, her long brown hair falling forward as she studied the ancient text. Her expression shifted from curiosity to alarm.
"Time manipulation?" she whispered. "Icy, these spells are banned for a reason. Even the Ancestral Witches—"
"The Ancestral Witches lacked vision," Icy said dismissively. "And opportunity. In two nights, Domino and Dyamond will align—the realm of the Dragon Flame and my home realm in perfect conjunction." Her eyes gleamed. "It's a sign, Darcy. The universe is giving me a chance to fix everything."
"Fix what, exactly?"
Icy turned back to the window, watching as the smallest of Magix's moons slipped behind a cloud.
"Our first encounter with Bloom. When she was still weak, still learning. I'll go back to that moment and end her before she ever becomes a threat." Icy's reflection smiled, sharp and dangerous. "One cold snap, and the Dragon Flame will be mine for the taking."
Darcy was silent for a long moment. "And how exactly do you plan to navigate the time stream without, I don't know, erasing yourself from existence? Or creating a paradox that destroys reality?"
Icy waved a dismissive hand. "Details. The spell is clear enough—it creates a temporary passage through the timestream. I'll make my change and return before any damage is done."
"These ingredients..." Darcy's finger traced down the page. "Frozen dragon tears? Where would you even—"
"Already acquired," Icy said with a smirk. "Remember our little field trip to Pyros?"
"The dust of Chronos's hourglass?"
"There's a reason I volunteered to clean Wizgiz's office last detention."
Darcy looked up, genuine concern in her amber eyes. "Icy, this is beyond reckless, even for you. Let's think this through. Maybe there's another way to—"
"There is no other way!" Icy whirled around, frost blooming across the floor beneath her feet. "I've been patient. I've been clever. I've played by the rules—even our twisted version of them—and what has it gotten me? Humiliation. Defeat. That fire fairy and her pathetic friends laughing at us."
Ice crystals formed in the air around her, reflecting the moonlight in jagged prisms.
"No more," she said, her voice deadly quiet. "I'm changing the story, Darcy. I'm rewriting history."
"And where do Stormy and I fit into this new history of yours?" Darcy asked, her voice carefully neutral.
The question caught Icy off guard. She hadn't considered that. In her mind, she had seen only her triumph, Bloom's defeat, the Dragon Flame coursing through her veins. Her sisters had been... footnotes.
She recovered quickly. "You'll be at my side, of course. Where you've always been. The three of us, ruling the magical dimension as we were meant to."
Darcy studied her for a long moment, then sighed. "What do you need us to do?"
A genuine smile, rare for Icy, curved her lips. "Help me gather the remaining components. And keep Griffin distracted while I perform the ritual."
"And if something goes wrong?"
"Nothing will go wrong," Icy said with absolute conviction. "I've calculated everything perfectly."
Darcy didn't look convinced, but she nodded. "I'll get Stormy. But Icy? Promise me you won't try this alone. Time magic is unpredictable."
Icy's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I promise."
It was the easiest lie she'd ever told.
Two nights later, Icy stood alone atop Cloud Tower's astronomy tower, the forbidden book open before her on an altar of ice she had conjured. Around her, five black candles formed a pentagram, their flames burning an unnatural blue in the night air.
Darcy and Stormy were busy creating a magical disturbance in the east wing—something flashy and obvious to draw Griffin and the faculty away while Icy worked. They thought they were buying her time to steal a rare artifact from Griffin's office. They had no idea what she was really planning.
Better this way, Icy thought as she arranged her components in precise formation. They'd only try to stop me—or worse, insist on coming along.
Above her, the moons of Magix were moving into perfect alignment, and beyond them, visible only to those with magical sight, the constellations that represented Domino and Dyamond were converging. The air hummed with potential, magical currents swirling around the tower like invisible eddies.
Icy checked her preparations one final time:
In the north point of the pentagram: a crystal that had absorbed the light of both moons of Magix, glowing with a soft inner radiance.
In the east: a vial of frozen dragon tears, the liquid inside shifting and moving despite its solid state.
In the south: a leather glove—the one she had worn the first time she encountered Bloom in Gardenia, still carrying the magical signature of that moment.
In the west: the hourglass dust, glittering with temporal energy.
And in the center, where the lines of the pentagram converged: a single strand of Bloom's fiery red hair, obtained during their last battle.
Icy closed her eyes, feeling the convergence of magical energies around her. The time was perfect. The stage was set.
She began to chant in the ancient language of the Ancestral Witches, words that scraped against reality itself as they left her lips. The temperature around her plummeted, frost spiraling across the tower floor in intricate patterns that mirrored the arcane symbols in the forbidden book.
"Tempus infinitum, porta aperta. Praeteritus mutare, vindica victoriam."
The candle flames shot upward, turning from blue to a frigid white that cast no warmth. The components at each point of the pentagram began to levitate, spinning slowly in the air as they released their magical essence.
"Flamma draconis extinguerem, glacies triumphum!"
Power surged through Icy's veins, colder and more intense than anything she had ever channeled before. Her hair whipped around her face, though there was no wind, and her eyes glowed with an unearthly light.
"Per sanguinem ancestrarum, tempus oboediet!"
The spinning components moved faster, blurring into rings of light that contracted toward the center, toward Bloom's hair—the anchor point for Icy's temporal target.
Just as the spell reached its crescendo, a voice cut through the magical maelstrom.
"Icy, stop!"
Darcy stood in the doorway to the tower, her face pale with shock. Behind her, Stormy's eyes were wide with a rare display of fear.
"You don't know what you're doing!" Stormy shouted over the howling magical winds that now encircled Icy.
"I know exactly what I'm doing!" Icy called back, never breaking the rhythm of her chant. "Changing our fates!"
"The spell is unstable!" Darcy pointed to the book, where the ancient text was now glowing with warning sigils that Icy had either missed or ignored. "You're channeling too much power!"
But it was too late. The convergence was complete, the magical energies compressed to a single point of blinding light. Icy reached for it, her fingers extended toward the swirling vortex that had formed at the center of the pentagram.
"Tempus, oboediet mihi!" she commanded. Time, obey me!
As her hand made contact with the vortex, pain seared through her body—not the expected cold of her ice magic, but a burning, tearing sensation as if she were being pulled apart at the molecular level. The light expanded explosively, enveloping her in a cocoon of temporal energy.
Through the blinding light, she could barely make out Darcy and Stormy rushing toward her, their hands extended as if to pull her back. Their voices reached her as if from across a vast distance.
"Icy!"
She tried to respond, but her voice was lost in the roar of magic. The tower, her sisters, Cloud Tower itself—all of it was dissolving around her, reality seeming to peel away in layers.
This isn't right, she thought with sudden clarity. The spell was supposed to send my consciousness back, not...