The first thing Cled felt was wind.
Cold, fierce, and alive. It carried the scent of frost and ash, sweeping across the mountain's broken crown. For a long moment, he didn't move. His body lay half-buried in pale snow, his breath slow and uneven. Above him, the sky was no longer cracked blue — it was gold streaked with green, rippling like the inside of a living flame.
He opened his eyes.
One glowed gold. The other, a deep emerald.
The mountain was gone.
Or rather — what had once been the mountain was now a hollow crater stretching miles wide, its walls pulsing faintly as if something deep below still breathed. Wisps of golden mist drifted upward, carrying fragments of light that vanished into the air.
Cled pushed himself up, coughing. His body ached — but not like before. The pain was… distant, echoing from somewhere beyond his skin. He looked at his hands, and his pulse quickened.
Veins of light and darkness intertwined beneath his flesh — one flowing gold, the other green. When he clenched his fist, the air around it shivered.
He could feel both — the calm warmth of the Sky, and the cold hunger of the Abyss — humming together inside him like a storm that refused to rest.
> "Freedom always comes with a price…"
The abyss's last whisper echoed faintly in his mind.
Cled rose to his feet. The snow melted instantly beneath his steps, leaving golden steam in his wake. His dagger — or what was left of it — floated nearby, hovering just above the ground. It had changed too. The once pure-golden blade was now streaked with green veins, humming with unstable energy. When Cled reached for it, it responded like a living thing, fusing back into his palm in a burst of light.
And suddenly — everything around him breathed.
The air vibrated with unseen life. The wind carried voices that weren't voices — whispers of the Heart, the Abyss, and something else entirely. The mountain was no longer just stone. It was alive, awake, aware.
And watching him.
Cled's jaw tightened. "I didn't ask for this."
> "Yet you were chosen," came a new voice — calm, old, and utterly still.
Cled spun around.
A figure stood upon the ridge — cloaked in white, face hidden behind a porcelain mask shaped like a serene smile. Around its neck hung a chain of crystal feathers that glowed faintly. Wherever the figure stood, the snow refused to touch the ground.
Cled's aura flared instinctively. "Who are you?"
The masked figure tilted its head. "A messenger. Nothing more. Though it's rare for one to return from the mountain's heart alive."
"Return?" Cled's eyes narrowed. "I didn't just return. I changed it."
The figure's tone didn't shift. "The fracture within you says otherwise."
It raised a pale hand, and Cled's reflection shimmered in the air between them — golden and green light pulsing violently, his own veins writhing as if alive. He took a step back, the air around him growing tense.
"What do you want from me?"
"To warn you," the messenger said softly. "When the mountain breathes, the world trembles. You've awakened something neither the Sky nor the Abyss wanted freed."
The wind howled suddenly, carrying distant echoes of screams. The figure's mask cracked down the center, faint light seeping through. "They've already felt you, Cled. The Keepers will come."
"Keepers?" Cled frowned. "Of what?"
"Of balance," the figure whispered. "And they will not see you as one of their own."
The words barely left its lips when the world around them shuddered.
Far off, at the edge of the horizon, black shapes rose into the golden clouds — colossal figures cloaked in starlight, each carrying a chain forged of light and shadow intertwined. They marched slowly, their footsteps shaking the land.
Cled's pulse quickened. "They're coming for me."
The messenger nodded. "For what you carry. You are no longer a mortal, Cled. You are a fracture made flesh — and the world does not tolerate what it cannot understand."
Cled's hand gripped his dagger. "Then they'll have to understand the hard way."
But even as he said it, doubt stirred within him. He could feel the abyss whispering in his veins — calm, persuasive, patient.
> Let them come. Let them break. You are beyond them now.
The golden light in his other eye flickered, clashing against the green.
"Silence," he hissed under his breath, pressing a hand to his temple. "I decide who I am."
The messenger's voice softened. "Do you? Power born of opposites never stays silent, Cled. The more you resist, the louder it will become."
"Then I'll learn to live with it."
The masked figure stepped closer, snow swirling around it like spirits. "Or it will learn to live through you."
The world trembled again — stronger this time. The golden clouds above darkened, streaked by green lightning. The approaching figures in the distance began to chant in a language that cracked the sky.
Cled turned toward them, energy surging in his blood. His aura flared — gold and green spiraling together, forming wings of unstable light behind him.
"I don't care who they are," he said, voice steady now. "If they come for me, I'll show them what the fracture really means."
The messenger tilted its head, the mask now almost fully splintered. "Then may your will be stronger than your destiny."
Before Cled could reply, the figure dissolved into white mist — leaving behind only a single feather, half gold and half green, drifting gently onto the snow.
Cled stared at it, heart pounding.
Then the sky split open.
A beam of pure light shot down from above, striking the crater's edge. The first of the Keepers descended — wrapped in silver armor, wings forged from twilight itself. Its eyes burned with judgment.
> "Cled of the Fracture," the being intoned, voice echoing across the mountain. "By decree of the Sky Throne and the Abyssal Seal, you are to be bound — or erased."
Cled smirked faintly, lifting his dagger as golden-green light rippled across his body. "You can try."
The Keeper raised its blade, and the air around them turned to crystal. Time itself seemed to freeze.
Cled took a breath. His heartbeat slowed. Power surged.
The fracture pulsed once — golden, green, and infinite.
"Then come and see what your gods created."
The two forces collided.
Light and shadow screamed across the crater, tearing the sky apart once more.
And beneath the chaos — far below, in the depths of the fallen mountain —
a single emerald eye opened again.
> "Good… the vessel remembers."