The ruins of Eryndral still burned. The sky was wrong—fractured like a cracked mirror. Reality hadn't fully healed from Selene's "thoughts."
But for the first time… someone survived her presence.
From the smoke stepped a figure—slender, armored in obsidian plates etched with glowing runes. Their long silver hair floated as if weightless, and their eyes burned with an unnatural gold light.
Selene narrowed her gaze. She felt it instantly.
This one… wasn't human.
"Selene Veyr," the stranger spoke, their voice calm but sharp. "You've been using what doesn't belong to you."
Selene tilted her head, her silk-black hair swaying softly. "And you are?"
"I am Kael Primarch, Executor of the Architects. And I'm here to retrieve our property."
The wind shifted. The air cracked.
Kael raised a hand—and the sky ripped open. From the tear descended luminous chains made of pure starlight, aiming straight for Selene.
For the first time, Selene… smiled wider.
"Oh… interesting."
She imagined the chains shattering into glass. They did. Instantly. But Kael didn't stop.
They moved at impossible speed, striking with a blade that wasn't really a blade—more like a sliver of unmaking, a sword forged from the void between realities.
Selene's arm split open from the strike. Blood spilled.
Her silver eyes widened, surprised—not in pain, but in curiosity.
"Oh," she whispered. "You can actually hurt me?"
Kael pressed forward, relentless. "That power inside you—it was never yours. It's an Architect's Core. A fragment of our world. A weapon we buried a thousand millennia ago!"
Selene laughed softly, blood trailing down her fingers.
"Then why…" she lifted her gaze, madness glinting in her eyes, "…do I feel like it's more mine than yours?"
She snapped her fingers.
The ground warped into a swirling labyrinth of living obsidian. Kael's blade extended, splitting through a hundred mirrored dimensions, but Selene's counterattack was faster—torrents of nightmare beasts spilling from cracks in space, each screaming in voices older than creation.
The two clashed.
Steel of thought against steel of god-tech. Shattered dimensions fell around them like glass snow. Whole city blocks vanished in seconds. It was like two gods fighting in a world too fragile to contain them.
Finally, Kael unleashed a final strike—blinding, divine.
Selene… caught it.
With her bare, bloodied hand.
Kael's golden eyes widened. "Impossible—"
"You say it's not mine," Selene whispered, her voice trembling with joy, "but watch closely… it's becoming me."
She imagined Kael ceasing to exist.
And Kael screamed as their form began unraveling, pixel by pixel, like broken code.
But before they fully vanished, Kael smiled faintly.
"You'll… regret waking them…"
Selene blinked. "Them?"
But Kael was gone.
And above her… the sky began to move.