The heart of the Obsidian Rift pulsed like a wounded organ. The deeper Kael went, the more the air trembled around him — as though the world itself was humming, waiting for the final note.
Stone twisted beneath his feet. Old chants echoed without mouths. The gravity around him became chaotic, folding in odd patterns, as if even the laws of nature weren't sure what was real anymore.
And at the center, standing before the throne of memory, was Elarys.
She stood still, her robes swaying in the soundless wind, eyes glowing with moonlit conviction.
"You're early," she said, smiling gently. "I thought you'd hesitate longer."
"I've had enough hesitation," Kael replied, staff sparking with compressed gravity. "You're trying to bring him back."
Elarys tilted her head. "He never left. You're the one who abandoned him. But I didn't. I listened. I remembered."
Echoes of the First
Kael's eyes drifted to the obsidian throne.
There, half-consumed by dark crystal and flickering remnants of form, sat the core of the First Vessel — not a man, not a corpse, but something worse: a fragment.
A mind frozen mid-thought. A soul trapped mid-song.
And when Kael stepped closer… it looked at him.
"I knew you'd come," it said in a voice like layered echoes.
Kael froze. "What… are you?"
"I am what's left when you forget who you are."
It reached toward him—not with a hand, but with resonance. The same pulse Kael had discovered in the Temple. But this one… was twisted.
"You were born to complete me."
Kael stumbled back as a wave of gravity erupted from the throne, pushing him to his knees. The entire rift vibrated with the clash of past and present.
Elarys' Truth
Elarys raised her hand. The air bent. Seven Choir runes floated around her like moons.
"This is why I reached out to Aeris. Why I risked everything. Kael, don't you get it?"
"You're not trying to resurrect him," Kael realized. "You're trying to merge us."
She smiled. "It's the only way to restore harmony. You are incomplete. But with him—you become the original. The one who can reshape this world."
Kael stood slowly, his aura darkening with dense gravity. "Or I become the weapon that breaks it completely."
The Battle Begins
With no more words left, Elarys struck first.
Her song surged across the rift — not as sound, but as command. Each note twisted the world, forcing memories to materialize as weapons: spears of old regrets, shields of shattered futures.
Kael responded in kind. His gravity didn't just crush — it neutralized her resonance, swallowing it in pockets of silence.
BOOM.
The first clash split the sky above. The Rift screamed.
Kael's gravity compressed the ground into diamond under his feet. Elarys's song rewrote the walls into shifting illusions, looping fragments of Kael's childhood, his pain, his fears.
"She's using your memories against you," Sera cried from the ledge above.
Kael gritted his teeth. "Then I'll make new ones."
Fusion Attempt
As Kael lunged forward, the throne behind Elarys began to glow — reacting to his presence. The soul fragment of the First Vessel began to rise, breaking free from the chains of time.
"Become me," it whispered.
Kael's gravity spasmed, his core pulsing between blue and black. His body flickered — as if two versions of himself were fighting for control.
"NO—" Kael roared, dropping to one knee as a tidal wave of remembrance hit him.
He saw visions — universes collapsing, Choirs torn apart, a god-like version of himself standing over a burning world.
He remembered it all.