For a moment, Crystal could not breathe.
The second statue towered above the endless red sea, half veiled in the blood-moon's glow. When her eyes adjusted, she finally saw it clearly—and what she saw made her heart forget its rhythm.
It was a woman carved in pale stone, her face serene and terrifying all at once. A goddess—or something older—so perfectly shaped that the light seemed drawn to her. In one hand she held a serpent-shaped blade, curved like a crescent of lightning frozen mid-strike. Her other hand rested upon the head of a colossal serpent that coiled around her feet, its eyes half-open, its fangs bared in eternal silence.
Behind the figure burned a halo of fractured rings, each etched with ancient symbols. The air shimmered around it, and faint green radiance gathered at its center, as though the stone itself contained breath.
Crystal felt that strange pull again—the same weight she had sensed before the first statue, but deeper, stronger, almost personal.
The statue called to her. Not with sound, but with recognition.
Her throat tightened. She stepped closer, the blood water rippling quietly beneath her. Every motion echoed through the silence, magnified until it filled the world.
Why does it feel so familiar…
Her voice trembled inside her mind. She had seen that face—or something like it—somewhere between memory and dream. A presence that lingered behind her every victory, her every wound. Something she had never named.
She kept moving until the tip of her boot brushed the stone base. The serpent's carved eyes seemed to follow her. Its mouth parted just slightly, as if tasting the air she exhaled.
Crystal swallowed hard. It was absurd. They were statues. Nothing more.
Yet the serpent's fangs glistened wetly under the red light, and a whisper of movement trembled through its massive coils.
Her instincts screamed to step back. But the pull from the statue—the woman—was stronger. So she stayed.
The serpent's head lowered an inch, and for a fleeting second it looked as though it might devour her whole. But stone cannot move. Stone cannot hunger.
She forced herself to reach out. Her fingers shook as they hovered before the statue's hand.
"Who are you…" she whispered.
When her palm met the cold surface—
—everything broke.
A sound like thunder and shattering glass tore through the sky. The world convulsed. Cracks spider-webbed across the blood-moon above, each fissure spilling streams of green-white light that hissed as they fell.
The sea beneath her trembled, waves rising higher than mountains only to fall soundlessly back into themselves. Even the darkness above split apart, revealing veins of light that pulsed like living scars.
Crystal staggered, her hand still pressed to the stone. The statue's halo flared violently, and the serpent's eyes burned emerald before freezing again.
The air filled with a deep, mechanical hum. Symbols she didn't understand formed before her in lines of bright green light. They hung in the air, spinning slowly, until they shaped themselves into a translucent screen.
Words appeared—cold, foreign, alive.
SOUL RECOVERED
Confirming…Accessing Soul's Host…
Crystal blinked against the glare."What… what is this?"
The letters shifted, their light reflecting in her eyes. She turned slowly, but there was no one around her—only the collapsing world.
The cracks across the sky widened, sending shards of red moonlight tumbling like falling glass. Each piece struck the sea with a hiss, melting into the crimson waves.
The ground—the sea—everything beneath her—began to split. Rivers of green light spilled through the cracks, turning the ocean into a mirror of broken fire.
The screen flickered again.
Accessing host body — Loading: 10%… 50%… 100%
Failed.
Cannot access body.
Finding alternative method…
The glow around her intensified, wrapping her in spirals of light. Her armor cracked along the seams, not breaking with sound but dissolving into thousands of faint motes. They drifted upward and vanished like dust in sunlight.
Where metal and blood had been, a white robe now shimmered into form—simple, flowing, weightless. It clung to nothing, moved like light on water. She looked down, bewildered; her hands were translucent, her skin threaded with the same green glow that pulsed through the air.
A soul… I really am a soul.
Her breath hitched—if breath could exist here.
The screen's voice—if it could be called that—continued to echo around her.
Retrying access: 10%… 20%… 40%… 70%…
Failed.
Protective realm collapsing.
Re-creating multiple recovery protocols.
The words pulsed faster, one after another, their rhythm frantic.
Crystal looked up. The sky was collapsing. The blood-moon shattered completely, its fragments crashing into the ocean like meteors of light. Each impact sent waves of molten red cascading toward the horizon.
The sea boiled. The serpent statues cracked and splintered, their forms disintegrating into dust that rose instead of fell.
All around her, the universe was unraveling.
"Stop…" she whispered, shielding her face from the radiance. Her voice vanished beneath the roar of breaking creation.
The screen's glow thickened until it was almost blinding.
Rebuilding host structure…
Failed.
Searching alternative vessel…
Stabilizing soul fragment…
Crystal's heart—or whatever part of her still remembered being human—lurched painfully. She didn't understand the words, but she felt the desperation behind them.
She turned her gaze upward. The heavens were gone. Only streaks of green light fell where the moon had once hung.
The sea beneath her feet no longer felt solid. Each step she took sank slightly deeper, as if the entire world were melting around her.
"Please…"Her whisper trembled into the void. "If this… whatever you are… can hear me… don't let me disappear again."
No answer. Only the relentless hum of collapsing reality.
Another message formed on the fading screen, its letters shaking as though even they were struggling to exist.
Final sequence initializing.
Soul stabilization priority: critical.
Commencing reconstruction…
A ring of green light expanded outward from her chest, spreading across the blood sea. Where it touched, the cracks glowed brighter, as if resisting the end.
But the world continued to crumble. The moon's last remnants plunged into the waves, sending towers of red water spiraling toward the nothing above. The air thickened; the horizon folded inward, turning space upon itself.
Crystal's vision blurred. Her surroundings twisted, the edges of everything dissolving into motionless color. Her thoughts scattered like dust on wind.
The screen flickered one final time. Its words came fragmented, fading between pulses of light.
Recovering… host soul…
Searching… vessel…
Please… wait…
The sound—if it was sound—dimmed into silence. Her robe rippled in the rushing current of energy, the white fabric glowing faintly against the chaos devouring all else.
Crystal's eyes lifted once more to where the blood-moon had been. Only emptiness remained. Her world—the world of blood and stone—was breaking apart.
And yet… she hoped.
Because even as the sea fell into itself, the green light around her refused to die. It coiled tighter, brighter, like a heartbeat returning to the body that had forgotten it.
She held onto that glow with everything she had left.
Hoping. Waiting.
As the last fragment of the blood-red sky fell into the sea, the light around her surged—
—and the world shattered completely.