The forest was gone.
Where once trees had stood, there now stretched an endless plain of glass, reflecting a broken sky. Akuro's legion marched across it—thousands of faceless angels, each bearing spears of radiant crystal. Their steps were perfectly in sync, their hollow eyes blazing with a light that devoured shadows.
At their front, Akuro stood tall, his body blazing like a star breaking apart. The cracks along his skin glowed brighter with every step. His smile was no longer divine. It was desperate.
"Brother," he hissed, "you guard mortals who will forget you the moment you turn your back. I will carve them into memory. They will never be free of me again."
Kurogami spread his wings. His black fire howled, rising like a storm tide. Every ember that fell to the glass plain birthed shadows—warriors of flame and ash, faceless like Akuro's army, but forged from memory, not obedience.
The battlefield shook as two armies of gods collided.
The Mortal Thread
Airi stood between the clash, the air too heavy for her lungs. Every clash of spear and flame made her bones ache, her vision blur. She wanted to scream, to run—but something held her in place.
The shards.
The pieces of the shattered mirror embedded in the world still pulsed with her hymn. Through them, she felt everything—the fear of villages, the fury of mountains, the sorrow of rivers. The world itself was watching through her eyes.
She clutched her chest. "They're not fighting for gods… They're fighting for me."
No—for humanity.
The Breaking Sky
The battle raged.
Kurogami's shadow army burned like wildfire, engulfing whole ranks of Akuro's glass soldiers. But for every angel shattered, two more rose from the cracks in the earth. The plain groaned under the strain, its mirrored surface splitting, bleeding light and fire into the heavens.
The sky cracked open, revealing not stars but eyes—vast, unblinking, ancient. The watchers of the first pantheon, awakened by the clash. Their gaze alone made mortals collapse leagues away.
Akuro raised his spear toward them.
"See! I alone carry the flame of divinity unbroken! I alone am worthy of your gaze!"
The eyes turned. But they were not kind.
They looked at him—and saw a thief.
Airi's Stand
Airi fell to her knees, clutching her head as the vision of the watchers poured into her. She saw their history—gods who had demanded worship, gods who had devoured worlds, gods who had feared Kurogami's truth. They had sealed him not because he was evil, but because he refused to rule.
Her ancestor's voice whispered again:
"The abyss does not hunger. It reflects. That is why they feared him."
She staggered to her feet, her voice raw, trembling.
"Stop this!"
Her cry echoed through the shards, carrying into every soul on the battlefield. For a moment—just a moment—the armies hesitated.
Kurogami turned, his fire dimming slightly. Akuro snarled, desperate, lunging toward her.
The Spear and the Flame
The world slowed.
Akuro's spear streaked toward Airi's heart.
Kurogami moved faster than he had in all his lives, his sword of shadow colliding with it. The clash sent a shockwave that shattered mountains, split rivers, and blinded the sky.
Airi was thrown back, landing on the fractured plain. Her body screamed in pain, but her eyes stayed open.
Through the cracks in the glass, she saw it.
A third figure, rising from beneath the battlefield.
Not light. Not shadow. Something older.
The true prisoner of the Mirror's chains.
⚫ To Be Continued...
Chapter Ten: The Third Voice
The plain shattered.
From beneath the battlefield, a figure rose—not with the crash of stone, but with the silence of a tomb opening. The glass cracked outward in rings, each fissure bleeding not light or fire, but emptiness.
Airi gasped, clutching her chest. Her hymn faltered.
"This presence… it doesn't sing. It devours."
The figure took shape. It had no face, no body—only shifting silhouettes of all things feared by mortals. Sometimes a beast. Sometimes a god. Sometimes a mirror showing only the void.
Akuro staggered back, his radiant spear dimming.
"No… impossible. It was sealed before even we were born."
Kurogami's fire guttered, his eyes narrowing.
"The Voidborn. The silence that came before song."
The Third Voice.
The Enemy of All
The Voidborn spoke—or rather, unspoke. Its words were absence, erasing sound from the battlefield. Soldiers of glass and shadow disintegrated into dust. Even the shards of the mirror trembled, dimming.
Airi clutched her ears, blood dripping. She could feel her memories being pulled away—not forgotten, but stolen. The lullabies of her childhood. Her mother's smile. The sound of her own laughter. Gone.
"No…" she whispered. "It's eating memory itself."
Akuro roared, thrusting his spear into the air. A thousand beams of light rained down upon the Voidborn. They vanished before touching it.
Kurogami unleashed his abyssal flame. It was swallowed whole.
For the first time, the twin gods looked the same—helpless.
The Fractured Path
Airi staggered to her feet. She realized with dread that the Voidborn was not fighting them. It was awakening. The battlefield was only its shadow. If it fully rose into the world, there would be nothing left—not light, not shadow, not mortals.
The watchers in the cracked sky began to scream. Their countless eyes wept blood as they turned away, abandoning the world. Even gods feared the silence.
Airi's voice trembled.
"If this thing existed before you… then why was it sealed with you?"
Kurogami's expression darkened.
"Because, child… the seal was never meant to hold me alone. I was chained as the lock upon a greater prison."
Her blood froze.
"Then breaking your chains—awakened it."
A Mortal Burden
The Voidborn shifted. It reached for her—not with hand or claw, but with a tide of emptiness that pulled at her soul.
And in that moment, Airi saw fragments of truth.
Her ancestor's choice. The thousand lives she had lived since. The hymn not as a weapon, but as a compass, guiding her to this exact moment.
She was never meant to seal gods.
She was meant to confront the thing even gods could not.
But how could she, when even Kurogami and Akuro were powerless?
A Desperate Gamble
Kurogami stepped in front of her, wings blazing with all the black fire he could summon.
"Stay behind me. This is not your burden."
But Airi shook her head, voice hoarse, body trembling.
"No. It's always been mine. That's why I kept being reborn. That's why the hymn survived."
Akuro, his face twisted with both hatred and fear, sneered.
"You're a fool. You'll be erased like the rest. Better to beg my light for protection."
But even his words shook.
Airi looked at both gods, then past them—at the Voidborn.
If shadow failed.
If light failed.
Then only humanity remained.
She took a step forward.
The Voidborn turned its faceless head toward her, and for the first time, it paused.
⚫ To Be Continued...