The earth should not have been able to scream.
But it did.
It started as a low vibration beneath the soles of Evelyne's boots, then grew into a keening wail that reverberated through the marrow of reality. The sky over the Weeping Hollow split—not with light, but with absence. A rift that had no shape, no color, only an unbearable wrongness.
Evelyne stood at the Hollow's edge, cloak flaring in the wind like a banner of defiance. Alaira stood beside her, blade drawn, lips tight.
"They're not echoes anymore," Evelyne murmured.
"No," Alaira replied, eyes scanning the swirling void. "This is something else."
What emerged from the rift did not walk.
It crawled.
It oozed, as though peeled from the skin of unreal time. It had no eyes, but Evelyne knew it could see her. Feel her. Hunger for her.
A spindled limb formed—a mockery of her own arm, twisted and dripping with chronoweave threads. Another limb followed. Then a face—her face, stretched like wax, mouth moving in soundless accusation.
"You should not exist," the thing rasped.
Alaira stepped forward, shielding Evelyne instinctively. "Neither should you."
The thing tilted its head, movements disjointed. "Then we agree. Only one of us can stay."
Without warning, it struck.
Evelyne raised both palms, summoning a burst of stabilizing light, the rune-sigil etched into her wrist pulsing in response. Threads of rewritten fate lashed out, weaving a barrier that cracked under the creature's assault. The magic screamed in her ears. The Rift had not truly closed—it had only changed shape.
"Containment circle!" Evelyne shouted. "Alaira—hold it back!"
Alaira charged forward without hesitation, blade gleaming with arcane runes gifted by the Lost Library. She slashed through the creature's limb, severing it—but the thing laughed, and the arm regenerated, now sporting her blade as a twisted appendage.
"It learns," Alaira growled, breath tight. "Every strike teaches it more."
Evelyne drew a breath. Then another. She didn't have the luxury of panic.
She slammed her palm into the earth, whispering a binding incantation in the ancient tongue. A glowing glyph burst outward—a containment seal of time, not space. It wouldn't stop the creature, but it would slow it.
"Alaira, guide it into the circle!"
Alaira responded without words. She moved like lightning, dodging the creature's whip-like tendrils. Every breath she took was deliberate; every motion an answer to death. She was Evelyne's constant—and in this moment, Evelyne was her anchor.
The creature hissed, lunged—and stepped into the circle.
The trap closed with a snap.
It froze mid-motion, limbs twitching violently as the runes pulsed. Time stuttered around it—seconds looping, rewinding, distorting. It howled, a sound that bled into a dozen voices at once.
"I am what was cut. What was culled. What you chose not to be."
Evelyne stepped closer, hands trembling.
"You're not me," she said, her voice steady despite her pulse. "You're a wound that refused to close."
"Then bleed with me."
The creature exploded outward.
The containment sigil shattered in a burst of fractal light. Evelyne was thrown back—striking a stone pillar, air driven from her lungs. Pain flared. Blood welled at her temple.
Alaira's voice pierced the haze. "Evelyne!"
She stumbled upright, vision swimming, only to see the thing reforming—now larger, uglier, fused with remnants of other selves. A Timewrought chimera, stitched from regrets and discarded paths.
She couldn't outpower it.
But maybe…
Maybe she could out-write it.
"I need a conduit!" Evelyne cried, grabbing the broken pieces of a fallen Echo Shard from her belt. "Alaira—hold it off for thirty seconds!"
"Make it count!" Alaira darted in again, blade a blur. Each clash sent ripples through the air, light colliding with shadow.
Evelyne knelt, forming a triangle of shards. She touched them, muttering words she had sworn never to use again.
"Chronos… lend me the voice of the unwritten."
The shards lit up—blinding, searing into her palm.
Memories poured into her mind—every version of herself that had died, failed, lost, or ruled in tyranny. She saw them. Felt them. Hundreds of Evelynes, screaming for a place in the world.
She didn't silence them.
She named them.
"One died saving her brother. One ruled alone in a castle of ash. One never met Alaira, and never learned to hope. One took her own life before the story began."
Each name burned like a star behind her eyes.
The Timewrought paused. It sensed something.
Evelyne rose, eyes glowing with spectral fire.
"You aren't hunger," she said. "You're grief. You are the mourning of the paths not taken."
The creature howled, surging forward.
Evelyne extended a hand, voice like thunder:
"And I honor you. But I refuse you."
Light burst from the shards, forming a ring of narrative certainty. The thing struck it—and shattered into silence.
There was no explosion. No cry.
Only stillness.
And then… quiet.
The wind returned.
The Hollow stilled.
Alaira rushed to Evelyne's side, helping her to stand. "You're bleeding."
"I'm always bleeding," Evelyne said, half-laughing. "It's the price of remembering."
They stood amidst the broken remains of the Rift-born thing. It had not vanished, not entirely. It had become stardust, memory, possibility.
Alaira touched her cheek, gently brushing away a streak of blood. "You saved us again."
"No." Evelyne leaned into her touch. "We did."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Alaira whispered, "If they were grief… what's still coming?"
Evelyne looked toward the distant horizon, where the sky darkened unnaturally. "The ones who never had names. Not even in the unwritten versions of the world."
Not memories. Not hunger.
Oblivion.