Ok so I had this thought about like what if post-snowgrave berdly fight in one of the later chapters??
I was thinking especially about chapter five, like imagine him waking up on the day of the festival, head pounding, body numb with cold
He remembers the battle the weird, hypnotic trance Noelle was under and the unfamiliar coldness with which Kris gave their orders
And that final biting flash of pain as he was encased in ice
He has no idea what's going on, but it HAS to stop
So he drags himself out of bed, out of the hospital, and slips completely unnoticed into the crowd of excited festival-goers, limping in pain and short of breath but no one looks his way
then yada yada fast forward idk what happens next
in the dark world, nearing the end of whatever Noelle and Kris are doing, he catches up to them, standing between them and their goal, he demands kris to stop, this time loud and angry but they're powerless to do anything and he doesn't know that
And then they have another battle, but this time he's even stronger.
See, Snowgrave is a fatal spell, and the attack did kill him, but only in the dark world, weakening but NOT fully destroying his SOUL
If he would have stayed in the light world, he may have made a full recovery
but in dragging himself back through the dark fountain, he inadvertently made the choice to fully become a part of that world
His determination transformed him from a block of ice into an immensely powerful darkner whose sole purpose is to stop us from reaching our goal
And by defeating him we destroy him forever
When the dark fountain is closed, all that's left of him is a pair of broken glasses on top of a small pile of powdery snow
Soooooo uh yeah that's my pitch lmao
ik its probably nowhere close to what's gonna happen because yk in the mini game thingy the bird only shows up later if you spare him earlier
buuuut idk i thought itd be cool
and it also fits in with my theory about the dark world being like an almost inbetween zone for life and death, like with dess maybe being dead or dying in the light world but she's being preserved and/or possibly being held together by determination since that seems to be what her armor is made of (if she's the knight ofc but im like 99% sure she is)