The seam blazed silver, holding two horizons in a fragile knot.
Elara stepped from dusk; Elara stepped from dawn. They faced one another upon the Bridge of Memories—two halves of one vow, mirrored and unyielding.
> "We are not the same," said the dusk-born.
"But if the seam collapses, neither truth survives."
Before they could join, the air tore.
A shriek, thin as unraveling silk, split the Confluence. Petals the color of dried blood rained downward, spinning into threads. Those threads wove themselves into a figure—long-limbed, faceless, its chest a cavity where time should have been.
The Nightweaver.
Every step it took dragged a spool of darkness across the bridge.
Memories peeled from the air: a comrade's last smile, her mother's words—recast, twisted, wrong. The voices spoke again, familiar yet altered, like puppets repeating lines they had never meant.
Elara's throat tightened. She looked at her other self.
The nod they exchanged was sharp, an unspoken pact.
> "We fight not to preserve my path or yours," said the light-born, voice steady.
"We fight to keep the world's truth from being replaced."
Together they moved.
Golden blaze and shadow-fire braided into a double edge, a blade too bright for lies to cling to. The bridge rang as if acknowledging their unity, silver veins spreading outward with every step they took toward the Weaver.
But the enemy did not falter.
Its threads hooked into the horizon, tugging dawn away from dusk, dusk away from dawn—stretching the seam until even the bridge beneath their feet began to fray.
Hook: In the fracture's echo, a child's laugh spilled once more—
not innocent, but hollow, like glass struck until it cracked.
And with that laugh came words neither Elara had ever spoken, yet somehow knew:
> "You were never meant to bloom."
The Confluence shuddered, and the first battle with the Nightweaver began.