Xin's arrows found their marks with mechanical precision, each shaft a streak of light tearing through the Hollow tide. His rhythm matched the movements of Shun's silver Jian, the two of them moving as if their blood carried the same song. Where the Jian carved, Xin's bow punished. Where Xin struck, Shun closed in and shattered what remained.
The battlefield responded to them. Soldiers who had been wavering steadied their stance. Hunters who had been retreating pressed forward with new fury. It was not a matter of command or order. It was the presence of two brothers who fought with a clarity that left no room for hesitation.
Xin had believed survival demanded sacrifice, that every victory carried a count of the fallen. Yet with Shun beside him, that calculation shifted. Each movement, each strike, each decision carried the weight of protection. No soldier would fall while Xin's focus remained whole. The thought surged through him like a vow carved into stone.
The Prime before them fell under coordinated pressure, its body collapsing into ruin, and for the first time in hours Xin saw the darkness of the battlefield relent. Hollows broke against the formation instead of driving through it. Hunters moved with a looseness that had been absent since the dome shattered.
The sun edged over the horizon, its light washing the summit in a pale glow. Xin's chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, but in that glow he saw something he had not seen in a long time. Ease. Their side carried ease in their movements, a release from the frantic strain that had ruled them since nightfall.
Xin's mind, freed from the constant need to anticipate the next strike, wandered into darker corridors. The thought pressed against him with the weight of inevitability. A permanent solution. Something that could end the cycle of assaults, the endless nights filled with Hollow screams. Fighting battle after battle would not suffice. Reinforcements would not suffice. Healing broken bodies would not suffice.
It had started with Shun.
Xin remembered the moment his brother initiated the second act. The air had quivered with that strange resonance, a tremor that reached deeper than the stone beneath them. From that moment, the intensity of attacks had sharpened, as if the Hollows themselves had answered. The memory clawed at him now.
And then Shun had returned. Alive when survival had seemed impossible. Stronger when recovery should have left him in weakness. The Hollows grew bolder after that return, as if his existence itself had drawn them near.
Was this the hidden consequence of an incomplete act? A secret thread in the fabric of the ritual? Xin sifted through his knowledge. No record of such a thing existed. An act left unfinished triggered collapse, backlash, warnings that no one could ignore. The world itself would have announced the failure.
None of the soldiers who had accompanied Shun into the act chamber had spoken of anything unusual. Their faces were pale, their words empty of detail. They remembered strain, resistance, the way the ground fought them, and then nothing. Silence. It was as though the act had swallowed part of their memory whole.
Perhaps it was not the act itself. Perhaps it was what they carried back. The materials gathered during the process. Objects meant to feed the act, to empower its completion. If something within those objects bled corruption, it could explain the sudden change. The possibility gnawed at Xin, but another thought pulled harder.
Shun's movement toward the crystalline building.
The memory of it set his teeth on edge. His brother had risen when he should not have been able. He had walked with purpose, with certainty, toward a structure that bore no relation to his quarters or the place where he had collapsed. The crystalline building stood apart, looming with a presence that had felt inert until the Hollows poured forth. Shun had moved before they came, before anyone else sensed the breach.
Xin's barrier stretched across the summit. Through that web he had felt the Hollow approach, the distortion growing until it shattered into reality. Shun had no such barrier. Shun could not have known from that distance.
Unless he had known in another way.
Xin's hand tightened around his bow, knuckles whitening. His heart hammered with the weight of suspicion, a rhythm that would not quiet. The thought circled him like a predator, whispering truths he did not want to face.
It was not chance. It was not reaction. Shun had moved as if he already understood.
The sun rose higher, its light cutting across the battlefield, casting long shadows through broken stone and Hollow remains. Soldiers cheered around him, their relief spreading like fire. The battle was not over, but for a fragile moment it felt contained.
Xin's eyes never left the crystalline building. He tried to reason with himself, to bury the questions, to focus on the survival of the moment. Yet the questions clawed their way back, sharper each time.
If it was the act, why had no signs announced it?
If it was the materials, why had no corruption revealed itself earlier?
If it was coincidence, why had Shun moved with such purpose?
The silence of those answers pressed heavier than the roar of the battlefield.
Xin's gaze shifted to his brother. The silver Jian moved with lethal grace, its glow unbroken, its wielder tireless. Shun's smile lingered even as blood spattered his body. A smile meant to comfort. A smile meant to assure.
Xin's chest tightened. The calmness he had sensed wrapped around Shun remained unshaken, shielding his essence from sight. It was not ether as Xin understood it. It was not barrier or armor. It was something else, something that erased the truth of his body from vision.
The thought settled like ice in Xin's veins.
It was almost as if Shun knew what would happen.
The cheer of soldiers felt distant now. The warmth of sunlight failed to reach him. His mind turned in circles, each path ending at the same door. A door he feared to open, because beyond it waited an answer that could fracture everything he fought to protect.
His bow lowered slightly, his breaths uneven. He stared at Shun across the battlefield, his brother bathed in silver calmness, radiant and untouchable.
And Xin whispered to himself, barely audible, a question that carried the weight of all his dread.
What have you done?
The sun had climbed higher into the sky, its light straining against the dark haze that lingered over the battlefield. The monsters grew more desperate with each passing moment, their claws scraping against the golden dome that shielded the last of the survivors. Every strike rang out like nails against glass, a maddened rhythm of hunger and fury.
Xin sprinted through the chaos, his body moving faster than thought. He weaved through swarms of hollows, smashing them aside with his hammer, vaulting from rooftop to rooftop as he carved a path toward Shun. Every breath came ragged, but his strikes remained precise, each swing clearing space for the wounded to retreat.
But even in the heart of the fight, unease gnawed at him. Why didn't I notice sooner? The thought clung to him like a curse. His mind flashed back to Belial—left alone, isolated burnt and at deaths door. It had been the same then. That eerie silence. That dreadful pause before everything collapsed.
It wasn't coincidence. It couldn't be.
If the threat were random, it would've gone for Raven as well, or for him. But it hadn't. No, it had chosen. It had hunted. And its prey had been Belial.
The realization weighed on him heavier than the hammer in his hands. Each strike against the hollows now carried a tremor of fear, a whisper that he was already too late to protect his friend.
Xin clenched his jaw and forced himself forward, eyes scanning the rooftops, the dome, the waves of writhing creatures. He didn't want to believe it. He prayed his hunch was wrong, that the creeping suspicion twisting in his gut was nothing but paranoia.
But deep down, he knew better.