Silence. No roar of the Flame. No laughter of the Abyss. No chorus of the First. Only silence thick, endless, suffocating.Kael opened his eyes or thought he did. There was no ground, no sky, no horizon. Just a vast emptiness, not black, not white, but something beyond both.He looked down. His body flickered in and out of existence, translucent in places, solid in others. Chains curled around his arms, slithering across his chest, glowing faintly as if alive. Each pulse of their light sent a sharp ache through his ribs.He breathed hard, though there was no air. Where… am I?The silence answered with more silence. For the first time since this began, he felt small not against gods or voids or flames but against nothing. The kind of smallness that stripped a man of name, face, memory.And then “Kael.”The voice rolled across the emptiness, soft and sharp at once. It wasn’t Mira’s. It wasn’t the Abyss. It wasn’t even the First. It was his.He spun, chains rattling. Standing only a few

The light from Mira’s hands poured outward, searing brilliance flooding the shattered sanctuary. The shadow beast shrieked as beams pierced its form, burning holes through its storm flesh. The ground quaked, the air warped, and the Abyss’s roar split the void.Kael staggered, chains rattling so violently they carved lines into the stone beneath his feet. His chest constricted, not from wounds, but from a sickening pull deep inside.The Spark within him screamed bright, defiant but the pull was stronger, relentless, like a current dragging him into a whirlpool.“Mira stop!” His voice broke as the chains yanked tighter, glowing with a perverse fusion of light and shadow. “It’s not working, it’s feeding on you!”But Mira didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Her face was twisted in determination, her eyes locked on the shadow as though daring it to overpower her. Every ounce of her power surged outward, an unrelenting storm of radiance.“I won’t let it take you again!” she cried, her voice cutting

The sanctuary lay in ruins. Stone cracked, fire sputtering weakly, smoke curling in chaotic spirals as Kael staggered to his knees. His arms ached, his chest burned, and every muscle in his body screamed in protest but he couldn’t stop. Not now.The Abyss hung above, a storm of shadows and claws, its eye fixed mercilessly on him. The rift from which it had emerged rippled, dark currents snaking downward like fingers reaching for the last spark of light.Kael’s entire body trembled under the pull, yet his fists clenched around the hilt of his sword. She’s out there. She’s still fighting.Kael could feel it, the faint pulse of Mira’s light, the tether between them. It was a thin thread, trembling and fragile, yet alive. Every fiber of his being screamed to reach for it. Every ounce of despair burned into determination.The Abyss roared, a hurricane of sound and force. Shadows spiraled down like knives, shattering the fractured stone. Kael lashed out, sparks of fire erupting from his bod

The impact split the void. Silence fell for one terrible instant, a silence so vast it crushed breath, thought, existence itself. Then the darkness screamed.The claw had struck, rending light and flesh alike, and the tether that bound Mira and Kael shuddered as if on the brink of snapping.Mira’s cry tore from her throat. Her body convulsed as fire burned through her veins, white-hot agony racing down her arms, her chest, her heart.The chains that had bound her for so long writhed in triumph, tightening with enough force to slice skin and muscle. Blood ran down her wrists, only to evaporate into the abyss, consumed instantly.And still she held.Kael staggered, his wings shattered, one arm hanging uselessly at his side. The claw had struck him directly, ripping through his ribs, gouging fire into his chest. Yet he did not fall. His legs trembled, his vision blurred, but his human eye burned like a shard of the sun.He dragged in a ragged breath, tasting iron and ash. His lips formed

Mira gasped awake. Her body slammed against hard stone, the impact jolting fire through her ribs. She coughed violently, black liquid spilling from her mouth, the taste of ash and metal burning her throat.For a moment she could not breathe, could not think. Then memory struck like lightning. The tether. The void. Kael’s hand slipping from hers.Her scream tore from her chest, raw and jagged. She clawed at the air as if she could still reach him, but her fingers closed around nothing. The silence where his presence had always been was unbearable, like a limb torn from her soul.Mira curled in on herself, shaking, every nerve screaming in grief. But then she felt it. A whisper. A flicker. The faintest echo of his heartbeat, buried deep, distant, but there. Not gone. Not erased.She dragged in a ragged breath, forcing herself upright. Her surroundings came into focus a cavern, if it could be called that.The walls pulsed faintly with veins of sickly light, shadows writhing in their crac