The world had become a landscape of ash and broken memories.

  Elena's fingers traced the outline of her hidden locket, a ritual of remembrance as automatic as breathing. Each touch a silent prayer, a fragile tether to those she had lost—her family, Jonas, and now Aiden. The weight of absence pressed against her chest, more familiar than hope. Beneath that weight, guilt whispered: What if I could have stopped it?

  The temple before them loomed, a monument to forgotten histories. Black stone and pale bone intertwined into structures that breathed ancient secrets. Obsidian gates, cracked and veined with silver, stood like broken sentinels. The ash-covered ground was a shifting canvas, each footprint a temporary scar in a world eager to erase.

  She remembered Aiden falling.

  The moment replayed—impossible stillness, horror beyond sound. One moment he stood beside her, vibrant and eternal. The next, gone. No fight. No farewell. Just silence. I should have seen it coming.

  Beyond the temple, the forest lay in a hush that suffocated. Ancient trees towered, bark the color of bone. Black moss draped between twisted limbs, swaying with breathless motion. Mist coiled through the trunks, shaping fleeting forms—a hand, a face—always dissolving before recognition.

  Thomas and Lily. They kept her upright. Anchors in a world dissolving.

  The camp had changed. Routine shattered into whispers of fear. Shadows stretched too far, lingered too long. The air tasted thin, each breath a struggle.

  At the camp’s edge, Lord Thorne stood—a pillar of grim resolve. His steel-grey eyes scanned the horizon, jaw tense with unspoken dread. Each measured movement carried decades of survival.

  Then it came.

  A ripple. Not through air or earth, but reality itself.

  Akasha arrived.

  Not walking. Manifesting. One moment absence, the next presence. Her sunlit skin radiated soft light, a defiance against the ash. Shadow-wings unfurled behind her, vast and absolute. Each feather absorbed light, silence itself gathering at their edges. Her eyes, black with flickers of crimson, bore the weight of centuries.

  “Thorne,” she said. Voice silk, but iron beneath.

  “Akasha.” His nod curt, respectful. “I’d rather it were under other circumstances .”

  “As would I.”

  They exchanged a glance. Understanding passed between them.

  Her gaze fell to Elena, gentler now. “Elena Doyle. Speak. Slowly. Hold nothing back.”

  Elena swallowed. Words trembled at first, then steadied. She spoke of the stranger, the silence, the horror. Of Aiden falling. Each word deepened the stillness. She hesitated. I should have warned him.

  Thorne’s hand found her shoulder. Steady. Warm.

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  Akasha turned to the gates, her face unreadable. She knelt by Aiden’s body, fingers brushing his brow with reverence. Her wings folded in, motion precise.

  Long moments passed.

  She rose.

  “Nothing remains,” she murmured. “No echo. No tether. He is gone.”

  Thorne’s jaw clenched. “Was it one of the Houses? Or other realms?”

  “I cannot say.” Her tone was measured. “If it were them, I would feel their mark. This was… clinical.”

  She looked to the horizon. “Varek, Lysara, and Maerros are coming. We’ll face this together.”

  “And if it returns?” Thorne asked.

  “Then we stand.”

  She exhaled slowly. “I will reach the Keepers. If knowledge of this being exists, it’s with them.”

  She turned back to Elena. Her voice softened. “You’ve been marked by something ancient. If it speaks in dreams—wake. And whatever you do… do not listen.”

  The air shifted.

  Again.

  Elena turned. Only silence.

  But beneath it, a whisper not hers.

  Aiden.

  Her heart lurched. She blinked.

  Nothing.

  A chill rippled down her spine.

  Astraxian’s eyes opened.

  Darkness gave way to two realms tangled impossibly close. His realm—a canvas of contradiction. Crystalline mountains rising from liquid ground, breathing like flesh. Rivers flowing backward, shifting between states of being. Trees growing from shadows, roots twisting in impossible geometry, branches both blooming and decaying.

  Opposite him stood Death.

  Not bones. Not a cloak.

  A presence. Absence made form. A silhouette of void. Shifting. Breathing. Sometimes ash, sometimes hollow shape, sometimes a ripple of pure negation. Where eyes should be, twin abysses devoured light and thought.

  His robes wove from twilight and forgetting, edges fraying into dust. Where it stepped, reality ceased.

  The realm around Death defied reason. A place that was not a place. Ground becoming ash. Horizons dissolving. Time dissolving.

  Death took a step forward. The ground withered beneath.

  His voice was final breaths. Last thoughts fading.

  “You could have done better.”

  Astraxian didn’t flinch. “We tried.”

  “You could have explained.”

  “We did,” Astraxian said, voice frayed. “At first. We went to the gods. Spoke of necessity. But they resisted. Fought. Pleaded. The more they struggled, the harsher the endings became.”

  Death moved. “There should have been another way.”

  “You wanted us to experiment?” Astraxian laughed, hollow. “When existence frays at the edges?”

  “And now?”

  A shadow crossed Astraxian’s face. “I wasn’t thorough last cycle. With her. Some part of me… wanted her to remember.” His voice broke. “Next time… I’ll leave nothing. No memory. No spark.”

  They stood in silence. The storm waited.

  Reality tore.

  Astraxian’s paradox shattered first. Crystals became weapons, cutting impossible lines through Death’s void.

  Death answered with erasure. Entire worlds unmade.

  Golden lances of condensed possibility shot from Astraxian’s palms, piercing through nothingness, birthing momentary universes that died before they lived.

  Death crushed them. Tendrils of absence coiled, suffocating stars.

  Astraxian hurled constellations. Stories. Hopes. Worlds in miniature. All smothered by shadow.

  The sky cracked. Death carved lines of negation. Astraxian stitched them shut with rivers of molten potential.

  Death summoned a scythe of silence, blade stretched to infinity. Each swing erased possibilities. Astraxian’s shields deflected the blows, each deflection costing pieces of him.

  They collided again and again. Creation and ending. Force and void.

  Astraxian whispered through the storm: “You wanted to remember. Let me show you.”

  And he did.

  Millennia of endings surged forth. Every last breath. Every forgotten story. The weight of memory overwhelmed Death.

  For the first time, Death trembled.

  Astraxian struck. The realms collided.

  When the echoes faded, Astraxian stood. Broken. Bleeding gold. More fracture than form. But standing.

  Opposite him, Death staggered. Wounded. A vast rift of light split its void-form, unraveling darkness into threads of fading night.

  He did not fall.

  Slowly, impossibly, Death straightened. The wound burned, brilliance bleeding through the void, but he endured.

  Astraxian’s breath rasped. He forced a bitter smile.

  “You’re as relentless as ever,” he rasped. “This... this will take a while.”

  Death’s hollow eyes locked onto him and narrowed.

  the battle was far from over.