Scene: Teleportation Carriage – En Route to Eidolon Cradle
The magical transport shimmered through space—an airbound, dragonbone-carved vessel powered by Alter's personal warp engine. Inside, the Mythral Dawn team sat scattered across the wide, lounge-like interior—laughing, sparring with words, tossing enchanted dice, and flinging cushions that occasionally exploded with sparks due to overcharged enchantments.
The long journey to the Eidolon Cradle would take half a day. Enough time to breathe.
Kaela, perched atop the backrest of a couch like a smug cat, pointed a glowing finger at Thorne.
"Thorne, I swear if you eat one more of those honeyburst crunch nuts, I'm launching you off this ride. Those are mine."
Thorne didn't blink. He slowly, deliberately, crunched another handful and grunted.
"Try me, pigeon."
"You ground-stomping meat gorilla."
"You flying pin-cushion."
Cidros Vane, lounging near the sparring corner, grinned. "Ten gold on Kaela. She's faster."
Selene, brushing a few stray strands of silver-blonde hair from her eyes, sighed. "This is why I train in the mornings. Before the idiocy begins."
"Oh no," Kaela grinned. "Our radiant princess is grumpy today. Selene, did someone eat your last moonberry pastry again?"
Selene raised a brow. "No. But I'll eat you next if you keep talking."
Revyn, curled up half-asleep in a shadowy corner with his panther tail flicking lazily, muttered, "Weird threats. I like it."
New Vice Commanders Enter the Chaos
The carriage rocked slightly as two figures walked in from the adjoining platform.
Nyra Valeheart – Vice Commander under Ilyra Faen (Warden Division).
New Class: Sanctified Arbitress
Dressed in violet-gold starlace vestments, she wielded divine judgments and layered defensive enchantments with clinical precision.
"You'd think this was a mission to a banquet, not an ancestral vault," Nyra remarked, adjusting her spectacles. "Children. The lot of you."
Ilyra, raising a hand with a cheerful wink: "We're just warming up! Besides, it's not like Alter's going to let anything get near us."
"Not true," Alter replied dryly from the corner, arms crossed and faintly amused. "I'm hoping you all handle it this time. I'll just drink tea in the back."
Gasps erupted.
"Blasphemy!" Garran Flamecoil stood with theatrical rage, one flaming eyebrow twitching. "You can't take our kills, then take our tea!"
"You're lucky we love you," Mira Snowveil said, ice swirling around her fingertips. "Otherwise I'd have frozen your pillow again."
Another figure leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed and expression smug:
Riven Duskthorn – Vice Commander under Revyn (Shadow Division)
New Class: Umbral Duelist
Wielded paired void blades and could blink between shadows mid-motion.
"You know," Riven drawled, "if we all die in the Cradle, at least it'll be with laughter in our lungs and Kaela's boot halfway up Thorne's backside."
Kaela raised her bow threateningly.
"Wanna test that theory, shadow boy?"
"...Kinda, yeah."
New Vice Commanders Stepping In
The rear door opened with a smooth click, revealing several returning figures:
Nyra Valeheart – Vice Commander of the Warden Division, clad in gleaming violet battle robes.
New Class: Sanctified Arbitress
She radiated divine composure and blessed shields.
"You're all too loud for a holy mission," she said primly, stepping around a tumbling mana pillow.
Riven Duskthorn, Vice Commander of the Shadow Division, leaned just behind her with a smirk.
New Class: Umbral Duelist
Twin void daggers hung from his hips like vipers on a leash.
"You say holy, I say homicidal chaos with prettier lighting."
Gavain Frostroar entered next, ducking to clear the doorframe. The walking glacier of a man nodded to Mira.
New Class: Cryo-Warden
He had summoned a frost lynx beside him, which immediately began licking the frost off Kaela's bowstring.
"Southern winds ahead are stable," Gavain grunted. "No leyline warps."
Ziri Emberbraid, the tiny walking furnace of the Pyre Division, followed with smoke curling from her gauntlets.
New Class: Volcanic Artillerist
"Let's just hope the dungeon ain't allergic to explosions. I brought all of them."
Alter and Lira Return
As the noise swelled, the front bay shimmered—and two figures appeared in a soft pulse of light.
Alter and Lira, freshly returned from the Still World, stepped into the carriage.
The room stilled for a beat.
Kaela immediately pointed. "They're glowing. Again."
"They were glowing before," Mira muttered. "Now they're... post-glow."
Ziri smirked. "That's the 'I just reforged existence and also maybe got laid' kind of glow."
Lira flushed a little but didn't deny it. She took a seat beside Selene, who gave her a curious glance—and a small, understanding nod.
Alter, expression calm as ever, simply stepped into the middle of the room and tapped the rune-inlaid table. A large projection flared to life, revealing the jagged mountain crater ahead—the Eidolon Cradle.
"We arrive in one hour. Final checks begin now."
The teasing died down—though not without a few exaggerated sighs—and the Mythral Dawn team shifted into expedition readiness.
But beneath it all, the camaraderie remained. Jokes, glances, nudges.
A family heading into the unknown.
Scene: Pre-Deployment Formation – Edge of the Eidolon Cradle
The Mythral Dawn teleportation carriage descended slowly onto a jagged obsidian platform hovering at the rim of the Eidolon Cradle. Wind spiraled up from below—sharp, cold, and unnaturally quiet. No birds. No magic flares. Just a stillness that pulled at the soul like gravity.
From the edge, the crater below resembled a memory frozen in time—clouded in silvery mist and ancient arcane pressure. Faint structures could be seen: obelisks, broken temples, and rings of fossilized roots embedded in the cliff walls. A battlefield? A tomb? A divine experiment?
Inside the carriage, the team had shifted completely from chaotic laughter to razor-sharp readiness.
Deployment Formation: Orders in Motion
The twelve divisions of Mythral Dawn stood in ranked precision across the wide central platform. Each Commander flanked by their Vice Commander, enchanted crystals marking their banners, division sigils glowing bright above their heads.
Alter stood at the front, cloak brushing the floor, his expression unreadable behind the shadow of his armor. His gaze swept across the team, then down to the projection table. With a quiet gesture, he dismissed the tactical map and reached for the weapon at his back.
With a low, resonant pull of air, he unsheathed Vastbane.
The jet-black blade shimmered with void-fractal etchings, its edge humming with the promise of severed dimensions. The moment it left its sheath, the deck darkened around him—just slightly. Reality itself recoiled, subtly folding inward near the blade's edge.
No one spoke. No one needed to.
It wasn't just a weapon. It was a statement.
Final Personal Preparations & Banter
Kaela, crouched beside her gear, examined the runic etchings on her phoenix-themed bow, Ashplume Requital. She muttered toward Sorei, who stood above adjusting her goggles.
"If we get down there and it's another frozen ghost dragon that recites poetry, I'm setting myself on fire."
Sorei cracked a grin. "As long as you aim it properly this time."
Thorne, already in full plated armor, finished wrapping his waraxe with a length of beast-hair cord.
"Doesn't matter what it is. If it bleeds, I'll crush it. If it doesn't, I'll make it bleed."
Garran, hands flaring with mana heat, raised an eyebrow. "You said that about the last boss. It turned into smoke."
"And I punched the smoke."
Cidros, checking the magnetic levitation of his twin arcblades, leaned back lazily. "Nothing says poetry like a clean decapitation."
Selene, tying a pale silver charm to the hilt of her blade, responded calmly. "Just don't underestimate memory. This place may not live—but it remembers."
Vice Commanders Step In
Nyra Valeheart stepped forward, battle robes radiating light.
"All Warden Division members triple-warded. Fourth layer optional if you enjoy living."
Riven Duskthorn, flipping a void coin through his fingers:
"Shadow Division's already infiltrated the terrain. Or the conversation. Depends on how bored we get."
Ziri Emberbraid, loading canister mines into her gauntlets with a satisfying click:
"I've got eleven firebombs, seven soulglass traps, and one homing squirrel. Guess which one I'm deploying first."
Gavain Frostroar, quiet as ever, stood beside Mira, his frost lynx silently perched beside him.
"Leylines ahead are… dormant. Not dead. Like they're waiting to be woken."
One Final Breath
Lira stood beside Alter now, her robes fluttering gently in the wind. Her hand briefly touched his. A soft reminder that whatever awaited them, she would be with him—through the storm, the silence, and beyond.
Alter turned toward the team as the teleportation carriage's ramp began to lower, revealing the blinding mist beyond.
He raised Vastbane slightly, letting its edge slice a ripple through the air without resistance.
"You're not the same adventurers I trained months ago. You've evolved. Led. Protected. Fought."
"You've become more than a team. You're a myth written in motion."
He looked toward the swirling crater beyond the platform.
"Down there lies something ancient. Not just a boss. Not just a dungeon. A memory."
"It may try to overwrite us. But it will not erase us."
"We are Mythral Dawn."
He pointed forward.
"Let's remind it who we are."
System Notification
[DUNGEON ZONE ENTRY IMMINENT: Eidolon Cradle]
Classification: Aberrant-Ancestral Vault
Elemental Saturation: [Cryo-Time / Forbidden Echo]
Threat Index: Unknown
Recommended Party Strength: [Mythic-Class and Above]
Warning: Divinity Signature Detected – Source: [Memory Fragment Residual]
Dungeon Sync Status: Unstable
The mist thickened as the first boots hit the landing path. The world beyond was quiet.
Too quiet.
But Mythral Dawn moved forward—unshaken.
The crater awaited.
Scene: Eidolon Cradle – Where Time Loops and Statues Blink
The fog parted with each step, not dispersing—but reluctantly moving, like a curtain drawn across a play it no longer believed in. Every breath felt oddly delayed, like their lungs were remembering to inhale a second too late.
Alter walked ahead, his black armor muted in color but radiant in presence. Vastbane hung at his back like a caged storm. The team fanned out in cautious arcs, the ground beneath them whispering with fractured memories.
Kaela's voice cut through the silence.
"Okay. Raise your hand if that statue definitely just twitched."
No one answered. But every hand tightened on a weapon.
Thorne grunted, stomping once for emphasis. "Statues don't twitch. You imagined it."
The statue to his left let out a faint crack.
Kaela pointed. "Imagined that, rock-head?"
Selene stepped forward beside Alter, her sword drawn but low.
"Everything here feels off. Like we're walking through a dream someone else already woke up from."
Revyn appeared on a nearby ledge with his usual feline grace, his panther tail flicking behind him. "Don't suppose this dream ends with tea and scones?"
Ziri twirled a mana-charged mine in her palm, eyes gleaming. "Only if we explode the kettle."
"Don't give her ideas," Mira muttered.
The Awakening
Then it happened.
A soft chime rang out—not from above or below, but from somewhen. Like the sound remembered by a forgotten bell tower. A light ripple ran across the ground, passing through their boots like a breath.
And the statue ahead—one of many scattered throughout the ruins—began to move.
Not forward.
Backward.
Its cracked limbs reassembled, ice flaking away in reverse. Chipped armor gleamed again. The rust vanished, leaving behind a polished silver helm now tilting upward. It stood from its eternal kneel, slow and graceful.
Then its eyes opened—bright with pale-blue fire.
Lira's breath hitched beside Alter. "That's not resurrection."
He nodded, eyes narrowing. "It's replay."
A deep voice echoed across the cradle, neither hostile nor welcoming.
"Chrono-Sanctum breached."
"Unauthorized presence detected."
"Restoring cycle integrity."
"Commence purging."
"...That's never good," muttered Ilyra.
The Echo Knight Stirs
The statue—now fully a knight—drew its sword. The blade pulsed like condensed moonlight. Its feet shifted into a battle stance.
And then…
It vanished.
A heartbeat later, a boom echoed from the far left flank. One of the stone outcroppings split as the Echo Knight reappeared mid-strike, his blade embedding into the ledge where Sorei had just leapt away.
She landed in a crouch beside Kaela and blinked. "Okay. That wasn't in the scouting report."
"I'm putting a vote in for exploding it," Ziri called, already winding up a mine.
Alter's System Prompt – Unseen to All
[Memory Fragment – Echo Knight]
Lv. 122 | Time-Locked Sentinel
• Rewinds damage every 10 seconds unless sealed
Countermeasure Suggested: Divine Time-Lock or use Vastbane: Oblivion Crescent
Caution: Using Oblivion Crescent may rupture other memory fragments nearby.
Alter's grip on Vastbane tightened slightly, but he didn't draw yet. His eyes gleamed behind the mask, calculating.
If I use that, we may be buried in echoes. Let's see how far they've come first…
Let the Commanders Test the Cradle
Alter tilted his head slightly.
"Selene."
She stepped forward without hesitation, sword already glowing with pale white radiance.
"Engage. Test its loop. Don't overcommit."
She nodded. "Understood."
Kaela gave a low whistle. "First draw's always our princess, huh?"
Thorne crossed his arms. "Better her than you. You'd die in style though."
"I always die in style."
Selene closed the distance in a blink, her blade clashing with the knight's in a shower of radiant sparks.
Their duel was like watching two memories fight to overwrite each other—elegant, precise, deliberate.
And then—
CLANG!
The knight staggered as Selene drove a focused piercing strike to its midsection. It faltered. Cracked.
Kaela raised her bow. "That's our girl!"
But then the cracks reversed. The knight rewound, as if someone had pulled a string and undid the wound.
Back to pristine. Back to ready.
Selene slid back, her brow furrowed. "Confirmed. It resets every ten seconds. Mid-combat."
Riven's voice echoed from a perch above. "So basically a cheater."
"It's not cheating," Mira murmured. "It's perfect memory."
Alter Steps Forward
Alter exhaled quietly and stepped beside Selene.
"Step back. Time to break the loop."
She obeyed immediately.
Vastbane left its sheath with a deep, bone-vibrating sound. The air folded. Shadows bent.
He didn't speak. Didn't pose.
He swung once—clean, diagonal—so fast the knight didn't react.
A ripple of distortion passed through the Echo Knight's chest like a whisper.
A moment of stillness.
Then the knight froze—mid-rewind.
Its body began to fracture—not shatter, but fragment, caught in a recursive paradox it couldn't correct.
Time itself rejected it.
With a low, cracking sigh, it collapsed—fading not into dust, but into silence.
No cheers followed.
Just the sound of shifting winds and the team realizing...
That was just the welcome mat.
Alter lowered Vastbane and turned to the team.
"Reset timers. Buff rotation. This cradle won't forgive us for breathing here."
Kaela nocked a glowing arrow and muttered, "Told you it would monologue first."
Sorei grinned. "Pay up, Ziri."
Scene: Eidolon Cradle – Descent into Fractured Time
The shattered echoes of the first guardian's demise faded behind them, absorbed into the unnatural silence of the crater.
Mythral Dawn moved forward in a tight formation, boots pressing into stone that cracked like brittle memory beneath them. Fog curled between archways of warped marble and crystalline trees frozen mid-bloom—each petal locked in stasis, glittering with suspended frost.
Every step felt like walking deeper into a heartbeat that wasn't their own.
"We're not moving through space," Lira whispered, "We're moving through someone's recollection of it."
"That's a horrifyingly poetic way to say 'this place is messed up,'" muttered Kaela.
"Language," Selene added dryly, ducking beneath a twisting arch that pulsed with residual mana. "Poetry helps us not go mad."
The Guardians Multiply
Without warning, a pair of statues in the distance shimmered—and stepped off their plinths like actors entering a play they had long forgotten.
But they weren't knights this time.
One resembled a priestess cloaked in crystalline veils, her face obscured but weeping motes of starlight.
The other was headless—but held its own face in its left hand, pulsing with a rhythm that mirrored Alter's heartbeat.
Ziri narrowed her eyes. "That's new."
"Design notes for future trauma," Mira muttered.
System Notification – Visible Only to Alter
[Multiple Memory Fragments Detected]
– Lament Echo (Priestess) – Displacement Heal Loop
– Identity Warden (Headless) – Anchor Memory Bind
Warning: Units are unstable. Do not allow synchronization.
Alter gave a subtle motion, and the team split—divisions adjusting in seconds.
"Suppress the priestess first. Interrupt its loop before it heals the others."
Thorne, already barreling forward like a battering ram, shouted, "With pleasure!"
The battlefield erupted.
The Lament Echo raised her hands and released a ripple of reverse mana, causing Sorei's arrows to un-fire back into her quiver. The Identity Warden hurled its own face like a boomerang, which then screamed mid-air before vanishing and reappearing behind Selene.
"Okay that's enough weird!" she snapped, parrying on reflex.
The fight bent space and sense—but Mythral Dawn adapted quickly, dancing through mechanics that would have erased lesser teams.
Kaela's phoenix arrows split and rebounded through air-pockets Lira had distorted with time pulses. Thorne absorbed a face-slam and hurled the statue into Gavain's freeze trap.
Riven whispered from the shadows, "We are way too sober for this."
"Speak for yourself," Ziri called, detonating a shrine behind the priestess.
With a final coordinated burst, Cidros and Selene broke through the loop and severed both entities in clean arcs—Vastbane never needed.
And Then – The Trap
The mist grew thicker. Alter narrowed his eyes.
"Something's wrong. No sync shift… no ripple. The air stopped reacting."
Lira glanced around. "It's holding its breath."
The very ground beneath them shimmered—and broke.
Not physically.
The terrain itself rewound—snapping back three seconds and locking their positions mid-step.
Then the voices came.
A chorus of whispers layered atop each other, each saying the same thing:
"Rejoin the loop."
Runes exploded upward beneath their feet. Dozens of temporal shackles shot out from the floor, binding legs, arms, and even thoughts. Kaela's bowstring snapped in reverse, winding back into an unstrung loop.
Selene, struggling against a force not of strength but of memory, growled, "It's trying to reset us—erase our progression!"
Revyn disappeared into shadow—only to reappear frozen mid-fade, like a paused film.
Alter's eyes flashed as reality buckled. The entire field was a trap layer—not meant to kill, but to revert them back to a moment before the dungeon had awakened.
"It's collapsing our progress..."
He raised Vastbane.
A sharp tone cut through the air as he sliced forward, sending a Void Crescent into the heart of the terrain's core projection.
BOOM.
The impact tore through the trap's anchor. The stone beneath them cracked—not from destruction, but from being freed from its own loop.
Time lurched. Gravity returned. Shouts and grunts followed as the team stumbled—alive, but shaken.
Riven groaned. "Did anyone else feel like they were about to forget their own name?"
Kaela coughed. "Forget that. I almost re-lived the time I got hugged by Thorne."
"That was ONE time," Thorne bellowed.
Alter Stood at the Center of the Broken Loop
He looked around slowly, gaze steady as the mist recoiled again.
"That wasn't just a trap," he muttered. "It was the dungeon... testing recall."
"Like it's trying to decide what version of us it wants to keep."
Everyone fell quiet.
Then Garran muttered, "Well it can keep Thorne's cooking and toss the rest."
"Oi."
Scene: Cradle of Broken Time – Echoes That Shouldn't Exist
The fog around Alter thickened—not like mist, but like memory made tangible. The cold retreated, replaced by a choking warmth. Pressure mounted behind his eyes like something ancient clawing forward from inside his skull.
He staggered.
Just a step. But enough for the others to notice.
Vastbane dipped lower in his grip, the void-forged greatsword vibrating faintly, as if uncertain whether to strike or shield.
A flicker of light danced across his vision—except it wasn't from the dungeon.
It was headlights.
Blinding. Sudden.
His breath hitched.
One step became two. Then his knee struck the frost-laced ground.
The Cradle was gone.
In its place—a rain-slicked road under a starless sky.
He sat behind the wheel. Fingers clenched the steering wheel tightly, knuckles pale.
Windshield wipers cut across sheets of water. Street lights blurred into comet trails.
A voice from the backseat. Small. Happy.
"Daddy, play the stars song again!"
Another giggle followed.
"No! The one with the lion!"
He remembered this. He remembered every word.
The warmth of a hand in his. Her voice—the woman beside him—chiding the girls playfully.
"If you play either of those again, I'm jumping out. I swear—"
Laughter filled the car. His laughter.
And then—
Screeching brakes.
A truck's headlights tore across the lane.
Impact.
The world twisted.
Glass. Screams. Metal folding in on itself like paper in fire.
Time didn't slow. It shattered.
White light.
Cold air.
A siren. Beeping monitors.
He was on a hospital bed. Eyes wide. Limbs numb.
A mask covered his mouth. He could hear his own breath—harsh, ragged, desperate.
His vision blurred, but he saw the corner of the emergency room:
A child's hand.
Still.
The woman—his wife—curled over a bed beside her, unmoving. A doctor tried to pull her away.
"We're losing him!" someone shouted. "He's coding—clear the line!"
Alter gasped.
But there was no air.
He exhaled hard.
Back in the Cradle.
The fractured terrain beneath his hands bit into his palms, but it grounded him. He blinked furiously, his breath ragged. The pain in his chest wasn't physical—but it screamed all the same.
Lira dropped to her knees in front of him, her arms encircling his shoulders before he could pull away.
"Alter. Look at me."
His vision swam. For a split second, her face wasn't hers—it was her. The woman in the hospital. His wife.
Then it faded.
Lira's golden eyes focused on his, filled with concern and fear and something else—unshakable presence.
"You're here. You're with me. You're not alone."
He didn't speak. Couldn't. His hand trembled against the hilt of Vastbane as his memories spiraled back into silence.
Behind them, the team stood still. Even Kaela's teasing smile had faded. Revyn watched from the shadows, brows drawn low. Selene gripped her sword tighter, her expression unreadable.
No one spoke.
They felt it. Whatever that had been—it didn't belong to this world.
It belonged to something buried deeper.
Older.
Truer.
Alter stood slowly, shaking off the tremor like breaking ice from his frame. His voice came quiet, low.
"I saw them."
Lira didn't need to ask who.
She reached up, brushing his hair back gently as she whispered, "They're still with you."
His eyes, twin galaxies behind shadows, focused on the path ahead.
"This place… it's more than a dungeon. It remembers things even I tried to forget."
He gripped Vastbane tightly, straightening his back as the fog slowly parted.
Ahead, the Cradle remained cold and still—like it hadn't just peeled back a layer of his soul.
But Alter knew better now.
The dungeon wasn't just testing them.
It was reaching into who they were.
Scene: Still World – Beneath the Skin of Memory
The portal sealed behind them with a breathless sigh.
The Still World bloomed open—endless, silent, timeless. Its skies shimmered with astral threads. The air carried no wind, but it felt alive, as if it remembered every word ever spoken inside it.
Alter stood still.
His eyes weren't on the terrain, or the radiant horizon stretching across the mirrored lake that now unfolded ahead of them.
They were somewhere else.
Someone else.
Lira touched his hand gently. She didn't say anything yet. She didn't have to.
Her voice came suddenly—soft, smooth, ancient.
Not aloud.
Inside him.
"You were not supposed to remember them here, Alter."
It was Seraphina.
Her presence arrived like a ripple in the stillness of his thoughts. She did not use words like others. She threaded them directly into the folds of his mind—calm, commanding, clear.
"The Eidolon Cradle fractured something in your boundary. A protected seal… partially undone."
Alter's jaw clenched. He stared at the reflection in the water. For a moment, he didn't see himself.
He saw hospital lights.
Rain.
Small hands.
A woman's voice calling his name.
His breath caught.
"Why now?" he asked in a whisper, though no one around would've heard it.
"Because the walls between your lives are thinning," Seraphina said gently. "Your mind is catching up to what your body never finished."
"You did not die, Alter. You are still there—in your world. In that hospital. This existence… is what your soul clings to in the gap."
He went still.
The silence between her words cut sharper than blades.
"You were never meant to forget your daughters. Or your wife. But the moment you touched the Cradle… a ripple reached backward, and pulled them forward."
He staggered slightly but caught himself. Lira stepped beside him, wrapping her arm around his.
She felt him trembling.
"Alter," she said softly. "Talk to me. Please."
He looked at her, breathing steady but slow. "I remember... a little more."
She guided him to sit beside the lake. The Still World obeyed, shaping the ground into a curved terrace of stone and blooming skyroses.
"You don't have to explain it," she said. "Not now. Just stay with me. Rest."
Time Passes – A Sanctuary of Silence
Days passed inside the Still World.
Only hours outside.
Lira stayed close—never overbearing, never pressing. She cooked for him in silence. Trained quietly on her own when he needed space. Slept curled against his back in the warmth of their sanctuary when he couldn't find rest.
Alter didn't speak of the vision.
But every day, he walked to the lake.
And every night, he returned with quieter breath.
One evening, Lira placed a hand on his chest as they lay beneath a drifting constellation.
"You don't have to heal alone. You never did."
He closed his hand gently around hers.
"I'm starting to believe that."
And high above them, in the fabric of stars, Seraphina said no more.
But she watched.
Guiding.
Waiting.
For the moment when everything would come full circle.
Scene: Return to the Cradle – Where Stillness Ends and Life Begins
The Still World faded behind them like a distant dream.
In a flash of starlight and breathless wind, Alter and Lira stepped back through the portal—back into the cold, crystalline light of the Eidolon Cradle, where their team waited on alert, formation tight, weapons glowing.
The moment they appeared, the wards pulsed once.
Selene stepped forward instantly, sword at her hip, eyes scanning them both.
"Status?"
Alter gave a firm nod. "Stable."
Lira smiled, softer but glowing. "Rested."
Kaela exhaled dramatically, lowering her bow. "About time. We were running low on sarcasm and mutual trauma."
"Speak for yourself," muttered Garran. "I've been fine. Except for the part where the ground tried to remember me."
"And I nearly got un-born by a frozen priestess loop," Revyn added, flicking his ears.
The team relaxed as the aura around Alter steadied—stronger, clearer, grounded. Vastbane hummed with quiet restraint at his back. He was whole again.
Or so they thought.
The Twist
As Alter stepped down onto the crystalline platform, he reached back to help Lira over a frozen ridge.
And then—she froze mid-step.
Her hand clutched her abdomen.
Her eyes blinked rapidly, unfocused.
"Lira?"
She swayed slightly.
Then turned—and sprinted toward a fallen archway, hand over her mouth.
Kaela blinked. "Wait, what—?"
The unmistakable sound of retching echoed through the still air.
Alter was already moving, panic barely restrained beneath his control. He dropped beside her, one hand on her back, the other glowing faintly as he began running rapid healing diagnostics.
"Lira—are you poisoned? Internal destabilization? Magical backlash from the Still World?"
Lira shook her head weakly, wiping her lips with her sleeve. "No. I don't think—"
She paused. Eyes wide.
Staring into nothing.
"Oh…"
Selene was the first to speak, her tone calm—but sharp.
"Wait. How long since the Still World?"
"One month," Mira answered automatically. "Give or take a few days. Why—"
Nyra gasped. Loudly.
Everyone turned.
She stared at Lira. Then at Alter.
Then slowly… at Lira's stomach.
"She's not sick."
The silence was immediate.
"She's pregnant."
Beat.
The team stared.
Lira blinked.
Alter's mouth opened—closed—then opened again.
"I—"
"WHAT!?" Kaela screamed, spinning in place. "Are you—seriously!?!"
"That was FAST," Ziri muttered, impressed. "Fertility buff from divine realms confirmed."
Garran threw his arms up. "I knew the Still World had weird time dilation mojo."
"You were in there for a month," Selene pointed out with amused precision. "That's at least four weeks' margin for… consequences."
"It was NOT a consequence," Lira snapped, face flushing. "It was a choice."
Alter blinked again, still stunned. "I—Lira. Are you sure?"
She stood slowly, placing both hands gently on her stomach. Her golden eyes shimmered with something radiant and fragile.
"Yes. I can feel it."
And just like that, the fog of war lifted.
Kaela exploded into cheer. "OH MY GODDESS. This is happening. Lira's gonna be a mom. Alter's gonna be a dad?!"
Thorne clapped so hard he cracked a nearby rock.
Revyn nodded solemnly. "We're all uncles and aunties now. Start planning the divine baby shower."
"I'm crafting enchanted diapers," Ziri declared.
"I'm crafting a tactical cradle," Garran added.
Alter stood frozen for another heartbeat before Lira reached out—gently placing his hand over her stomach.
His knees nearly buckled.
Then he laughed. Quietly. Disbelievingly.
He pulled her close, forehead to hers.
"A new life… in this world."
"Ours," Lira whispered.
And behind them, as Mythral Dawn erupted in cheers and teasing, and Kaela wiped fake tears while dramatically declaring herself the godmother, the Cradle watched.
Silent.
Still.
But not untouched.