POV: Arthur Starlight
The moment our boots touched the innermost circle of the Archive, something changed.
Not in the air. Not in the stone.
In us.
A low hum slid through my ribs like a tuning fork struck against my spine.
My red eye twitched—hard—pulling me toward a shadow I hadn't noticed before: a massive pedestal cracked in half, half-buried under sigil-covered rubble.
Vanitar stood across from it, barely breathing.
The sigils flared.
Just once.
And the ground screamed.
It wasn't sound.
It was memory, torn open.
The crater shook with a pressure that didn't belong to weight.
The dust rose—slowly, reverently—as if called to witness.
And then the shape pulled itself from the heart of the ruins:
The Protector of the Archive.
Classification: Riftborn Echo-Type.
Rank: B-Class.
Title: He Who Binds Forgotten Names.
It didn't walk. It assembled.
Layer by layer—stone grinding on bone, bone woven with paper, and words burned across sinew.
Wings of broken monument slabs scraped open as it rose.
Its face had no eyes, only a shifting mask of runes and black fire.
The instructors shouted.
Shields raised.
Sigils activated.
But it wasn't after them.
It looked at us.
Me.
Vanitar.
And the world tilted.
I couldn't move.
No—
I moved, but not by choice.
My hand raised.
Fingers spread.
Eyes locked forward.
My chest glowed with that cursed warmth again—but brighter.
Fiercer.
Like it wasn't hiding anymore.
Across from me, Vanitar took a step forward.
His breath caught in his throat.
His eyes—gone white—lit with something hollow and old.
And then it came:
A whisper.
One voice.
Two names.
"The Threadborn.
The Last Horizon."
No one understood.
But we felt it.
My mark pulsed.
And in my hand, the sword returned.
Not summoned.
Not forged.
Remembered.
White-gold fire poured from the hilt.
Not heat—judgment.
The blade sang with clarity older than language.
Its edge knew the shape of stories before they were told.
Its name burned into the flat of the steel:
FLAME OF MICHAEL.
The Archangel's Firebrand.
The air recoiled.
The Archive bent around its heat—not in destruction, but reverence.
Vanitar's body leaned forward slightly—like a tether had caught hold deep inside him.
His expression didn't match the moment.
He looked distant. Like something ancient had borrowed his shape.
The Archive Beast roared.
Not in rage.
In recognition.
And then—
It charged.
I didn't wait for orders.
Didn't look back.
The moment the Protector moved—I ran.
The heat of the sword scorched the air around me, but I didn't feel it. My blood roared louder than fear. My coat snapped behind me like a banner in a storm, but my focus tunneled.
My red eye twitched—
And the world fractured.
Movement. Future.
The beast was already halfway through a lunge it hadn't made yet. I saw where its limbs would land, where its head would twist, where the ground would shatter beneath its weight seconds before it happened.
My gold eye flared—
and the rest of it unraveled.
Information poured into my mind—etched like flame into a scroll. Its name. Its anatomy. Its history. Weaknesses. Everything about this Riftborn's construction. Ten legs, each one wrapped in memory-spine. A central heart protected by folded glyphbone. But its left flank—the bone was older. Brittle. Rewritten too many times.
"There—" I whispered. "That's where it ends."
But I wasn't alone.
From my right—
Vanitar moved.
He didn't charge.
He walked.
Slow. Fluid. Untouchable.
His pale hair drifted like ash caught in quiet wind. The glow in his eyes—that white, blinding silence—never dimmed. And the way he moved…
Like he wasn't afraid of death.
Like he was death.
The Riftbeast's rear leg twisted to strike him—massive, bone-hooked, clawed in inked symbols.
He didn't dodge.
He touched it.
Just one hand.
And the leg withered.
Not burned. Not broken.
Forgotten.
The color drained from it. The runes dimmed. The air recoiled.
The leg, once dense as obsidian bone, snapped like brittle wood and collapsed in dust.
My red eye snapped forward.
The beast screamed.
I was already leaping.
Sword raised.
No thoughts. No doubts. Just the fire.
I landed on its flank—my boots skidding along glyphskin—and drove the blade in a long, arcing slash across the left side of its body.
The glow carved through it like paper.
It didn't bleed.
It glitched.
Its form split—like a film reel torn in half. Chunks of its body twisted, refracted, desperately trying to stay real. But the blade left a wound of story—a narrative cleave. Something it couldn't rewrite.
Vanitar appeared beside me without a sound.
He didn't ask.
Didn't look.
He simply raised his hand again—and another leg crumbled.
The beast staggered.
Its entire form shimmered, trying to shift phase, to retreat, to reset its presence like Riftborn do when cornered.
We didn't let it.
My fire surged.
His presence deepened.
And together—
We broke it.
The Riftbeast didn't fall.
It screamed.
But not in pain.
Not in defeat.
It screamed like a story unraveling.
Like a lie being forced to remember it was never true.
The wounds we gave it—they held.
Vanitar's touch had erased more than flesh; the leg we stripped of life never grew back. It hung like dead concept, crumbled into void.
But where my sword had carved deep—
It healed.
Not perfectly.
The side we tore through pulsed now with violent, twisted light—a scar that couldn't close. As if something too real had been etched into its false existence. The flesh stitched itself in jagged strands, uneven, desperate, wrong. Like the Riftbeast was copying itself backward and couldn't remember what it looked like.
It turned its head—if that's what it was—and roared in every direction at once.
The floor cracked beneath us.
Magic flared.
I staggered backward. Not from impact.
From within.
Something inside me surged—like pressure behind the bones. A light behind the ribs. The sword in my hand pulsed hotter, its flame now white-gold, licking at my fingers like a warning.
I dropped to a knee.
The pain wasn't physical.
It was existence-level. Like my soul was cracking.
My body wasn't built to hold this. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
And so it answered.
The armor formed.
First from the air. Then from nothing.
It didn't wrap around me. It anchored me. Piece by piece—runes locked into joints, plated bands spun from fiction's edge. Not forged for battle… but to contain what I was becoming.
A chestplate like obsidian glass laced with burning thread.
Shoulder guards shaped from stylized wings, folded inward.
A helm that hovered behind me—never settling, as if even it feared who I'd become.
My skin glowed beneath it—not with magic, but narrative heat.
Vanitar glanced at me.
And for the first time, his pale expression flickered.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like he'd seen this before.
The beast roared again—but hesitated. Its fractured side still smoked. My armor hummed—not with power, but with pressure. Like every second it existed, it was stopping something inside me from tearing out.
I rose to my feet, sword blazing brighter now—its name whispered in the silence.
The Fire Blade of Michael.
It wasn't a weapon anymore.
It was a warning.
And I was the one it was warning about.