The green light swallowed everything.
Cled couldn't tell if he was falling, burning, or dissolving. The roar from the fissure had no sound—only pressure, an unending weight pressing on his mind. The world fractured again, the sky above his spirit cracking like glass. Through each break, he saw flashes of things that were not his own: battles fought beneath red suns, shadows walking on rivers of molten gold, and a thousand eyes opening in the dark.
The light collapsed.
When Cled hit the ground, it wasn't stone beneath him anymore—it was something alive. The surface pulsed, faintly breathing, its warmth rhythmic and slow. He staggered to his feet, panting, his dagger dim at his side. Around him stretched a vast plain of shadow and pale fire. The air shimmered with whispers.
He was no longer inside the mountain.
He was somewhere beneath it.
> "The vessel awakens…"
The voice came again—vast, endless, neither male nor female, echoing from every direction. It wasn't sound, it was gravity. Its words pulled at him.
Cled steadied himself, tightening his grip on the dagger. "Show yourself."
> "You stand where no light dares linger. You, who bear the fracture, would command the abyss?"
The ground trembled. From the distance, a shape rose—tall, skeletal, wrapped in veils of smoke. Its form was constantly changing, sometimes human, sometimes winged, sometimes only a column of dark fire. Eyes—too many to count—blinked open across its shifting frame.
Cled's heart hammered. "You're what the Heart warned me about."
> "The Heart… a remnant of order. A wound that refused to heal. It thought to test you, to see if you could survive truth."
"Now, I will show you what survival costs."
The being stepped closer. The air froze solid around it. Where its feet touched the living ground, frost spread like veins of death. Cled raised his dagger, but the light refused to answer his call. His golden aura flickered weakly, as though suffocating.
"I don't fear you," he said, though his voice cracked.
The abyss's laughter was slow and cold. "You will."
A wave of force struck him. He was thrown backward, crashing through rippling air. Pain exploded through his chest. He landed hard, sliding across the surface that felt like frozen glass. His breath misted. The air tasted of iron and smoke.
Then—his dagger pulsed. The faint ember from the Heart glowed inside it, defiant.
Cled pressed a trembling hand to it. "If you are watching… lend me your strength."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, faint golden light flared across the dagger's surface. The crackling glow spread up his arm, mixing with the green corruption that had tainted it. The two colors fought violently, neither giving way.
> "You would merge sky and abyss?" the voice rumbled. "You are more foolish than those before you."
Cled gritted his teeth. "No… I'm not merging them. I'm balancing them."
He swung.
The dagger released a wave of light and shadow intertwined—gold and emerald spiraling together like a storm of creation and decay. The blast struck the abyssal figure square in the chest. The creature staggered, smoke tearing off its form, revealing something almost human beneath—an echo of a face, sorrowful and old.
> "You… remember us," it whispered.
"What?" Cled demanded.
> "We were the first… the sky's chosen… until the Heart sealed us away."
The world quaked. Around them, other shapes began to rise from the darkness—more figures, each different, each ancient. Their eyes burned green. Some wore armor made of scales, others carried banners of light turned black by time.
Cled's breath caught. "You're the Fallen Chosen."
> "We are what happens when will outlasts purpose," the first figure said, its voice breaking. "You carry what we lost. You carry the fracture. The choice."
The abyss pulsed again, stronger now. The figures convulsed, their forms melting back into the dark as the true voice of the abyss filled the world.
> "Enough remembrance. The vessel must break."
The ground split open. From beneath, a colossal hand of green fire erupted, grasping toward the sky—or what passed for a sky down here. The hand's fingers brushed Cled's aura, and he felt his soul ripple, unraveling like thread. Images burst into his mind—his mother's laughter, the mountain village, his father's voice, the boy he once was—all dissolving.
"No!" He screamed, forcing his will outward. Golden light surged, wrapping around him like wings of flame. The hand recoiled slightly, hissing.
Cled gasped for breath. His vision blurred. "You can't have me."
> "You are already mine."
From the shadows, tendrils lashed out, slamming into his chest. He flew backward again, this time smashing into something solid—an obelisk made of dark crystal. It pulsed once, then shattered. A flood of energy poured into him—alien, heavy, ancient. His veins burned.
Cled screamed, falling to his knees. The golden light around him flared, then dimmed. His left eye flickered between gold and green. His veins shone through his skin, twin rivers of light and corruption.
The abyss laughed again, deep and patient.
> "So it begins. The union of what was sundered."
> "The Heart gave you balance. I give you truth."
"Truth?" Cled gasped, clutching his chest. "This… this is corruption!"
> "No. This is you."
A mirror appeared before him—formed of liquid shadow. In its reflection, he saw not himself, but a being with wings of both gold and void, eyes burning with twin flames. It was him, but more. Terrible and divine.
> "You are the child of the fracture," the abyss said softly. "Neither sky nor abyss. Both. The world will call you savior or destroyer, but in truth… you will be the end of both realms."
Cled's knees gave out. The reflection shattered, and the pieces of it shot into him like shards of glass. Power flooded his limbs—raw, chaotic, unstoppable. The ground beneath him cracked, golden and green lightning racing outward in spirals.
The abyss's laughter turned into silence.
Everything froze.
Cled rose slowly. His eyes glowed with both lights now—one gold, one emerald. His aura was neither warm nor cold, but something entirely new. The dagger floated beside him, humming as if alive.
"I understand now," he said quietly.
> "Do you?" The abyss whispered, almost curious.
Cled looked upward—if "up" even existed here—and clenched his fist. "The fracture wasn't just a wound. It was a seed."
He drove his hand into the living ground.
Energy exploded outward in concentric rings. The plain of shadow trembled, cracking open to reveal rivers of molten light beneath. The air screamed as the abyss recoiled, its form unraveling under the force of Cled's awakening power.
> "Impossible… you cannot wield both!"
"Watch me."
The light consumed everything again. For an instant, all was silent, and then the world flipped—sky became ground, ground became sky. The fissure that had dragged him down reversed, sucking the energy back into the mountain above.
Cled's body was torn between two forces—one pulling him toward the light of the Heart, the other dragging him deeper into the abyss. The space between them cracked like glass.
"Not yet…" he growled, forcing his aura outward again. "I won't be your vessel. And I won't be your savior."
He reached toward the fading light above. His dagger shot upward like a comet, embedding itself into the very heart of the fissure. The two energies—Sky and Abyss—swirled around it, forming a vast ring of power.
> "Then you choose neither?" the abyss asked.
"I choose freedom."
The ring detonated.
A sound like the first dawn filled the void. The world inverted once more, and Cled was flung upward, back toward the world of stone and frost. The abyss's final whisper chased him, faint but lingering:
> "Freedom always comes with a price, fractured one…"
Cled's vision dimmed as the light consumed him. The last thing he saw was the mountain collapsing inward, folding into itself, and a green eye opening in the heart of the crater.
Then—darkness.