The Rift vibrated with a low, bone deep hum like the world was exhaling in fear.Kael’s older counterpart stepped fully into the emberlight, shadows clinging to him like living threads. His aura wasn’t just stronger than before, It was oppressive quietly violent.A gravity that bent reality around him.Veylen moved in front of Kael in a single fluid step.“Stay behind me,”he murmured.Kael didn’t argue. His instincts screamed.The older Kael tilted his head slightly, studying Veylen with that calm, terrible precision “You again.”Veylen’s expression sharpened “You’re early.”“I accelerated,” the older Kael replied. “The convergence required it.”Kael snapped, “Stop speaking like I’m not here!”His counterpart shifted his gaze to him and Kael felt it like a physical blow not pain and not force Recognition.“You’re stabilizing,”the older Kael observed. “Good. It will make the merge easier.”Kael felt ice crawl up his spine. “M,merge?”The older version took two steps forward.Veylen’s hand

Light exploded outward, swallowing the chamber in a storm of gold and shadow. Khyra staggered under the force, teeth clenched as the energy ripped through her senses like a thousand unspoken truths. The Fractural Core wasn’t just reacting, It was actually judging.Shadow Khyra’s laughter cut through the roar like a blade.“Do you feel it? It knows which version is stronger.”Khyra’s boots slid back across the fractured stone as the gravitational pull intensified around the Core. A halo of splintered reality formed around her mirror self glass like fragments turning to orbit her in a tight spiral.Jalen fought the pressure, dragging Orion behind a jutting slab of Nullglass. “We can’t get close!”he shouted, shielding his eyes with his arm. “The Core’s field is locking us out!”Orion’s voice quavered, panicked despite his calm exterior. “It’s creating a duality alignment test it must determine a primary resonance”“Two identical signatures can’t coexist in its proximity.”Jalen growled

The chamber exploded into motion as shadows rushed in like a tidal wave featureless bodies shaped from fracture energy, their edges flickering like torn film. They moved too fast, too synchronized, bending around each other's movement like a single, monstrous organism.Jalen grabbed Khyra’s elbow.“Khyra there are too many”“There are exactly enough.”Her voice was too calm then her aura ignited two colors: gold and storm blue twined into spiraling rings around her arms.The threads she had summonedearlier now unfurled like awakened serpents, weaving over her skin in luminous patterns.The shadows halted not out of fear but recognition.“Mergebearer”The voice rolled through the chamber, as if every shThe chamber exploded into motion Shadows rushed in like a tidal wave featureless bodiesshaped from fracture energy, their edges flickering like torn film. They moved too fast, too synchronized, bending around each other's movement like a single, monstrous organism.Jalen grabbed Khyra’s

The storm hit Ardenfall the moment Astra, Kael, Nyra, Orion, and Riven crossed its fractured threshold. Not a storm of rain or wind Those would have been merciful but a storm of memory.Shredded echoes drifted through the sky like torn pages of a forgotten book. Buildings flickeredbetween states: whole, ruined, half reconstructed, then ancient and gleaming for a heartbeat before rotting into dust again. Streets dippedin and out of alignment. Shadows crossed intersections where no one walked. The entire city breathed like a massive, wounded animal dreamingitself into being and then dreaming itself apart.Astra felt it immediately, a sharp static pressure at the base of her skull.“This place it’s alive,” she whispered.Orion shook his head. “Alive" isn't the word. Could be bound, forced or “something stitched the city into a loop of remembering and forgetting.”Nyra traced a finger across a wall that kept flickering from brick to glass to bone. She snatched her hand back as it phased

Astra fell not downwards but inward but the sound vanished first. Then light. Then the sensation of having a body at all. She wasn’t tumblingthrough space so much as being peeled apart by layers of reality, each one whispering a different version of her name.Astra, Thread bearer,Anomaly,Mistake “No,”she gasped except there was no air, no lungs, no mouth. The word existed because she insisted it did.Something grabbed her wrist really hard “Astra stay with me!”Kael’s voice was real and anchoring so her vision snapped back in fragments. Color bled in so much that pain followed. She slammed onto cold, glassy ground, breath ripping into her chest like a blade She coughed. “Kael?”“I’ve got you,” he said quickly, hands on her shoulders, face pale with relief. “You just vanished and were gone.”Nyra crouched nearby, blades out, scanning the dark. “We’re not in Ardenfall anymore. Or anywhere I recognize.”Orion knelt, fingers pressed to the ground. “This isn’t a place but It’s a junctio