She smiled. "Not if the seasons have anything to say about it."
It started subtly. The cherry blossoms of spring didn't bloom. Summer sun refused to warm the cobblestones. Autumn leaves fell brown and brittle within a day. Winter brought only a hollow, colorless frost. The world outside Fairy Tail was stuck in a perpetual gray twilight. The Seasons themselves had been fractured, and the magic that once flowed through the land was fading.
Glacies cracked. A single snowflake landed on Lucy's key—the Aquarius key, still broken. "You miss someone too," Glacies whispered.
He created a sculpture: Ur smiling, Igneel roaring, Simon shielding Erza. Aurel touched the ice, and it didn't melt. It glowed. "You honor loss," the spirit said. "Then I will honor your future." Erza and Lucy went alone to the Frostpeak Lament, where Glacies had frozen herself into a glacier of loneliness. She spoke only in whispers of regret: she had once frozen a village to stop a plague, saving lives but taking warmth. Erza, who had carried guilt since childhood, understood.