The moment they crossed the gate, the air changed.
It wasn't colder or hotter. The kind of feeling that made your skin crawl before your mind could name why. The sky above twisted slowly, bleeding violet into bruised red, while the land cracked in jagged slopes. Ash drifted like snow, catching on Lucan's lashes.
They said nothing as they walked.
Lucan kept his grip tight on the weapon Thal'ryn had given him—a short sword fitted with folded crystal veins, light but humming faintly in his palm. Lyra held a curved blade at her side, its edge blackened from past battles.
The Verge didn't feel empty.
Every step Lucan took felt like it echoed too far, like the ground took a second too long to settle beneath his boots. The air pressed close, dense and slightly off, like walking through a room just after an electrical surge. It smelled faintly metallic, and every breath tasted like dust soaked in static.
Around them, the landscape looked broken in ways that didn't make sense. Trees—or things that might've once been trees—twisted in on themselves, their limbs warped and curled like they'd been trying to shield something. The bark wasn't normal either.
Even the rocks didn't behave right.
Some hovered inches off the ground, motionless at first glance. But then they'd drop without warning, sinking into the dirt with a dull thud, only to rise again minutes later like nothing happened. It was as if gravity had forgotten what it was supposed to do—and was still trying to relearn.
Lucan crouched once, brushing his fingers along the edge of a stone. It was warm. Not from sunlight—there was no real sun here—but from something else, like the land itself still held onto memories it wasn't ready to let go of.
Lyra walked a few steps ahead, silent. Her eyes kept moving, scanning the terrain, hands close to the weapon at her hip. She didn't say it out loud, but Lucan could tell—she felt it too.
Hours passed, or maybe minutes. Time didn't behave in the Verge.
Then they heard it.
A sound like wet cloth being torn apart, echoing from somewhere ahead. Lucan halted, hand raised. Lyra crouched low, eyes narrowing toward a ridge carved by ancient wind.
They climbed carefully, boots crunching glassy soil, and peered over.
On the other side was a creature.
If it could be called that.
It stood still, hunched and twitching. No face. No defined form. Just a shifting mass of shadow and veins of pale gold that flickered like dying stars. Its limbs were too long, too fluid, like it was trying to remember how a body worked.
Lucan felt it before he understood it. A pressure behind his eyes. A flicker of thoughts that weren't his own crawling into his skull like centipedes.
"You were left."
Lucan staggered back. The voice was inside. Not heard—felt. The creature hadn't moved. But its presence scraped against his thoughts like broken glass.
Lyra grabbed his arm. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head, but his breathing quickened.
Then the thing moved.
It didn't run or charge—it folded. One moment it was there. The next it was five feet closer, then ten. Reality skipped like a broken tape as the creature advanced, the pressure in Lucan's mind increasing with each lurch forward.
He could barely think. His thoughts were being overwritten.
"You were abandoned."
"No." he whispered, voice cracking. "That's not—"
"They left you."
Lyra shouted something, but the sound twisted in the air, distorted and distant. Lucan's knees buckled.
Then the creature shrieked.
A burst of sound—not from its mouth, but from the world around it. The air rippled. Stone cracked beneath its influence.
Lucan forced himself to his feet, raised the sword, and lunged.
The tip pierced the creature's shoulder—or where its shoulder should've been—but passed through with little resistance. Like stabbing mist.
Lyra joined the attack, her blade slicing through the creature's side. It stumbled—but not from pain. From inconsistency, like her strike made it forget what shape it was wearing.
It reformed and lashed out, a tendril whipping toward Lyra. She ducked, rolled, came up gasping.
Lucan swung wide, forcing it back again, but it was already rebuilding, its body folding over itself like paper.
"We're not hurting it!" Lyra shouted.
"Then we keep trying!"
Lucan feinted right, then jabbed again. The sword shimmered on contact—but this time, he felt resistance. A moment of solid shape.
The creature recoiled, but its thoughts burrowed deeper.
"They never wanted you."
Lucan screamed—not from pain, but from pressure. His vision blurred.
Then, Lyra roared.
She tackled the creature from the side, driving her blade through its midsection. Her voice broke with effort. "Shut up!"
The creature screeched again, louder this time. Its body flickered—shimmering like a mirage. Then, slowly… it began to fade.
Not die.
But disappear.
Lucan collapsed to one knee, breathing hard. The silence that followed was suffocating.
"Are you okay?" Lyra asked, crouching beside him.
He nodded, barely. "I… it was inside my head."
"I know. I felt it too. Just for a second. Like it was pulling memories and twisting them."
Lucan stared at the spot where it had vanished. "I think… it feeds on lies. On what we believe about ourselves."
"You think?"
"No." he said. "I don't know. But it felt like that."
They stayed there for a while, catching their breath.
Eventually, they moved on.
They walked through a canyon lined with mirror-like walls. Each reflection flickered strangely—sometimes showing them as children, sometimes as strangers. Lyra passed one pane and saw herself in a white coat, her hands stained with blood. She didn't stop walking.
Lucan saw himself smiling in a garden he didn't remember. It unsettled him more than any monster had.
They didn't talk much.
At one point, the wind changed—and with it, came whispers.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds. All versions of their own voices.
Lyra grabbed Lucan's arm. "It's the Verge. It's trying to unmake us."
He nodded. "Let it try."
They pressed on until the terrain broke into sharp peaks and valleys. From one ridge, they saw a cluster of structures in the distance—half-sunken towers wrapped in luminous vines. Even from here, they could feel something ancient stirring in the soil below.
"The Bastion ruins." Lyra said.
Lucan exhaled. "We're close."
Then the sky cracked.
It wasn't lightning.
It wasn't even sky.
It was the sound of something underneath the world giving way—like a buried bone snapping under pressure. The rumble came not from above, but from below, deep in the crust of the Fold, shaking the fractured land around them. A pulse rippled through the dust, knocking Lucan slightly off balance. Loose shards of copper-like stone rattled under his boots.
The ground shivered again—and then it split.
Another creature emerged, but this one didn't crawl or leap or charge. It simply rose, as if the ground had been holding it prisoner and finally let go.
It was larger than the first. Its form wasn't just unsettling—it was wrong. It had no constant shape. One second it looked like a hunched figure with too-long arms, the next a mass of writhing limbs like an insect's legs. Then a flame. Then a shadow. Then something that looked back at them without eyes.
Lucan flinched. Not from fear—but from instinct. His mind couldn't process it fast enough.
The creature wasn't just shifting shape—it was shifting thought. Like it didn't exist in one idea at a time. It wasn't bound to a single identity. Whatever it was, it didn't care how reality worked.
Lucan's hands tightened around his sword.
Next to him, Lyra steadied her stance. Her face was cut along the jaw from their last fight, a thin line of blood tracing her cheek. She turned her head to him, eyes sharp, voice steady.
"This time." she said, "We don't fight what we see. We fight to stay ourselves."
Lucan's throat was dry. "How?"
She didn't hesitate. "By remembering who we are. It can't take that—unless we give it up."
Lucan gave a short nod, the kind born of pain and clarity. "Then let's remind it."
The creature lurched forward—not walking but glitching. The space around it warped slightly, like heatwaves, and the shrill hum in the air spiked. It felt like pressure in their skulls, like someone whispering through their own memories.
The fight wasn't clean.
There was no rhythm, no grace. It was a battle of grit.
Lucan swung first, his sword striking the creature's arm—or what resembled an arm. It split open into a bloom of light and fluid, shrieking, then snapped back into a new form before Lucan could pull away. A fist slammed into his chest, and he went flying back into a twisted tree trunk, knocking the wind from his lungs.
Lyra screamed—not from pain, but in resistance—as she hurled a folded-blade toward its torso. It pierced something soft, and the creature bent in on itself. Then it retaliated, its form unraveling into tendrils that clawed at her suit. Sparks flew as they struck the Void-woven fabric, but she ducked and rolled free.
They were bruised. Bloodied. Breath ragged.
But they kept going.
For every time the creature warped reality, they held onto theirs. Lucan focused on the smell of the air—dry and metallic. The sharp sting in his side. The sound of Lyra's breathing next to him. Real things. Tangible anchors.
That's how they fought it.
Not just with weapons, but with memory.
Lucan struck again, this time aiming for its center. It screamed, voice pitched higher than sound should go, and the world seemed to flicker.
Then Lyra leapt forward, slashing across its shifting torso—whatever counted as its core.
Another screech.
This time, it didn't recover as fast.
Its form began to unravel—not violently, but like something losing coherence. Like it had to believe in itself to exist, and they were slowly tearing that belief apart.
One more hit—Lucan drove his sword straight through the center, shouting with everything he had.
And the creature dissolved.
Not in flame, not in blood.
Just… ash.
Ash that blew away in the wind like it had never been real in the first place.
Lucan dropped to one knee, the last of his strength gone. His breath was ragged, his arms trembling. His side throbbed with every heartbeat. But his mind—his thoughts—were his again.
He didn't feel whole, but he felt present.
Still here.
And in this place, that was victory.
Lyra came to his side. She didn't say anything right away. Just offered her hand. He took it.
They walked in silence for a while, steps uneven, gear scuffed and dusty. The landscape began to shift again—less warped now. Fewer distortions. Less resistance in the air.
Ahead, the ground dipped sharply.
They reached the edge of the rise, and looked down.
What lay below wasn't another battleground.
It was a graveyard of towers.
Dozens of massive, sunken structures lay half-buried in stones and copper sands. Broken walls jutted out at odd angles, and the remains of old machinery glinted beneath layers of dust. Some towers were split entirely, like someone had snapped them in half. Others were scorched black, their tops melted like candlewax.
Lucan exhaled slowly. "The Spiral Bastion."
Lyra scanned the horizon. "What's left of it."
Behind them, the Verge stretched out—unnaturally quiet.
She looked back once more. "We survived."
Lucan didn't speak right away.
His gaze lingered on the floating ash in the wind. On the silence that now felt earned.
Then he said, quietly, "No. We endured."
And as they descended the slope into the ruins—toward whatever secrets the Bastion still kept—the sky above flickered faintly, like something just noticed them.
But this time, Lucan didn't look away.
[End of Chapter 15]