CHAPTER 71 — THE WARDEN'S CHILDREN
The void no longer felt empty.
It felt… watched.
Pearl could feel it the moment she and Ardyn emerged from the collapsing mouth of the Sunken God-Archives. The fractured Citadel drifted in the far distance like a wounded titan, its broken spires rotating slowly through the void, but something new had crept into the silence.
A presence.
Not just one.
Many.
Her fragment pulsed in warning, low and rapid, like a terrified heartbeat against her palm. The silver light around her wings dimmed slightly, as if the universe itself had drawn in a breath.
"Do you feel that?" Ardyn asked quietly, his hand already drifting toward his blade.
"Yes…" Pearl whispered. "And it's not the Warden."
The void in front of them rippled.
Not like a disturbance in water… but like reality flinching.
From the folds of broken space, something moved forward.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Tall figures emerged from the darkness, perfectly still. They were vaguely humanoid, but stretched, elongated, their limbs jointed in impossible ways. Their bodies were not flesh, not metal, but something in between — a smooth, matte surface like dark stone infused with faint pulsing veins of crimson light.
Where their faces should have been, there was nothing but a mirror-like surface. And in each of those mirrors…
Pearl saw herself.
Not physically — but versions of her. Angry. Broken. Consumed. Lost. Powerful. Destroyer. Goddess. Monster.
"They're made from your reflection," Ardyn murmured. "The Warden… he studied you. These are his answer to your evolution."
A low unearthly sound rolled from them. Not speech. More like resonance. Vibration that passed through bone rather than air.
The nearest one stepped forward and the void beneath it cracked.
Pearl's wings spread wide. "Warden-spawn," she said coldly. "I am not your creator."
The creature tilted its head.
Then it spoke — in her voice.
"You are our beginning."
The words hit like ice.
Immediately, the others shifted, circling, gliding rather than walking, their movements synchronized as if controlled by one mind.
"Pearl…" Ardyn began, stepping back-to-back with her. "These aren't soldiers. They're constructs. Weapons built to understand you… to copy you… to destroy you from within."
Silver light crackled along Pearl's arms. The power from the Sunken Archives stirred, waiting for command. "Then I won't fight them like enemies," she replied. "I'll end them like errors."
The first one lunged.
The void bent around it as it struck, faster than anything she'd faced before. Pearl twisted mid-air and slammed a wave of compressed silver energy into its chest. The impact echoed across dimensions.
The creature shattered… then reformed.
Its fragments reassembled around a core of dark light, the mirror-face now reflecting a version of Pearl screaming in silent agony.
"I don't like that trick," Ardyn muttered, slashing through another that came at him. The blade passed through the body, leaving only ripples in its form before it reknit itself again, unharmed.
"They can't be destroyed by force alone," Pearl realized. "They are bound to me — to possibility."
More of them closed in, forming a wide circle around her. Their mirrored faces now displayed moments from her past: the fractured Citadel, the Colossus chained, the Warden's glowing eyes.
Her fears.
Her doubts.
Her future nightmares.
Each image was meant to destabilize her.
"You will break," they whispered in unison, their voices layered with dozens of tones. "You will choose power over balance… and we will be born of your failure."
Pearl clenched her fists, forcing her mind to steady.
"No," she replied through gritted teeth. "You exist because he is afraid of what I can become."
The Warden's presence suddenly brushed against her consciousness — far away, yet intimately close, like cold fingers along her spine.
Do you like them? his voice slithered into her thoughts. I made them from the parts of you that you pretend not to see. They are your truth.
Her eyes flared silver.
"Then watch your truth be undone," she whispered.
Instead of attacking again, she did something different.
She stopped.
Lowered her hands.
Folded her wings slowly.
The creatures froze, confused by the shift.
Pearl closed her eyes, and for the first time in a long while, she allowed herself to feel everything — the fear, the anger, the grief, the darkness — and she did not reject it.
She accepted it.
Balanced it.
The fragment in her hand blazed white-silver.
When she opened her eyes, her reflection was no longer in them.
Only starlight.
"I am not afraid of what I am," she said quietly.
"And because of that… you have no power here."
She lifted the fragment, and a pulse radiated outward — not destructive, but cleansing. A wave of pure balanced energy, drawn from the Sunken God-Archives, carrying the memory of the first Moon Heirs' harmony.
One by one, the mirrored beings began to crack, not from damage… but from truth.
Their reflective faces shattered like glass, revealing emptiness inside. No soul. No will. No identity.
They were lies given form.
And lies could not survive clarity.
A chorus of distorted screams echoed as their forms unraveled, dissolving into ash-light that scattered into the void.
Within moments… silence returned.
Only Pearl and Ardyn remained, hovering in the vast dark.
Ardyn looked at her like he had never seen her before. "That was… different. You didn't fight them. You erased the reason for their existence."
"I remembered who I was," she murmured, her glow softening.
A slow, deliberate clap echoed through the nothingness.
Time seemed to freeze.
Reality folded inward.
Then he appeared.
The Warden.
Towering, cloaked in a shifting mantle of darkness and fractured gold. His eyes blazed brighter now, sharpened with something new: obsession mixed with respect.
"Remarkable," he said, his voice echoing in multiple layers. "You are no longer just reacting, Pearl of the Moon. You are becoming."
Pearl did not move.
"You made children from broken glass," she replied calmly. "And you expected them to hold the sky."
He smiled beneath the shadow of his hood. "They were not meant to defeat you." His gaze slid briefly to Ardyn. "They were meant to measure you."
"And?" she asked.
His eyes darkened with satisfaction.
"You have crossed the threshold. The Archives chose you… and now, so will the void."
Ardyn stepped forward, blade burning with energy. "Say what you came to say and leave, Warden, before I make you regret materializing so close to us."
The Warden laughed softly. "Bold, as always."
Then his stare locked onto Pearl fully.
"In three cycles of the broken moon, the Vein Gates will open. When they do, creation itself will split between shadow and light. You will come to them."
He gestured toward the endless dark behind him.
"And there… the Colossus will kneel to only one of us."
A heavy silence.
Pearl's fingers tightened at her side.
"And if I refuse?" she asked.
The Warden's smile vanished.
"Then watch every realm you love burn in my absence."
With that, reality split behind him and swallowed his form. The tear sealed instantly, leaving only faint ripples behind.
Ardyn exhaled sharply. "Three cycles… That's a declaration of war."
Pearl stared into the darkness he had left behind. Fear touched her for only a second — then resolved into something sharper.
Determination.
"Then we don't wait for the gates to open," she said.
"We go to them first."
Her wings ignited brighter than ever.
"And we take back the future… before he can rewrite it."
The void trembled as if responding to her vow.
Far away, hidden beyond time, something ancient stirred.
And the Vein Gates… began to awaken.