Smoke curled across the ruined city, trailing through shattered windows and rising into a sky tinted with unnatural red. The ground still burned in places, hot enough to warp metal. What had once been a thriving urban sanctuary was now just another mark on the map—one more loss in a war that had too many.Samuel stood at the edge of the crater where the city center had once been. Bits of scorched rubble crumbled beneath his boots as he stepped forward. The scent of ash and ozone stung his nose, and deeper than that… something older. Something wrong.It had taken less than an hour for the Sentinel’s fire to consume the entire city.Behind him, the others remained silent.Sarah’s jaw was clenched, her knuckles white around the hilt of her blade. Lin stood slightly apart, her expression unreadable, but her body trembling faintly. Dareth had one arm in a makeshift sling, and Nyra knelt beside a body that had been too charred to identify.Ilara wasn’t with them.After the Watchtower, she h

The silver sky shimmered like molten mercury, flowing with unnatural currents across the firmament. Samuel stood on a ridge overlooking the valley below, heart pounding as reality itself seemed to shift. Ilara and Dareth stood behind him, silent, watching as the final piece of the world they knew began to dissolve.“It’s starting,” Ilara murmured. “The Gate is responding.”Samuel didn’t speak. His eyes were fixed on a ripple in the horizon—a jagged seam, like the tear in an old painting. Beyond it, a mirrored world flickered, inverted and broken.The Gate was opening.“Where’s the team?” Samuel asked.“Scattered,” Dareth answered. “Joey went east, Sarah’s still recovering from Lin’s attack. Nyra hasn’t checked in. We’re down to fragments.”Samuel didn’t wait. He stepped forward and descended the ridge alone, flame gathering in his palms, eyes burning with a purpose too long denied. The mountain slope gave way to ancient stone steps, as if built by something older than time. With each

Lin stood at the edge of the flame circle, her eyes closed, body trembling. Around her, the energy crackled — wild, unstable, barely restrained. Sarah watched from a distance, hand tight around the hilt of her blade, while Ilara murmured chants under her breath, the language ancient and stinging in the ears.“She’s resisting it,” Ilara said. “But it’s already inside her.”Samuel stepped forward slowly. “Then what do we do?”“There’s no spell that can force it out. She has to choose. Or the voice inside her… will.”He glanced toward Lin again. Her feet floated just above the earth, toes glowing. Her breath was shallow, her skin pale like moonlight. Every few seconds, her lips moved — silent. But she wasn’t speaking.She was listening.To something only she could hear.And then—Lin’s eyes opened.But they were no longer her own.One golden. One black.The light around her exploded outward, knocking everyone back. Sarah crashed into a boulder, Ilara into the trunk of an ash tree, and Sa

Joey dragged himself across the shattered plains, every breath a knife in his lungs. The battle against the Echo Sentinels had torn his squad apart—Kael lay barely breathing on a slab of scorched rock behind him, and Aria stood alone at the edge of the cliff, her cloak fluttering like a broken banner."Aria!" he shouted hoarsely.She didn’t turn.Wind howled around them, thick with ash and memory. The final beacon had lit the sky hours ago. The Gatekeeper was close now. The shards were nearly all awake.Joey took a step forward. His leg buckled from the earlier strike, but he pushed through.“You don’t have to do this!”Aria finally turned.Her face was pale, eyes glowing faintly with shard-light. Her once-proud stance was slumped, like something inside her was rotting.“I’m already gone, Joey,” she said quietly. “I let the shard in. There’s no reversing it.”“That’s a lie.”“No. It’s the only truth I have left.”Joey swallowed hard. “Then let me fight beside you. We can still get bac

The air was different around Lin now.Not just colder—emptier. Samuel stood several feet away from her, the once vibrant glow of her presence now dimmed, as if the world around her refused to acknowledge her existence. She wasn’t speaking. She hadn’t spoken since the battle near the Nexus Tower.But something inside her whispered louder than any scream ever could.Ilara stood nearby, arms crossed tightly, every rune on her skin glowing faintly. She glanced at Samuel. “We have to destroy it.”He didn’t answer immediately.Instead, his gaze was locked on the relic clutched in Lin’s trembling hands.The fragment—the shard infused with Gatekeeper residue—had embedded itself into her chest like a second heart. Faint pulses of black flame seeped from the wound around it. And though her lips moved now and then, no words emerged.Just silence.Samuel finally broke it. “If we destroy the relic, we might destroy her.”Ilara exhaled sharply. “And if we don’t, we will lose her.”He knew she was r