The world cracked inward.
Helene's form flickered—once, twice—as if reality itself struggled to hold her shape.
Her hand still clutched her chest where Konrad's bullet had struck, violet threadlight leaking between her fingers like a star about to collapse. Her breathing grew heavier, shoulders trembling under a weight the eye couldn't see.
Then she straightened.
Not gracefully.
Not triumphantly.
But with finality.
The threads around her shuddered, unraveling and reweaving all at once. The air folded back in layers, ripples tearing through the sky above, distorting the fractured clouds into spirals of deep violet and bruised silver.
Helene's violet glow deepened—darkened—until it wasn't just color anymore. It was presence.
The shape of her body blurred. Her hair lifted in unseen currents, strands glowing with threads of violet and black that moved against the direction of the wind. Her coat, torn and scorched, reformed not into fabric, but into something woven from living time itself—an ephemeral cloak that shimmered between existence and memory.
Beneath it, glimpses of armor—fractured, like shattered porcelain—hugged her form, laced with threadlight veins that pulsed with a rhythm not of this world. Segments of her body seemed to slip between moments—her feet never fully touching the ground, her hands existing half a breath ahead of where they should have been.
When she raised her face to us, her eyes were no longer Helene's.
They were deep, endless wells of shifting moments—each blink rewriting the cracks around them. Violet burned at the edges of her pupils, fracturing into rivers of glimmering silver that split her gaze like shattered glass.
The air around her warped visibly, distorting the horizon behind her. The ruins of the bridge bent subtly in her wake, as if the very distance strained to contain her.
A low, resonant hum began to vibrate through the stones beneath our feet—a sound deeper than hearing, felt in the bones. It was as if the bridge itself recognized the thing that now stood upon it.
I knew then.
I felt it, deeper than thought. Deeper than memory.
"It was you," I whispered. The words feel out of me, powerless against the gravity of truth.
The woman in indigo.
The shadow that had haunted my dreams since before this lifetime.
The reason we stood on the ruins of all we once had.
"Arbiter… isn't it?"
The name hung between us, heavier than stone, sharper than any blade we carried.
The air thickened, pressing against our skin like a second atmosphere. Colors bled into each other—the pale spring sky turning deep violet at the edges, bleeding into bruised silver and washed gold. The river below churned against its own banks, pulling back from the stone supports as if recoiling from what now stood above it.
Gravity itself seemed to lurch, not enough to send us sprawling, but enough to make each breath a deliberate, strained act.
The threads that anchored the world sagged visibly, like fraying cords left too long in the rain.
I could feel the threadlight inside my chest stuttering, trying to find its rhythm against the distortion now seeping into everything.
Konrad's stance widened instinctively, shoulders bracing against a tilt that didn't belong to the earth. Erich shifted his grip on the twin golden daggers, his movements slower, as if he were pushing through water.
And still, Arbiter smiled.
It wasn't malice.
It wasn't cruelty.
It was inevitable.
The smile of someone who had already seen the outcome, and was only now stepping into its shadow.
Her first step forward sounded like the snap of distant thunder.
The bridge shivered underfoot.
A wave of displaced air rippled outward from her, scattering loose debris and tearing shallow cracks deeper into the crumbling stone. Every loose thread hanging in the weave of the world tightened visibly, snapping taut like a snare about to spring.
Above, the sun dimmed—not eclipsed, but leeched, its light filtered through a veil of fractured time.
I felt a bead of sweat roll down my temple, dragged sideways by the shifting weight of gravity. My blade trembled faintly in my hand, not from fear—but from recognition.
She raised one hand.
Not as an attack.
Not as a threat.
But as a summoning.
Reality itself buckled, the edges of the bridge blurring into a haze of possibility undone.
The sky trembled, the river screamed beneath us.
And the war truly began.
***
Arbiter moved.
A ripple shuddered across the bridge as she did. From behind her cloak, something began to materialize—slow, deliberate, terrifying.
A weapon.
A scythe.
It's handle was woven from broken, flickering threads—purple, black, and bleeding silver, bundled together in chaotic order. The blade carved outward like a crescent moon torn from the sky, formed from fraying coils of threadlight that sharpened into an impossible edge.
Every time the blade shifted in the light, reality around it folded—air blistered into fractures, sound bent sideways.
With a slow graceful pull, Arbiter dragged the scythe across the stones, leaving a shallow cut through the surface of the bridge as if severing not just stone—but the memory of it.
It wasn't a weapon.
It was a severance—a scythe of torn threads, designed to reap possibilities, to cull futures before they could be born.
And she wielded it like judgment incarnate.
Not like a human.
Not like anything that should have existed on the edge of this broken world.
She crossed the distance between us in a heartbeat, her cloak splitting into tendrils of violet threadlight that whipped at the ground, carving trenches into the bridge. Every step distorted gravity, drawing the stones toward her like an invisible tide, each footprint warping the laws of physics.
I blinked sideways instinctively, reappearing in a staggered crouch near the collapsed edge. The bridge moaned in protest beneath the sudden shift. The moment I had moved, Arbiter's scythe slashed through the air, and three distorted afterimages of herself shimmered forward—illusions, but solid enough to kill.
Konrad lifted his gold-threaded rifle.
The first shot cracked like thunder—striking through one illusion, dispersing it into fracturing light, the echoes of its collapse distorting the very soundwaves around it.
Erich moved next—his twin golden daggers flickering in hand. He blinked into the fray, intercepting the second illusion mid-swing. Their weapons clashed, metal against impossible memory, the recoil driving both figures backward. The impact sent a visible ripple through the air, like a pebble dropped into a pool of molten glass.
The real Arbiter struck for me.
I felt the rush of displaced air an instant before her scythe arced toward my ribs. I rewound—three seconds—just enough to throw her rhythm off. I blinked low, coming up beneath her guard, and swung my golden blade upward.
She didn't dodge.
She absorbed the blow with her arm, letting the impact fracture her armor. Violet light bled from the wound—but this time, gold shimmered inside the cracks, staining the edges like poison, spreading like veins through porcelain.
She smiled.
Then retaliated.
A pulse of raw threadlight erupted from her core—shockwave slamming into me, sending my body skidding backward along the bridge's splintered surface. The ground shattered where I landed, stone shards flying outward in a halo of destruction.
Konrad fired again.
This time, Arbiter twisted mid-air. The bullet ripped through the side of her cloak, tearing a hole through the very fabric of reality for a blink before sealing shut.
Before she even landed, her thread surged. Strands of violet thread erupted around her like living whips, lashing toward us from every angle, carving symbols into the bridge that shimmered and twisted like living things.
I blinked through one, feeling the pull of its gravity distort my passage. Erich ducked another, rolling low and slashing through a tendril. Konrad didn't move—he simply dropped to one knee and froze it mid-air. It hung, trembling in place, severed from Arbiter's will, suspended like an insect caught mid-flight.
She snarled—an ugly, inhuman sound that vibrated in my ribs.
The bridge groaned again. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed outward beneath out feat, water vapor rising from the splits as the river below forced its way through the crumbling structure.
Erich blinked to my side, golden daggers ready. His breaths came sharp, fast, misting in the unnatural cold that radiated from Arbiter's presence.
Together, we rushed her.
Erich veered right, drawing her gaze. I went left, carving wide arcs with my blade to limit her movement.
Arbiter caught Erich's first lunge with the shaft of her scythe—no blade, just brute force. She twisted, hurling him toward the bridge's edge. He blinked last second, rolling back into stance with a crack of displaced air.
I came in low, blade dragging a trail of green across the stones. I struck for her exposed side.
She reacted with impossible speed—her cloak folding into a hardened shield of threadlight. My blade slammed against it, rebounding with a burst of kinetic backlash that nearly tore the weapon from my grip.
She countered immediately.
Her scythe blurred through the air—a wide, horizontal arc that split the stone where I stood a heartbeat earlier. I blinked aside, the passage of the scythe shredding the air like a scream.
Konrad, still positioned near the bride's entrance, lined up another shot—but this time, Arbiter anticipated him. She spun, thread weaving into a reflective shield that deflected the bullet into the sky, the projectile vanishing into a burst of scattered stars.
Erich lunged again, twin daggers flashing.
She parried the first strike by snapping the shaft of her scythe into his path—absorbing the blow, deflecting the second with a burst of rippling thread-pulse.
I saw my chance.
I blinked high—above her—and dropped toward her with my blade angled for a finishing strike.
Arbiter looked up.
For a moment, her eyes weren't violent. They were calm. Accepting.
Then she moved.
Threadlight erupted from beneath her feet, launching her upward into my fall. We collided mid-air—power against power, weight against weight—and the bridge shook with the force of our impact, sending cracks racing outward like veins of lightning.
I barely twisted free, landing hard in a crouch a few meters back.
She hovered above the ground now.
Not standing.
Not falling.
Held aloft by the threads of time themselves, the fabric of reality bending around her like a collapsing sun.
The color around her flickered—violet bleeding gold, then stabilizing back into pure royal purple, the fracture visible only for a heartbeat before she willed them closed.
I rose to my feet.
We faced each other again, threadlight crackling between us like a storm about to break, the echoes of lost timelines screaming silently around us.
The second phase of the battle had begun.
Arbiter tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something we couldn't hear, the threads vibrating around her like the strings of a dying instrument.
Then she attacked again—harder, faster.
She didn't walk or run. She warped, blurring between instants. One breath she was twenty steps away—the next, her scythe screamed toward my neck.
I barely blinked aside, feeling the heat of her strike pass my cheek, the air itself left scarred in its wake.
Erich threw himself between two attacking illusions, golden daggers flashing brutal arcs. He fought not like a scholar, but like something primal—like a man with nothing left to lose.
Konrad remained anchored at the far end of the bridge, breathing hard, rifle flashing golden light every few seconds. Each shot cracked reality a little more, slowing but not stopping the tide.
The entire battlefield twisted around Arbiter's will.
Stone folded and unfolded beneath her feet. Time itself blurred—causes detaching from effect. My blade moved to parry a strike that hadn't been thrown yet. My feet skidded across stone that was only half solid.
She wasn't fighting us.
She was fighting the rules of existence.
And she was winning.
But we hadn't lost.
Not yet.
***
The rhythm fractured.
Arbiter shifted her stance—not forward, not back, but sideways through time itself. Her scythe blurred once, splitting into afterimages, and when it solidified again, it pointed—not at me, not at Erich.
At Konrad.
The air pulsed once, twice.
Then the assault began.
She didn't move her feet. She moved the world.
The shadows around Konrad thickened instantly, folding like shrouds over his position at the far end of the bridge. Tendrils of threadlight, woven violet and black, lashed out from the stones themselves, snapping toward him like living snares.
Konrad fired once—another golden bolt cracking through the air—but Arbiter bent the shot mid-flight with a lazy flick of her hand. The bullet spiraled harmlessly into the river below.
More tendrils surged.
Konrad locked one mid-air—freezing it—but three others slipped through. One coiled around his arm, another at his ankle, a third around his chest. He struggled, violet light flaring at each point of contact, but the weight of the threads pressed him downward, trying to rip him from time itself.
The stones beneath Konrad's boots cracked under the force. Tiny fissures radiated outward in spiderweb patterns, glowing faintly as if the bridge itself resisted its own unraveling.
Erich saw it first.
He blinked hard—disappearing from his engagement with the illusions—and reappearing beside Konrad in a flash of displaced air. His twin daggers moved faster than eyes could follow, slashing through two of the tendrils with precision cuts, the edges sizzling gold against the oppressive violet. For a heartbeat, the bonds loosened.
The bridge shook again under the strain, cracks widening, chunks of stone breaking free and tumbling into the raging river below. Vapor hissed upward from the gaps, misting the entire battlefield in a chilling, spectral fog.
Arbiter tilted her head, unamused. With a slow, disdainful spin of her scythe, she redirected the broken tendrils into a whirlwind of kinetic backlash. The resulting shockwave slammed into Erich and Konrad both, lifting them off their feet and hurling them backward across the stone like broken puppets.
Konrad coughed once—blood flecking the ground—but stayed conscious. His rifle clattered to the side, skidding toward the edge of the bridge.
Erich planted himself between Konrad and the next wave of incoming tendrils, golden daggers spinning defensive arcs that tore through the unnatural air, leaving streaks of blue silvered mist that hung briefly before being swallowed by the chaos.
And me?
I was alone.
Arbiter descended toward me like a falling star, her scythe sweeping wide, cleaving through light and sound itself. Every swing painted new fractures into the bridge—wounds that bled light instead of blood.
I blinked, ducked, rolled—but she was relentless. Every dodge left me breathing harder, threadlight leaking from thin cuts along my arms, legs, ribs.
One swing I barely deflected with the flat of my golden blade—only for the backlash to send spiderweb fractures racing up my arm, numbing it to the elbow.
She didn't speak.
She didn't gloat.
She harvested.
Every blow she threw wasn't aimed to kill—it was aimed to break. To shear my thread strand by strand until nothing recognizable remained.
The bridge itself warped beneath our feet. Time flickered. Gravity twisted. Every motion pulled against my instincts, turning seconds into endless punishment. The stones grew slick with condensation, time pooling into impossible pockets of frozen moments that shattered underfoot.
She blurred sideways again, striking low.
I blinked late—too late.
The shaft of her scythe cracked into my ribs. Pain exploded through my chest. I hit the ground hard, skidding across shattered stone, coughing blood that glowed faintly green in the mist.
Above me, Arbiter hovered—not with wings, not with grace, but with sheer refusal to obey the laws she'd broken.
My vision blurred. I blinked twice, fast-regaining my footing by instinct alone.
Threadlight bled from every point of impact now, green mist trailing from my fingertips, my breath, my wounds.
Erich shouted something—wordless, a rallying cry—and hurled one of his daggers across the bridge.
It struck one of Arbiter's looming tendrils, dispersing it in a flash of blue and violet, a momentary breach in the tightening noose.
But there were always more.
Konrad fired again, aiming for the clusters of threads binding the bridge itself, trying to limit her influence. Each shot rippled the air, golden trajectories cutting through the haze like imploding supernovae, momentarily stalling the collapse.
We weren't winning.
We were surviving.
Barely.
Arbiter's eyes flickered once—briefly—toward Konrad again.
Another tendril of severed time lanced toward him.
Erich blinked into its path without hesitation.
The tendril struck him across the shoulder, sending him crashing to one knee—but he stayed upright, teeth bared in defiance, blood staining the stones beneath him.
I forced myself upright, golden blade trembling in my hand.
We were falling apart.
But so was she.
Hairline cracks ran deeper now along Arbiter's scythe, tiny fissures of bleeding gold tracing the curves of it. Every attack cost her—not in strength, but in stability. Every clash, every warp of reality, etched new fractures into her being.
It was a race.
Whose threads would snap first—the broken companions, or the one that broke them?
And in that moment, battered and bleeding, I made the only choice left to me.
I stepped forward.
Into the storm.
***
The storm didn't pause.
It cracked louder, closer.
Arbiter surged again—her scythe sweeping in devastating arcs, carving gashes into the very bridge that held us. She didn't move like a person anymore—she moved like inevitability.
I could barely breathe between dodging slashes and thread pulses. Erich blurred at the edges of my vision—golden daggers flashing defensively, intercepting tendrils of shadow that lunged at Konrad.
Konrad was kneeling, rifle braced against a fragment of the shattered bridge, body trembling from effort. His brow was slick with blood and sweat, threadlight seeping from the cracks in his armor, but his hands—those hands—remained steady.
On shot.
The rifle wasn't just a weapon anymore—it was a prayer, a promise. A memory of everything we had lost and everything we still fought for.
Erich blinked again, positioning himself directly between Konrad and Arbiter, shielding him from the worst of her reach. Every second he bought was bought with blood.
Konrad exhaled once. Slowly.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
The threads of time themselves quivered, sensing the gravity of the moment.
Arbiter's scythe arced toward him—a blur of severed timelines.
Erich threw himself into the path, catching the blow with crossed daggers. The impact knocked him clear across the stones, landing hard against the crumbling rails of the bridge. Dust and shattered fragments rose in a choking cloud.
Konrad didn't flinch.
He pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked across the battlefield like a divine hammer.
A golden thread of light split the chaos—straight, clean, pure.
Time itself seemed to slow, folding inward around the bullet as it tore through the mist and distortion, ignoring the rules Arbiter had twisted.
The bullet spun through broken moments, through shattered air, past suspended drops of water hanging in frozen arcs, past warping shadows that tried to intercept it.
It struck Arbiter's left arm just as she raised it to strike again.
The effect was immediate.
The impact didn't just wound her—it shattered her.
Her scythe spun from her grip, clattering against the stone with a scream that sounded like the dead of a thousand forgotten memories, skidding to a halt with a hollow, metallic wail that echoed down the entire bridge. Her arm split along ancient cracks already forming in her thread woven skin—golden fissures branching out like rivers, carving her apart from within.
She staggered backward, her body spasming against the sudden collapse of stability. Violet threadlight poured from the rupture, leaking into the mist like blood. Her cloak shredded under the strain, revealing the raw, broken weave of her being underneath.
For the first time, Arbiter recoiled.
She clutched at her wounded arm, violet and gold energies sputtering between her fingers, unable to mend the breach. Her body flickered, reality stuttering around her, as if the world itself no longer agreed on where she stood.
The bridge groaned under the seismic shift, stone splinters floating into the air around her like the aftermath of a collapsing reality.
Her scythe, abandoned at her feet, flickered once—then slowly unraveled into strands of lost moments, disappearing into the mist.
She couldn't fight in close anymore.
Not with a shattered arm. Not without her scythe.
I saw it in her posture—the way she shifted her weight, the slight stagger, the desperate glance toward the crumbling edge of the bridge.
She abandoned the fight.
And began weaving time itself.
Thread constructs bled outward from her ruined body-jagged, unstable projections of distorted futures, collapsing timelines, and twisted memories. Shapes half-formed from regret and unrealized choices surged into existence, howling without mouths, their bodies flickering between states of being.
The very air grew heavy with entropy. Colors dulled and frayed at the edges, stone melted into water, water hardened into glass. Gravity bent sideways in places, pulling pebbles and dust into slow, looping spirals above the broken bridge.
It was no longer a fight of flesh and thread.
It was a battle against reality itself.
She had shifted.
No more close combat.
Now, the world itself would fight for her.
We stood amid the wreckage of what we had barely survived—and knew we were stepping into something far worse.
The fight had only just begun.
***
Arbiter staggered back—golden fractures blooming across her wounded side, the remnants of Konrad's shot still burning in her thread woven flesh. Her movements slowed, but not from hesitation.
From purpose.
She turned without a word, her ruined cloak snapping behind her in the mist, and began walking toward the far end of the bridge—the gates of the castle looming in the shifting fog beyond.
Every step she took rewrote the ground beneath her feet. Stone twisted, cracking into impossible patterns, the very geometry bending to her presence. Time golden like brittle paper, old echoes of our footsteps appearing and vanishing around her with every motion.
Then she raised her hand.
The world answered.
Threadlight bled outward—not in smooth ribbons, but in jagged scars across the sky, slashing open wounds in the mist.
The bridge began to groan.
And from its fractured bones, an army was born.
Shadows rose from the cracks—tall, spindly, monstrous. Some dragged chains of broken time behind them. Others floated, eyeless and formless, leaving trails of withered hours in their wake. Their bodies flickered between states of being—solid one second, vaporous the next—stitched together by grief and rage.
The sound they made wasn't a roat.
It was a lament.
A great, arching sob from a thousand lost futures.
Above us, the towers lining the castle flared to life.
From the parapets, more horrors spilled out—thread-forged monstrosities wielding fractured weapons. Their armor was stitched from the regrets of a hundred abandoned memories.
The towers became living engines of annihilation.
Bolts of warped threadlight rained down in crooked, shrieking arcs, each impact shattering stone into molten rivers. Vaporized debris twisted into spiraling columns of mist, casting long shadows that warped the very color of the sky.
The entire bridge between us and the castle vanished beneath the seething mass.
It wasn't just an army.
It was a graveyard set loose.
The mist thickened until it felt like drowning. Every breath tasted of ash, salt, and something colder—something ancient.
Time stuttered.
Pebbles rose into the air and hung there, trapped between seconds.
Our heartbeat rhythms fell out of sync, our shadows lagging half a step behind our bodies.
The bridge trembled under the sheer weight of it all—stone tiles lifting, spinning mid-air, dissolving into threads before hitting the ground.
The shadows surged forward.
A tidal wave of loss.
Every figure in the army carried a whisper, a half-heard cry, a forgotten name. They were built not to conquer—but to remind us of everything we could never save.
Konrad dropped into a new stance, rifle braced tight against his shoulder, golden threadlight coiling around him like a fragile shield.
Erich twirled his daggers once, light flashing across the jagged gold, his face set in a grimace of pure focus.
And me—
I stood alone at the midpoint, blade angled down, breath misting in the corrupted air.
Across the battlefield, Arbiter paused atop the distant steps.
Her body glowed with fractures, her hand still leaking violet and gold light—but her posture remained proud.
She wasn't desperate.
She wasn't afraid.
She was patient.
Letting her final wall close around us.
This was not just a battle.
It was a funeral.
And we were the ones being buried.
***
The moment hung—a breathless, shuddering stillness before the charge. The air thickened, fog rolling over broken stone, every breath tight with ash and cold mist. Time slowed, heartbeats echoing like war drums beneath the surface of my skin.
Konrad dropped low, rifle braced, golden-threaded rounds spinning into the chamber with a metallic hiss. His jaw clenched, brow furrowed, eyes narrowing on the advancing summons. They poured forward in a rolling tide of blackened limbs, spindly shadows that flickered and screamed without sound. Konrad wasn't aiming to kill. He was aiming to hold—to pin the chaos back long enough for us to break through.
"Go!" I shouted, voice ragged, throat raw. My blade gleamed in the corrupted light, green thread-light pulsing along its edge. "I'll cover the middle!"
Konrad's rifle roared, each shot a hammer blow against the tide. The bullets split the mist, streaking golden light through the gray, tearing through the nearest horrors in bursts of shattered moments. The monsters dissolved on impact, unraveling into threads of vapor and light. But more pressed forward, a flood of jagged limbs and distorted faces, each one a fracture born from Arbiter's twisted weave.
I pivoted sharply, boots grinding against fractured stone, blade sweeping in a wide arc. Green thread-light carved through the nearest shadows, severing their warped bodies into coiling ribbons of mist. Each cut came with resistance, like dragging steel through memory itself. My arms burned from the force, chest heaving with each breath. Sweat mixed with blood along my skin, sharp and acrid in the cold air.
Then Erich moved.
A streak of silver blurred past me, so fast it split the mist with a sonic crack. Erich darted forward, twin daggers blazing in his hands, each motion a slash of light. His figure distorted with speed, blurring between moments, his outline flashing in and out of sight like a strobe. His steps detonated shockwaves beneath his feet, each footfall blasting the fractured stone into spiraling shards.
Erich blitzed through the battlefield like a living tempest, cutting a gleaming path through the endless horde. Every swing of his daggers left molten arcs in the air, the blades glowing white—hot against the fabric of broken time. Shadows lunged for him—too late, too slow. Their bodies split apart in showers of golden sparks, their screams fading before they could reach their target.
The bridge quaked under the assault. Chunks of stone lifted into the air, frozen mid-collapse, twisting in slow spirals before crumbling into ash. Threadlight lashed across the battlefield, violet and gold crackling in violent collisions, the very mist of pulsing and fracturing with each impact.
I stayed close to Erich's flank, blade flashing, cutting down anything that slipped through his storm. My strikes were heavy, deliberate, driving deep into the heart of each creature. Every impact sent tremors up my arms, fingers aching from the force. Time folded underfoot, the world flickering between moments as I blinked through narrow gaps, rewinding seconds to split past near-fatal strikes.
Behind us, Konrad's rifle roared again, each shot punching through the largest horrors. One massive creature surged up from the mist—a colossus of bone and unraveling moments, its limbs stitched from lost futures. Konrad's eyes narrowed. Three rapid shots cracked the air. Golden light ripped through the monster's chest, shattering it into a cascade of light and mist. Erich didn't even glance back. He vaulted over the collapsing beast, daggers flashing, and kept running.
The mist thickened, swallowing light, choking the world in a pale, drowning haze. My lungs burned, drawing in sharp, cold air, heavy with the scent of ash and cracked stone. My blade cut through another charging figure, green thread-light sparking and hissing as it met. Violet sparks scattered across the ground like falling stars.
Erich surged faster, his silhouette flickering like a lightning strike. His feet barely touched the ground, each step rippling outward with force. The air behind him distorted, warping into spirals of broken moments, fragments of past and future collapsing in his wake. His eyes were sharp, focused, jaw clenched in a fierce grin. This wasn't joy. This was freedom—the full release of his power, no longer held back.
Konrad braced again, sweat dripping down his temples. Each shot was a calculation, a promise. His hands trembled but never slipped. Golden thread-light coiled tight around his arms, holding his body steady as the recoil rattled through his bones. His rifle wasn't just a weapon. It was a calling. A fragment. A memory of something left behind.
I felt my pulse hammer in my ears, each beat matching the rhythm of the battlefield. My legs strained to keep pace, every muscle burning, every breath a sharp, cold knife in my chest. Still, I pressed forward, striking again and again, cutting through the advancing flood.
The bridge beneath us groaned, its ancient bones fracturing under the unnatural weight. Stone cracked and splintered, chunks of debris rising into the air, spinning slowly before dissolving into glimmering threads. The world bent around Arbiter's will, yet we refused to break.
We were not losing. We moved as one.
We were the last thread, fraying but unbroken.
***
Erich reached the castle gates first, his body a blue streak of light, tearing through the dense mist with a crackling roar of displaced air. His feet slammed into the fractured stone, sending shockwaves spiraling outward, mist and debris curling up behind him in spirals of vapor and thread-light. Before him, the gates rose—ancient, towering, scarred by time and power. Blackened wood, bound in iron, each band inscribed with shifting, glowing runes that pulsed violet. These gates were no simple barriers, they were wards, sealed not by locks, but by the weight of memory.
Erich didn't slow.
Every breath burned in his lungs, his heart racing faster than the shattered seconds around him. His daggers crossed and the gold light coiled up his arms, wreathing his body in a blazing halo. For one suspended moment, his feet left the ground, the mist swirling upward as if pulled into the gravity of his charge.
With a roar, he slammed both blades into the seam of the gates.
The eruption was blinding.
Golden thread-light erupted outward—a nova, splitting across the entire surface of the gates in an instant, racing through the runes and shattering them mid-glow. The runes cracked, then dissolved, their light snuffed out. The iron bands split open with screeching wails that echoed across the collapsed space. The wood shattered, not from force, but from unmaking—the very moments holding the gates together were severed at the roots.
The ground trembled violently, Fissures cracked outward in lightning-bolt patterns from Erich's feet, the fractured stones pulsing with gold as their anchoring points in time dissolved. Chunks of masonry lifted, suspended in mid-air in the wake of the unraveling, before they crumbled into ash and thread-dust.
As the blast faded, Erich stumbled forward slightly, panting hard, daggers still glowing faintly in his grasp. He let out a ragged laugh under his breath, shoulders shaking. The gateway before him was nothing but a yawning breach, mist and golden light pouring through.
I reached his side, boots scraping softly over the ruined stones. My chest heaved with exhaustion, every breath cutting cold and sharp through my ribs. My blade trembled faintly in my hand, the green thread-light flickering, as if aware of how close we stood to the edge.
Konrad approached slowly from behind, rifle lowered at his side, his face pale and worn, sweat mixing with streaks of blood along his brows. He stepped carefully over the debris, his heavy boots crunching against the splintered stone and dissolved memory.
I turned to him, lifting a hand.
The threads obeyed.
Green and gold light coiled at my fingertips, weaving upward like strands of living flame. I shaped them deliberately, pulling the weave tight, forming a hilt, a guard, a long narrow blade. It pulsed with golden radiance, solid yet alive, the very threads binding us given form. I extended the weapon to Konrad.
He met my gaze, and for a moment, we stood locked in shared silence. No words were needed. His fingers closed firmly over the hilt, the golden glow wrapping up his arms like a second skin, reinforcing the unspoken promise between us.
The three of us turned, slowly, as one.
Beyond the shattered threshold, the ruined hall stretched before us. What had once been a fortress of stone and order was now a cathedral of collapse. Pillars leaned at impossible angles, their surfaces flickering between past and present, their shadows stretching unnaturally long across the fractured floor. The air itself pulsed and bent, warping light and sound, bleeding colors together until violet, silver, and gold smeared across every surface.
And at the far end, waiting in the heart of it all, stood Arbiter.
She was motionless, a figure cloaked in ruined majesty, her form flickering between moments. The fractured armor across her body leaked thin trails of violet thread-light, golden cracks branching out like veins through porcelain. Her cloak, once flowing and regal, now hung in tatters, dissolving into the mist at its edges. Her eyes bottomless, shifting pools of memory and undone futures—locked onto us the moment we stepped forward.
The ground beneath her feet pulsed faintly, the very air around her trembling with the weight of a hundred collapsed realities. Behind her, the inner sanctum of the castle waited, a space unmoored from time, flickering between what was, what is, and what will be. Walls shimmered between ruin and perfection. Archways twisted into fractal loops. Distant echoes of forgotten voices curled through the air like strands of music.
We stood at the edge.
Bruised, battered, broken—but unyielding.
Erich twirled his daggers once, the blades flashing with sharp golden arcs, his grin steady despite the exhaustion in his eyes. Konrad shifted his stance, golden sword balanced carefully in his hands, shoulders squared, breath slow and deliberate. I felt the weight of my own blade steady in my palm, the green glow pulsing softly, answering the rhythm of my heartbeat.
Across the field of ruin, Arbiter tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something none of us could hear. For the first time, I saw the faintest tremor pass through her form—a hesitation, a recognition of finality.
The air thickened, pulling taut.
The castle walls groaned softly, their broken bones whispering of the countless threads soon to be severed.
And there we stood, the last three threads of defiance, woven together by every battle, every loss, every choice that had led us here.