Kaelen did not know how long he sat in silence. Time in the void was meaningless—minutes, hours, perhaps days. But when the air began to tremble, he knew it wasn't his mind slipping again.
A low rumble rolled across the stone plains. Jagged cracks tore through the ground, splitting open with a violet light that bled upward like fire. The shard at Kaelen's chest shuddered violently, its pulse racing, pulling him toward the disturbance.
He rose to his feet, blade in hand, wary. The cracks widened until a gash split the landscape, a rift yawning open. From its depths spilled whispers far louder than the ones in his head—screams, chants, the echo of countless voices trapped between worlds.
Kaelen staggered back. "No… this isn't me. This isn't the shard—"
But the truth struck like a blade. The fragment was resonating. Its memory was not dormant—it was a key. And now it had unlocked something vast.
A shape clawed its way out of the rift: a figure cloaked in smoke, its limbs stretched and distorted, face shifting endlessly between dozens of forms—some human, some not. Each flicker of its visage felt familiar, as though Kaelen had glimpsed them in the vision of fallen Keepers.
The thing's voice scraped across the void:
"Keeper… vessel… thief."
The word cracked through Kaelen like thunder. It saw him not as a savior, not as a warrior—only as the container for what it wanted.
His blade rose instinctively, black fire igniting along the edge. "If you want it," he said through clenched teeth, "you'll have to take it."
The monster's shifting faces smiled as one. Its body surged upward, a tidal wave of shadow and flame.
Kaelen's pulse steadied despite the dread flooding his veins. Whatever the Abyss had made him, whatever chains it had wound around his soul—he would not bow.
Not now. Not ever.
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