The Watcher's roar didn't just echo across the marble platform—it tore through the very fabric of the realm.
The fractured sky above split wider, jagged rifts spilling raw light and shadow in equal measure. Islands of broken cities drifted closer, smashing into one another with thunderous force. Rivers of fire cascaded upward, only to vanish into black holes that flickered like dying stars.
The Dominion was unraveling.
The Shifting Battlefield
The marble platform beneath their feet cracked like a spider's web. Pieces tilted, some rising, others sinking toward the abyss.
"Stay close!" Carlos shouted as the ground lurched beneath them. He barely managed to keep his footing as a slab of marble tilted at a dangerous angle.
Rina grabbed Maren's wrist just before she slipped. "I'm not dying in this nightmare," she hissed, dragging her back from the edge.
The Watcher stood at the platform's center, its body now a swirling colossus of void and shattered stars. With every step it took, the ground split further apart. Its sheer presence pulled at the fragments, as though gravity bent toward it.
"Look at the ground!" Lys cried, pointing.
Faces pressed against the marble from below—half-formed, screaming, whispering. Hands reached up through the cracks, grasping at their ankles. Not illusions this time. Not reflections. Something deeper, hungrier.
Thalor slammed his shield against the floor, crushing the grasping hands of shadow. "The Dominion itself fights us!"
The Watcher's Games
The Watcher did not strike immediately. Instead, it extended its arms wide, and the mirrors reformed, shards floating in the air around them. This time, they did not show reflections of the heroes.
They showed worlds.
Carlos staggered back as one shard displayed a vivid scene of his family's home—his mother's voice echoing faintly through the glass. Another shard showed him sitting at his desk in the real world, headset glowing, untouched meal beside him.
Lys froze as another shard showed her village, green fields burning under a crimson sky. Rina snarled as one displayed the shadow of a man she had spent her life hunting, his face twisted with laughter.
Each shard pulled at them, tempting, accusing, whispering of paths unchosen and mistakes made.
"Fragments of truth," the Watcher intoned. "See the lives you abandoned. See the lies you built. Which of you deserves to leave this place?"
The platform shifted again, dropping one massive slab into the abyss. It fell for endless moments before finally vanishing into the void below. The abyss itself howled, as though welcoming a meal.
Maren clutched her staff tighter, voice breaking. "It's trying to shake us apart. If we doubt ourselves here, we're finished."
Carlos gritted his teeth, forcing himself to look away from the shard of his home. "We can't look back. We have to keep moving forward."
The Descent of Shadows
The Watcher finally moved.
Its arms stretched impossibly long, plunging into the abyss. When they rose again, they carried chains of pure darkness. From those chains hung figures—dozens of them—each a prisoner writhing in silence.
The chains smashed down onto the platform, splitting it into smaller fragments. The prisoners dissolved into swarms of shadow-creatures, shrieking as they swarmed toward the heroes.
"Here it comes!" Rina shouted, spinning her daggers.
Lys nocked three arrows at once, eyes narrowing. "Keep moving. Don't let them surround us."
Carlos raised the Blade of Ascension. Its white fire burned brighter, as though sensing the Dominion's unraveling. For the first time, it felt alive in his grip, like it wanted to fight as much as he did.
The shadows closed in. The Watcher loomed, still watching, still waiting. It wasn't trying to end them quickly. It wanted to wear them down, to break their will before the final blow.
And the Dominion itself shook, groaned, and split apart around them, threatening to drag them into the abyss even before the Watcher struck in full.
They stood on crumbling ground, enemies closing in, a godlike being towering over them, and no path forward but through.
The battle for survival had become a battle against despair itself.