The ruins of the meditation hall lay in silence, but the air vibrated with unspoken rage. Cracks zigzagged across the floor like veins of shattered reality, glowing faintly where Lyra's starlight clashed with Nyra's shadows.
Kael stood at the center, golden threads spiraling from his hands, holding the broken hall—and reality itself—together by sheer will. Sweat slicked his brow, but his eyes burned like suns.
"Enough," he said again, voice rough and dangerous. "I will not watch this world fall because of you two."
Lyra lowered her blades slowly, though her stance remained taut, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. Her voice trembled—not with weakness, but with the fury of someone watching something precious slip away.
"She will destroy everything, Kael. Can't you see it? She doesn't love, she consumes."
Nyra stepped from the swirling shadows, her bare feet gliding over the fractured floor as if she walked on whispers. Her smile was soft but threaded with hunger.
"Is that so different from what you feel, Lyra? You call it love, but you want him just as fiercely. You'd tear the sky apart before you let him go."
Lyra's jaw tightened, and her bow shimmered back into her grip. "If that's what it takes to protect him, then yes."
Kael moved before either could strike, his threads wrapping around their weapons and dissolving them into stardust and smoke. The surge of his power was a command neither could defy.
"Enough!" His voice cracked like a thunderclap. Golden light rippled across the hall, stilling shadows, dimming Lyra's radiance. Both women froze, their breaths sharp, eyes burning with emotion too vast for words.
Kael turned to Nyra first. "You want freedom. You want to dream." He stepped closer, every syllable weighted like a vow. "Then you do it by choice—not by war. Do you understand me?"
Nyra's lips parted. For the first time, the shadows around her trembled—not with rage, but with something raw and unfamiliar. Fear.
"I…" She swallowed, her voice softer than silk. "I only wanted to be what you are."
Kael's expression darkened. "You can't be me, Nyra. You can only be you. But if you keep pushing, if you let this hunger own you, I will end it—no matter what it costs."
The silence was sharp as a blade.
Then Kael turned to Lyra. Her eyes glistened like fractured stars, and when she spoke, her voice shook with something far deeper than anger.
"You're choosing her."
Kael flinched. "No. I'm choosing the world. If Nyra loses control, everything unravels. But if I destroy her now…" He looked back at the girl of shadows, whose void-dark eyes held a desperate longing. "We lose more than we save."
Lyra stared at him, her hands trembling at her sides.
"And what about us, Kael? What happens when she makes you choose between her dream and mine?"
Kael opened his mouth, but the words didn't come—because deep down, he knew the truth: that choice was already coming, and nothing could stop it.
Before he could answer, the sky above split open like torn silk. A gash of color burned across the heavens, spilling tendrils of unbound possibility into the world. The Abyss was no longer watching.
It was coming.
And Nyra—her body shook, shadows thrashing wildly as the gash pulsed like a heartbeat. Her voice broke into a whisper of dread and desire: "It's calling me."
Kael's blood turned to fire. He didn't hesitate. Golden threads erupted from his hands, wrapping Nyra in a prison of light as she screamed—a sound that shook the bones of the earth. Shadows lashed against his bindings like storms against glass.
Lyra stared at him in shock. "Kael… what are you doing?"
Kael's eyes burned with fury and resolve.
"Ending the Abyss's claim on her—before it ends everything."
But as the bindings tightened, Nyra's whisper slid into his mind like poison and silk:
"You can chain my body, Kael… but will you chain your heart?"
And in that moment, Kael knew: this was only the beginning of the war inside him.
Above them, the sky bled possibility, and the first shadow of the true Abyss stepped through the tear.