The ground quaked as the skeletal warriors advanced, their hollow frames rattling like wind through a dead forest. Their weapons were nothing more than shards of broken starlight bound with sinew of shadow, but the energy radiating from them was older than any human empire.
Kaelen tightened his grip on the relic. It pulsed with heat, each wave searing his bones from the inside. The First Thread wants me to use it. Wants me to give in.
Lyra stepped forward, blaster raised, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Stay with me, Kaelen. Don't let it pull you under."
The skeletal tide surged. Lyra fired, bolts of plasma ripping through the first wave. Bones shattered and disintegrated, yet fragments of light and dust reformed, knitting themselves back together.
"They don't stay dead," she hissed.
"Then we break them faster than they can rebuild." Kaelen slashed with the relic, a sweep of violet fire that tore through six at once. For an instant, the void screamed as if the universe itself remembered their deaths.
But then the army reassembled, bone by bone, rising again.
The First Thread's voice shook the realm:
"They are memory given shape. You cannot erase memory."
Kaelen's chest burned. Memories not his own flooded him—wars fought long before Earth was born, loves lost to the void, betrayals that scarred civilizations. Every swing of the relic bled those memories into him until his knees buckled.
Lyra saw it, panic sparking in her chest. She grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "Kaelen, listen to me! They're trying to bury you in the past. Stay here—with me."
Her voice cut through the storm. For a heartbeat, the relic's light dimmed. Kaelen met her gaze, anchoring himself. "I'm here."
Together, they shifted tactics. Instead of fighting to destroy, Lyra and Kaelen fought to distract—dodging, weaving, pulling the skeletal warriors apart. Lyra led them into a narrow fissure, bottlenecking their advance.
"Now!" she shouted.
Kaelen drove the relic into the ground. The fissure blazed, glyphs igniting one by one. The entire canyon erupted in light, swallowing the skeletal army in a scream of fractured energy.
When the light faded, silence hung heavy. The bones had dissolved into ash, drifting upward like dust toward the shattered planets above.
Lyra's chest heaved. "Did… did we win?"
Kaelen lowered the relic, his hand shaking. "No. We just survived the First move."
The colossal eye of the First Thread loomed once more, unblinking.
"Interesting. You resist forgetting. Perhaps you are strong enough to bear what comes next. The Watcher tested your reflection. I will test your future."
The ground split again, wider this time. Through the chasm they glimpsed a burning city—not of stone or steel, but of light itself, collapsing in slow motion. Screams echoed from within, human and alien alike.
Lyra grabbed Kaelen's arm. "That's… not real, is it?"
Kaelen's jaw tightened, eyes fixed on the vision. "No. It's worse. It's what's waiting if we fail."