The silence after the battle was not silence at all. It was the hum of dying storms, the faint hiss of scorched air, and the brittle sound of crystal shards that was cracking under the Crest's boots.
Where once phantasms had towered and illusions forged from grief and flame, only fragments remained. Shattered cores of green-black crystal lay scattered across the ruined shrine, which was still smoldering with necrotic heat.
The Crest stood in the wreckage, panting and each of them was filled with blood, each of them was trembling from more than wounds. They had fought memories tonight, not merely monsters.
Kelvin marked first, his gauntleted hand hovering over a shard as large as his palm. It pulsed faintly, with veins of light threading across its fractured surface. It did not feel dead. It felt like is waiting.
