The visions shattered.The river's colors twisted into a sickly crimson, spreading like spilled ink. The girl staggered back, clutching her chest.
"It's crossing," she gasped. "It's not supposed to cross."
Aloysius felt the hum deepen into a vibration that rattled the ground beneath them. The shimmering water bulged upward, forming jagged spires of crystallized blood. From between them, something began to push through first a claw, black as obsidian and slick with molten light, then a second, then the suggestion of a head crowned with fractures that bled radiance.
It was not fully here yet, but even half-formed, its presence distorted the forest. Trees warped into twisted shapes, their leaves shriveling into ash. The glass veins in the trunks flared brightly, then shattered in sharp bursts.
The girl raised a trembling hand toward him. "We have to run."
"No," Aloysius said, his eyes locked on the thing forcing its way through the river. "If it comes through, this world will never be the same. It won't stop until everything becomes like the Fracture."
The creature's gaze found him.That molten-gold iris burned through the last of the shimmering surface, locking on him like a hunter recognizing old prey.
Aloysius drew in the air slowly, pulling at the fragments of divine energy that still lingered in his veins. They resisted him now, sliding away like oil from water, as though even they feared what was coming.
"Why won't you fight it?" he muttered under his breath, not sure if he was speaking to the power… or himself.
The girl's voice sharpened. "You don't understand this isn't a thing you kill. This is a thing you close."
"How?"
She hesitated, eyes flicking to the cracks forming in the riverbed beneath the monster. "…By giving it something it wants more than escape."
Before he could ask what she meant, the thing lunged forward and the river exploded outward, sending shards of crystalized blood through the air like knives.
Aloysius didn't move. His fists clenched. His decision was already made.