The doors groaned open like they had not been touched in centuries. Outside was not the dead wasteland Mae expected. It was worse. The ground twisted in ways the eye rejected. Horizon lines bent wrong. Stone spires floated, some sideways, some inverted. Clouds spun in spirals, not across the sky but around something unseen.
The sky itself was cracked, thin veins of pale light slicing through black clouds like shattered glass half-mended. It was wrong. Not broken like ruins. Not destroyed like wastelands.
Warped. Bent. Twisted. Reality itself undone. Mae shivered. Skin prickling. Every nerve screaming: You shouldn't be here. Nothing should. This is the fracture. Riven stepped out first, boots crunching against ground that looked like crystal shards pretending to be grass. Mae followed, careful. Every step deliberate, like the ground might collapse if she trusted it too much. Riven glanced back. No grin. No swagger. Serious. Sharp. Watching her. "Alright chaos bomb," His hand swept wide toward the broken horizon. "All yours."
Mae froze. Her fingers curled tight. "I... what does that even mean?" Riven shrugged one shoulder, casual but not careless. "It means you do, whatever it was you did before."
"I didn't do anything, at least not on purpose!" Her voice cracked, breath already trembling. "It, it just happened-"
"Exactly." He crouched slightly; eyes locked on hers. "We find out... if it was you. Or if it was him." His chin tilted back toward the castle behind them, back toward the silent shadow of Ashar still watching from somewhere inside. The words hit her like a punch. Her breath caught. "And if it was me?" Riven's grin flashed, not cruel, but sharp. Like teeth. Like truth. "Then we figure out what the hell you actually are."
Her heart thudded loud. Every instinct screamed to run. Hide. Deny. But there was no more running. Mae shut her eyes. Fingers clenched. Chest tight. If it is going to happen, let it happen. Mae's hands trembled. Her breath came in short, shallow pulls that barely scraped her lungs. Her pulse pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears, loud enough to drown out the broken hum of the warped world around them.
"Riven." Her voice cracked. "I don't, I don't know how."
He didn't laugh. Didn't grin. Didn't roll his eyes like usual. He crouched lower, forearms resting on his knees. Serious. Focused. Watching her like someone watching a fuse about to burn out, or ignite. "Then let's figure it out." His gaze cut sharp, straight into her. "Think, Mae. All those times, everything that's ever gone weird around you. Everything that's ever, bent." His fingers drew a loose circle in the air. "Start from the beginning. Name it."
She swallowed hard, forcing her brain through the panic. "Zone Nine," Her throat tightened. "It started there. The explosion. The systems shut down... but not like a hack. Not like anything they'd seen. Just, collapsed." Her nails dug into her palms. "And before that, the supply drones, they glitched out. Fell. Just dropped midair."
Riven nodded once. "And?"
"Before that," Her head spun. "The tracking collars. They fried. Melted. The traders thought I rigged it. I did not. I could not have." Riven's fingers tapped against his knee. Sharp. Precise. "Keep going."
"The scanners at the checkpoint. They crashed. The whole sector lost power." Her breath caught. "It was always machines. Systems. Structures. Anything that is supposed to hold me in place." Her arms wrapped tighter around herself. "It always... breaks."
A silence. Riven's voice dropped lower. Slower. Pulling her deeper. "Good. Now... ask yourself one thing." She blinked. "What?"
"What's the common factor?" His head tilted, silver eyes narrowing. "Every time something bent, or broke, or came undone." Mae's breath stilled. She felt it. Right there. Hovering at the edge of knowing. Fear. It whispered. It echoed. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Riven saw it. Watched it click behind her eyes.
"Yeah." His voice softened. "Every time you were scared." A tremor worked up her spine. "Cornered. Hunted. Desperate. Terrified. Every time, except one. Her head whipped toward him. " Except-" Her voice hitched. Except Ashar. Her hands tightened.
"At the auction." Her voice thinned to a whisper. "When the dagger came at me, I was scared, but when Ashar moved." She shook her head. "I was not afraid of him. Not the way I was of everything else. It was not the same."
Her knees nearly gave out from under her body. Her hands braced against her thighs, holding herself upright. Riven stood, circling her once, slowly. Watching. Thinking. Calculating. "Fear was the trigger," he murmured. "Survival instinct. A subconscious defense, a wild system rebooting reality whenever you are about to snap."
"But with him," his eyes flicked toward the castle, toward Ashar's invisible presence. "It changed. It was not fear that triggered it off. It was," His brow furrowed.
"Something else." Mae stared down at her hands, her pulse shaking through her fingertips. Something else. Not fear. Not panic. Something heavier. Something deeper.
The second he touched her, something had shifted. The world had not shattered. It had not collapsed. It tried to fix itself. Riven's voice was quieter now but razor-sharp.
"That's why these matters." His hands spread wide toward the twisted wasteland. "Because if fear makes things break and something else makes them heal."
His silver eyes pinned her. "Then we need to figure out what you decide this world does." The air vibrated, thick, humming, heavy with pressure. Like the fracture itself was listening. Mae's fingers pressed into the wrong earth beneath her, breathing ragged. Please don't let me break it. The hum deepened. Something below. Something within. Something waiting. The tension twisted tight enough to snap, right before the next moment hit.
The warped silence inside the castle pressed heavier than any sound. The hum of fractured energy had quieted, but something lingered beneath it, a feeling. A shift. Like the world itself was holding its breath. None of them spoke. Not Lucien, whose usual sharp tongue was buried behind furrowed brows and a jaw set tight with thought. Not Sethis, whose hands turned his silver ring over and over with no trace of his usual lazy humor.
Not even Kaine, who paced the cracked floor like a caged predator, but slower. Edgier. More uncertain than angry. And Ashar, he stood where he always did. Silent. Still. Crystal gaze distant, focused somewhere far beyond what anyone else could see.
The tension snapped with Kaine's voice. "Alright, no. No." His hands clenched. "I'm done standing here like an idiot. Someone's explaining what the hell is going on."
No response. Kaine's gaze snapped to Ashar.
"You. You know something. I can see it written all over you." His tone dropped, not hostile, but heavy. "What. Is. Happening." Ashar didn't flinch. Didn't blink. For a long breath, he stayed silent. Then, voice low, carved from something older than words, he finally answered. "It's not simple." Kaine's hands spread, sharp. "Didn't think it would be. Don't care. Say it anyway." Ashar's crystalline eyes shifted, glancing toward the massive doors left open to the fractured wasteland where Riven and Mae had vanished.
His voice remained level. "She's not what we thought." Lucien scoffed quietly. "That much was obvious." Ashar's gaze didn't move. "She's more. Or less. Or both." His shoulders rolled once, an odd, subtle twitch of discomfort for someone usually carved from stone. "There is something in her. Something old. Older than this fracture. Older than the high council. Older than us." Sethis's fingers stilled on his ring. His eyes narrowed, sharp but careful. "You're talking like you've seen this before." A pause.
"Not seen." Ashar's voice dropped further. "Known. In theory. In lore. In fragments told in the dark." Kaine crossed his arms, jaw tight. "Then spit it out. You know something. What is she?" Ashar's hands flexed at his sides, a rare sign of tension in the usually unshakeable man. "It's not my place." His gaze sharpened toward the open doors. "Riven will explain when they return."
Lucien's brow arched sharply. "Riven? You're pawning this on Riven?" Ashar nodded once. "Yes." No hesitation. "He volunteered. Or forced himself into it. Either way." Sethis huffed. "Great. Nothing like entrusting the most reckless one of us with the walking glitch in reality." Kaine's jaw shifted, grinding side to side. "He better not break her." Ashar's gaze narrowed. "No. He won't." His voice dipped further, flat, certain. "If anything, she might break him."
That left the room in another choking silence. Lucien ran both hands through his hair, pacing now, muttering. "This is bigger than any of us realized, isn't it?" Ashar didn't answer. Didn't need to. The air itself trembled, just faintly. A reminder that whatever was happening out there, was changing everything. And it wasn't done yet. The arguing had turned sharper, frustrated, tense, cutting.
"You know more than you're saying," Kaine snapped, stabbing a finger toward Ashar. "You've got that look, you always do when you're holding something back."
"I've told you what I can," Ashar replied, voice flat but coiled, like he was holding back a storm of his own. "That's not enough." Kaine's hands clenched into fists. "You knew something was off with her the second the cuffs came off, hell, before that. You-"
The floor trembled.
Not a shake. Not a tremor. A shift. A pulse. The air thickened, folding in on itself like space was a fabric someone suddenly tugged too tight. Sethis staggered. Lucien cursed, grabbing a wall that groaned beneath his hand, warped angles snapping, trying to hold. "What the hell is-" The walls bent. Then snapped straight. The entire castle shifted, no, the entire reality outside of it.
Cracks in the walls sealed. Ceilings straightened. Light, real light, not that warped, bending shimmer of the fracture, pierced through the windows, golden and sharp.
The hum of broken reality collapsed into a deafening silence. And then, a second pulse hit. This one hit harder, physically. A wave of force rolled through the room like a shockwave. It knocked Kaine back into a column. Lucien hit the floor with a curse. Sethis slammed against the far wall, gasping.
Even Ashar staggered, Ashar, whose feet never left the ground unless he chose it. His hands snapped out to brace, but even his crystalline gaze flickered with something rare, shock. No. His jaw tightened. Not this. Not yet. The groan of the world unbending reverberated through every wall, every bone, every breath. And then, "Outside," Ashar snapped, voice sharper than anyone had heard it before. "Now."
No one argued. No one had time.
They bolted, stumbling, half-tripping over still-shifting floors as the doors blew open.
What met them outside made every single one of them freeze. The fracture was gone. Or healing. The warped, broken landscape, twisted sky, sideways gravity, shattered light, was smoothing. Spirals of clouds straightened into clean, open sky. Floating shards of stone sank back to the ground where mountains once stood. The black cracks threading the air like shattered glass, filled with gold.
Reality itself was being stitched back together. And in the center of it.
A small figure lay collapsed, sprawled in the grass that was now normal grass.
"Mae-!" Riven sprinted toward her, sliding to his knees beside her limp body. His hands hovered, not sure whether to touch her or afraid that touching her might undo the world again. "Mae, hey, hey. wake up."
Ashar's boots hit the ground behind him, faster than anyone else. His gaze locked on her small form, the faint, flickering glow still pulsing under her skin, leaking into the earth like the last echo of whatever had just happened. Lucien skidded to a stop. "Is she-?"
"Breathing," Riven cut in, voice tight. "Out cold. I Don't, I don't even know what the hell-" He ran both hands through his hair. "I didn't think she'd actually do it." Kaine hovered, fists clenched. "She did more than do it." His gaze swept the horizon, mouth tightening. "She fixed it." Sethis let out a sharp, breathless laugh. Not amused, stunned. "Holy void. She really did."
The silence was heavy. Heavy with the weight of something none of them had words for yet. Ashar slowly crouched, silent as ever, expression unreadable. His hand hovered just above Mae's head, but he didn't touch her. His fingers trembled, barely, but enough for anyone watching closely to notice. It's real, he realized. She's real.
The fracture had recognized her. And obeyed. "We need to get her inside," Ashar finally said, voice quiet but absolute. "Now." No one argued.
Because for the first time since the galaxy broke, they weren't sure what was broken anymore. Or what was being remade.