The scream tore out of Kael before thought.The shard burned in his grip, violet-white fire racing his veins.
The Custodian did not flinch.
It loomed in the doorway, half-formed—body more absence than flesh, fog drifting through it like smoke in cracked glass. Across its chest blazed the fractured eye: seven shards orbiting a black slit pupil.
The symbol pulsed in rhythm with the shard.
Kael pulled harder.
The air split. The walls bent inward, plaster groaning. The lamp burst, oil and flame scattering across the table—but fire froze mid-leap, droplets suspended like amber sparks. Time itself stretched taut, trembling.
The shard screamed in his hand.
"Break," Kael rasped, throat tearing.
The Custodian tilted its head. Its fog-rimmed edges rippled, as if amused. Then it raised a jointless hand ending in nothing. The frozen fire unraveled—flames streaking backward into oil, lamp glass reforming midair.
Time reversed.
Kael staggered, teeth bared. The shard pulsed frantic, bleeding heat into his bones. Blood streamed from his nose, his ears, his eyes.
But he did not stop.
He pulled again.
–––
The room fractured.
Mirrors bloomed across the walls, countless and sudden, each one reflecting Kael. Some screamed. Some laughed. Some sat hollow-eyed, hands blackened with ash.
And in every reflection, the Custodian appeared. Not once the same—winged, serpentine, child-shaped, faceless. All watching.
Kael clawed at the fragment's power, dragging at the threads of reality. His ribs ached, body trembling toward collapse. But the visions bent—just enough.
Mirrors shivered. One shattered, then another. Glass rained inward, shards cutting nothing, falling through him like mist.
For a heartbeat, Kael thought he had won.
Then the Custodian moved.
–––
It stepped forward without sound. The air withered beneath its weight, floorboards blackening, peeling into dust. The fractured eye flared brighter, splitting into seven beams that pierced Kael's skull.
He dropped to his knees, screaming.
The shard seared his palm, violet scars burning deep. Visions tore him wide: cities collapsing, oceans boiling, skies filled with endless fractured eyes.
The Custodian's voice unfurled, layered and endless:
Kael Ardyn. You are already ours.
Kael convulsed. "No—"
Every pull binds you. Every memory feeds us. You are hollowing for us.
"No!" His throat was shredded by blood. "It's mine—my choice!"
The shard blazed white-hot. His veins lit like rivers of fire.
He dragged everything inside out.
–––
The world shattered.
Walls dissolved into a storm. Furniture made of ash. Shadows stretched into infinite corridors where nothing lived.
Kael floated, weightless, suspended in violet fire.
The Custodian towered whole at last: a figure of glass and void, seven fractures splitting its chest. The pupil within turned, unblinking.
Kael's body unraveled at the edges, bones flickering into threads of light. Still, his grip on the shard tightened.
He pulled.
The Custodian staggered. Its outline faltered, face twisting—man, woman, beast, child. The fractured eye cracked wider, light spilling.
Kael laughed, wild, broken. "I can bend it. I can—"
The shard screamed.
Something snapped.
–––
Kael collapsed onto the floorboards.
The room was whole again. His chair is upright. The lamp is steady, flame calm.
But the air was wrong. Too still. Too thick.
The Custodian was gone.
Kael gasped, wiping blood from his face with trembling hands. The shard lay dim in his palm, no brighter than coal.
He laughed once. Twice. Ragged. Sharp.
Had he driven it off? Broken it?
He staggered upright, clutching the table for balance. His vision swam, doubling.
The cracked mirror showed his reflection—grinning when he wasn't.
Kael froze.
The reflection leaned closer, lips moving soundlessly. Then, across its chest, the fractured eye bloomed. Violet light spilled through the glass.
Kael reeled back—
–––
The knock came again.
Three raps. Slow. Patient.
His blood iced.
He turned to the door. His knees shook, but he could not look away.
The shard pulsed once in his hand—faint. Eager.
The bolt rattled.
Kael whispered, voice shredded, desperate:
"Not again."
The door began to open.