The world slipped again.
One breath, they were in the Sky Fortress corridor, the next, Ania and Yureiv stood beneath a sky that wasn't real.
Memory space.
It swallowed them whole.
The memory didn't share a single timeline.
Yureiv and Ania were separated, different fragments, different emotions.
---
Yureiv's Vision
The air around him pulsed with anger barely contained.
He stood in the center of a royal chamber, opulent, cold, and shrouded in mourning.
Nimpha sat stiffly on her drawing room, her face unreadable.
Around her, stood soldiers, bowed, and backed away like the walls were caving in.
Then---
A messenger entered.
Yureiv couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
He could only watch.
The man knelt. Voice trembling.
"My Queen... it's your son. The prince... he was executed. He's… gone."
Time didn't slow.
It fractured.
The silence in the hall was deafening.
Nimpha didn't scream. Didn't fall. Didn't shatter.
She stood.
Every soldier in the room straightened like the weight of war had just returned.
"Who," she asked, "dares take my son from me?"
The answer was clear before the words even came.
"His Majesty, King Urdeil, the new king. He ordered his execution."
Yureiv clenched his fists, despite knowing, he could not speak, could not interfere.
He could only witness the storm that followed.
Nimpha's face didn't twist in grief.
It hardened.
"Then let the earth forget mercy," she said coldly. "We answer with blood."
The chamber trembled with the force of her rage, an emotion buried so long, now peeled raw.
Yureiv's heart ached.
This was not the Nimpha the world remembered. This was the woman behind the veil.
The mother who had lost her son to war, and vowed no peace until his soul was answered.
---
Ania's Space
Meanwhile, Ania stood in darkness.
Then---
A roar.
Not from a beast, but from a soul torn in two.
The fragment before her pulsed wild with grief and fury. It paced, lashed out, screamed, but it was wordless. Mindless. A soul caught in that exact second between heartbreak and revenge.
Ania flinched but didn't move away.
Instead, she breathed.
Stepped closer.
And whispered softly, "It wasn't your fault."
The fragment shuddered.
Another step.
Her hand reached forward, open, vulnerable.
"You didn't fail him. You loved him."
The rage faltered.
Not gone, but redirected. Not an explosion. A tremor.
Ania closed her fingers around the soul fragment, pulling it close.
Light flared.
And then, it was done.
---
A Few Days Later
The final pull came without warning.
Ania and Yureiv were pulled into memory space one last time.
This time, the world was quiet.
A garden.
Unreal. Timeless.
And Nimpha sat alone, her hands folded on her lap, face calm, finally calm.
Ania approached slowly, Yureiv hovering just behind her.
"I remember now," Nimpha said gently. "All of it. The fury. The silence. The helplessness. I tried so hard to be Queen, I forgot how to be a mother. I buried my grief… and it became a curse."
Yureiv bowed his head.
But Nimpha stood and faced them both.
"You brought me back."
A faint glow lit the air, her soul mending itself at last.
"And now… I can rest. But not disappear."
She placed a hand over her heart, and then turned her palm outward.
A glowing sigil traced itself mid-air, Nimpha's seal. A soul now whole, ready to be bound.
"I will remain. Inside the Ring. Not as a Queen… but as a guardian."
Then she looked beyond the dream, toward the Shadow Guards watching from the edges of the veil.
Their armor flickered.
The haze that once hung over them like a curse… lifted.
"We can feel again," one murmured.
"We can fight again," another whispered, awe in their voice.
As Nimpha's essence dissolved into golden light, streaming toward the Ring of Seal's core, the lingering regrets faded too.
Not erased, answered.
And as the light faded---
Yureiv and Ania opened their eyes again…
Back in the Fortress.
Together.
Forever changed.
---
Rain swept across the London skyline in quiet sheets, soft against the old stone of the palace balcony. Sofie stood at its edge, alone, her gaze fixed on the horizon, not searching, just… steady.
Then, a warmth.
She looked down.
The Ring of Seal on her finger glowed.
Not in alarm. Not in danger.
It pulsed with a quiet certainty. A presence.
And from the corners of the terrace where no sound had come---
The Shadow Guards emerged.
They stepped forward, one by one, black cloaks rippling with purpose. No longer sluggish, no longer weighed by invisible sorrow. Their movements were cleaner now. Sharper. Each step firm. Proud.
One knelt before her, head bowed, voice clear.
"My Queen," he said, reverent. "Queen Nimpha's soul has returned to rest. The fragments are whole. Her will now lives in the ring. And we---"
He looked up.
"---are no longer burdened."
The others followed, kneeling, one after another, each movement echoing with something Sofie hadn't seen in them before.
Clarity.
"We feel it," another said. "Her grief has lifted. Her regrets… gone. We stand now not as penance, but as soldiers."
Sofie didn't speak, but she didn't need to. She met each gaze, calm and unflinching.
The ring still glowed, faint but steady. A heartbeat from a queen long passed, now held within her.
And as the Shadow Guards stood taller, freer than before, Sofie turned from the rain.
The echoes of the past had settled.
And the future had just been handed its sword.
---
The screen in front of him bled red.
Not from glitch. Not from failure.
From loss.
One by one, every node across the world dimmed into silence. Safehouses, labs, relay points, breeding pits, all gone. Carved out of the earth like tumors cut by a precise and merciless blade. Demonfire's emblem flickered across a dozen feeds, sometimes in ash, sometimes in flame, but always the same message:
We found you.
And we're not done.
Volton sat on his makeshift throne, twisted steel welded from the wreckage of a lab that once birthed gods. The room around him pulsed with the quiet hum of failing power, backup generators feeding only what was necessary.
Him.
His chair.
And the final screen.
The map once bloomed with vitality, red markers of control, white threads of movement, silver pulses of new Reapers in progress. Now, it was a corpse. A bleeding skeleton of what once ruled the dark.
Only one marker remained untouched.
A single green dot.
His own.
Volton leaned forward slightly, resting his knuckles against his jaw, his other hand curled into a fist against the armrest, the faintest tremor in his fingers betraying the rage that simmered beneath his skin.
He watched the green dot.
Watched it flicker.
"Let them come," he murmured.
Behind him stood the Four.
His Perfect Reapers.
Tall. Composed. Silent.
They didn't blink as the feeds replayed the fall of Morocco, the collapse in Siberia, the blaze in East Africa. Faces void of emotion, eyes tracking every image with clinical stillness.
Not one flinched.
Not one questioned.
They were not shaken.
They were waiting.
The tension hung thick in the air, oppressive and electric. Like a storm trapped behind glass. Like claws scraping just beneath the surface.
Volton's foot tapped once against the metal floor. The sound echoed, soft but final.
No alarms.
No orders.
Just the slow collapse of an empire.
And the calm before a reckoning.
"They've bled for this," he said, voice even, almost tired. "Let's see if they're willing to drown for it."
The screen refreshed.
The green dot pulsed again.
And somewhere across the broken spine of the eastern seaboard… the wind changed.