The mountain trembled.
Only slightly at first — a subtle groan deep beneath the stone, like something ancient rousing from a long sleep. The sky above the sword-shaped peak darkened not with clouds, but with ink that bled from the seams of time itself.
The shard around Dee's neck pulsed once. Then again. Faster. Brighter. Its glow matched the rhythm of a second heartbeat — one not his own.
Hiro turned, breath caught in his throat. "Is it just me, or is the world... humming?"
"No," Vampher said. "It's singing."
Dee took a step back as the wind picked up — not from any natural current, but from words moving through the air like invisible script. The grass bent in the direction of the mountain's peak, where a slit of golden light formed in midair. A scroll, sealed in obsidian wax, drifted downward in spirals.
It landed without a sound.
The wax cracked. Not by hand.
By fate.
Dee knelt and gently unfurled the scroll. Its parchment shimmered like woven starlight, but the ink bled red — words formed from memory, myth, and the breath of what almost was.
He read aloud.
"Three who walk unchosen paths,
Each holding what should not last.
When splinters mend by heart not crown,
The fourth shall rise, the fifth fall down.
The cursed shall bleed what once they feared.
The weaver shall bind what none have steered.
The hungry one must face the well —
Drink, or leave the world to hell.
When broken Vale and mirrored choice
Align beneath the echo's voice,
The Witness shall no longer stand.
The world shall slip from fate's own hand."
Silence followed — not emptiness, but reverence. The kind of hush found in ruins or cathedrals, just before the divine speaks.
Myla's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
"The prophecy is no longer dormant."
The air rippled as if agreeing with her. Above, the sky fractured — thin white cracks crawling across the blue like stress lines on porcelain. Through them, other realities blinked into view for brief flashes. Alternate pasts. Possible tomorrows. Worlds where things went very, very wrong.
Vampher exhaled. "That part about me drinking or ending the world? That wasn't metaphor, was it?"
"No," Myla said from the air, "and it was never just your choice."
The scroll ignited into golden flame, turning to ash that rose upward instead of falling.
"Fate has waited long enough," she said.
Then she was gone.
And so was the calm.
From the east came a great wind — not air, but force. Possibility. Bursting from a newly opened scar in the sky, an enormous black feather floated downward, swirling with stardust and blood. It landed beside Hiro's foot, hissing slightly as it touched ground.
"I've seen this before," he whispered. "In my dreams. Always right before things go bad."
Dee stared at the feather. "That's not from any bird. That's from something older."
Vampher closed his eyes. "Something that remembers when the stars had teeth."
The mountain groaned again, louder this time.
From its peak came a sound — distant bells, tolling not time, but warning.
Each tone rang with meaning only the soul understood:
One for choice.
Two for fracture.
Three for prophecy.
Four for consequence.
The fifth bell never rang.
Not yet.
Because the fifth hadn't fallen.
Not yet.