The sandstorm came without warning.
One moment, Kael and the others stood in the stillness of the Bleeding Quiet. The next, the sky howled and the earth screamed—grains of red-glowing sand spinning into a vortex as sharp as broken timeglass.
Ero didn't flinch.
He raised a hand, fingers splayed wide, and the storm bent around them—unseen waves of song pushing the chaos aside. The boy's whispered melody kept their path open, but even his power had limits.
Ashra gritted her teeth. "Where's this coming from?"
Vaelith's voice cut through the storm like thread through fabric. "The third Fractureborn awakens."
Kael's grip tightened on his blade.
"Another like us?"
Vaelith shook her head. "Not like you. Not like anyone."
She pointed into the storm.
There, rising like a beast from myth, was a throne made of spine and rusted steel. And seated upon it—a creature wrapped in molten armor, crowned with jagged shards of clockfaces and bone.
It stood as they approached. Eight feet tall. Four arms. And eyes like bleeding stars.
Ero's voice slipped into Kael's mind: That is Nohr.
Vaelith added, "He was born inside a collapsing time loop—his body aged and rewound a thousand times until it broke into this. His soul fractured, scattered across nine centuries. Only one fragment remains, and it wears the Timeblood Crown."
Kael stepped forward. "Is he… aware?"
A deep growl vibrated through the sand.
"I remember every death," Nohr snarled. "And every life that replaced mine."
He raised one clawed hand.
Time around them froze—birds stopped mid-flight, Ashra caught mid-step, Ero's whisper cut silent.
Only Kael moved.
Only Nohr moved.
"You were the first fracture," Nohr said, his voice layered like echoing screams. "You carry the wound that started my undoing."
Kael pointed his sword at the crown. "Then let's finish it."
Nohr roared.
The storm shattered.
And in that breathless instant, Kael leapt, steel meeting molten claws in mid-air—sword against chronosteel, fracture against fracture.
The world spun.
And the throne crumbled beneath their fury.
The clash between Kael and Nohr shattered time itself in a thirty-meter radius.
Ashra gasped as the frozen moment snapped back to motion—wind returning, sand cascading, and Ero singing a single sustained note that kept their ground from folding inward.
Nohr drove Kael backward with sheer brute force. Each swing of his massive clawed arms left gashes in the air, distorting the light and smell of the battlefield.
"I died nine times," Nohr snarled, lunging again, "and in each death, you survived."
Kael blocked with his blade, the golden glyphs flaring brighter. "I didn't choose to survive. Time spared me. Blame the god."
Nohr's laughter was like metal scraping bone.
"Time doesn't spare. It calculates."
They collided again. Sparks flew. Kael saw images in the impact—fragments of Nohr's memories flashing in bursts:
A mother weeping over an empty cradle.
A village celebrating a birth that never happened.
A battlefield where Nohr stood alone… again and again.
Each of his deaths rewritten, each return more monstrous.
Ashra shouted from the edge. "Kael! His crown! It binds his soul!"
Kael ducked a strike and rolled behind Nohr. The Timeblood Crown shimmered—an unstable fusion of clockwork and memory, wrapped around the beast's skull like a prison.
Ero raised both hands. His lips moved in silence, but Kael heard the words inside his chest.
"Break the ninth chord. Set him free."
Kael didn't hesitate.
He surged forward, sword glowing white-hot, and slashed upward with all the fury time had denied him.
The blade struck the crown.
A crack split the battlefield.
And Nohr screamed—a sound torn from every version of himself that had ever died.
The crown exploded in shards of light and blood and broken seconds.
Nohr collapsed.
The storm died.
The throne of rust melted into sand.
Kael stood over him, chest heaving.
Nohr looked up, no longer monstrous—just a man, weary and weeping. "You… remembered me."
Kael knelt. "I do now."
Ero walked forward and placed a hand on Nohr's chest.
"He is the third," Vaelith whispered. "And the war just became winnable."
Far beyond the dunes, in a chamber of mirrors beyond space, the Chrono God opened one golden eye.
And began to rewrite the rules.
Nohr slept now, curled beneath a dying sun that hovered strangely still in the sky. The others gathered near a crumbled ridge, where the sand fell away into what Vaelith called a memory trench—a fracture where lost time pooled.
Kael sat with his blade resting across his knees. The weapon pulsed faintly, echoing the beat of his heart.
Ero stared into the trench, his golden eyes reflecting fragments of broken days—moments that no longer existed, yet clung to the edges of reality like ghosts that refused silence.
Ashra stood behind them, arms crossed, still watchful. "What now?" she asked. "We've awakened three of the Five. That means the Veil will move. The Chrono God won't let this go unpunished."
Vaelith nodded slowly. "There will be agents. Echo-splitters. Reapers of the Fold. The longer we resist, the more the timeline will fight back."
Kael clenched his fists. "Then we fight harder."
Ero finally spoke, his voice distant. "The next of us hides behind a locked moment. A war that never happened… yet left a million dead."
Ashra blinked. "How does that even work?"
Vaelith looked solemn. "You'll see."
Kael stood, raising his blade. "Before we go, we need an oath. A rewritten one."
Ashra tilted her head. "Like the old Oath of the Watchers?"
Kael nodded. "No. Something new. We're not watchers. We're not guardians. We're fractures. We exist where the gods failed."
Ero touched the ground and sang a single note, and from it, a circle of burning sigils bloomed around them.
Each stepped forward.
Kael spoke first.
"I am Kael of the First Scar. I vow to defy fate, no matter the cost."
Ashra followed.
"I am Ashra of the Flame Vein. I vow to burn through every lie written in time."
Vaelith stepped in.
"I am Vaelith, Born Between Bells. I vow to remember what others forget."
Ero placed his hand in last.
"I am Ero, Keeper of the Moon's Last Whisper. I vow to sing until the silence ends."
The circle glowed brighter, then vanished.
Above them, the still sun twitched—skipping a beat.
In a far-off citadel of mirrored time, a new timeline bled into existence.
The war was no longer prophecy.
It was present.
The first sign was the silence.
Not the ordinary kind—but an oppressive stillness that crushed sound itself. Even the wind stopped moving.
Kael noticed it first, the fine hairs on his neck rising as the world held its breath.
Ero turned sharply. "They've found us."
From the edge of the memory trench, dark figures emerged—not walking, but gliding, as if their feet barely acknowledged reality. Cloaked in unraveling shadows, their faces were masked with fractured timeglass, each reflecting different versions of the world.
"Fold Reapers," Vaelith whispered.
Ashra drew her twin daggers. "What do they want?"
Vaelith's voice dropped. "Not what. Who."
The lead Reaper raised a curved blade forged from compressed timelines—dripping with seconds stolen from dying moments. Its voice was many voices at once:
"Return the awakened. Restore the broken. Or perish and be rewritten."
Kael stepped forward. "We've made our oath. There's no going back."
The Reaper raised its hand. A ripple shot forward—time distortion—twisting space like paper curling in fire. The trench behind them groaned, trying to collapse into itself.
Ero clapped his hands together and sang—three notes, high and sharp.
The distortion shattered in midair.
Ashra moved in a blink, cutting through one of the lesser Reapers before it could fade. It burst into a cloud of past echoes, crying out names that no longer existed.
Kael and the lead Reaper clashed next.
Blade met blade.
Kael's sword hummed with the energy of fractured destinies. The Reaper's weapon struck with the weight of extinguished futures. Every blow shifted the battlefield—one strike took them to dusk, the next to a night that hadn't happened yet.
Vaelith held the edges of their location steady, her fingers glowing with glyphs drawn from forgotten languages.
But they were outnumbered.
Ashra panted. "They just keep coming—splitting from echoes!"
Then Ero shouted:
"Pull back into the trench!"
Kael hesitated.
"Now!"
They jumped.
Falling—no, folding—into the memory trench, time unraveling around them like a spiral staircase of dead centuries.
The Fold Reapers didn't follow.
Not yet.
But above the trench, the lead Reaper stared down, one cracked mirror-eye pulsing red.
"You cannot hide in memory forever."
And then it vanished.