The ruined temple breathed.
Its walls, once carved with prayers to lost gods, now pulsed with warped moonlight. Ivy choked the arches, twisting upward like skeletal fingers. Dust shimmered unnaturally—too slow, too heavy—like the air itself mourned what had once been sacred.
Kaelith waited, unseen.
The Lunavynx lay curled atop a fractured altar, eyes closed, purring a melody that made the shadows move. With each pulse of its rhythm, reality thinned. Illusion bled into truth.
"Welcome home," Kaelith whispered, his voice threading through the stone.
And the temple shifted.
---
Aelric Stormrune was the first to notice something was wrong. He blinked, and Selene was gone. In her place stood his brother—Tavian, who had fallen in the war for the Eastern Reach.
"Aelric," Tavian said, smiling the way he used to before the crown poisoned them. "It's not too late. We can still go back. You don't have to carry all of this alone."
His heart clenched. His sword lowered. But only for a breath.
Tempestheart trembled in warning. The illusion cracked—and Tavian's eyes shimmered gold.
Aelric stepped back into the storm of his purpose.
---
Thorin Blackflame wasn't so lucky.
He saw Lyra not as she was—but as the daughter he'd lost to plague, her silver hair tied with the same braid, her laugh that same burst of spring. When she reached for him, calling him Papa, his warhammer trembled in his grip.
Lyra didn't realize the danger until it was almost too late. She dove aside just as the hammer shattered the floor beside her.
"Thorin! It's me—snap out of it!"
But his eyes were full of flame and memory. And for a moment, the temple held its breath.
---
Vaelorith Duskbane tried to fight it with reason.
He sealed himself in a sphere of shadow and logic—but the mirrors along the temple walls whispered with voices long buried. One called his name in Kaelith's voice. Another sang their old spell-duets. A third whispered of the kiss Vaelorith had stolen and regretted ever since.
His magic—intricate and dangerous—fractured under emotional strain. The shadows spiraled, reacting wildly, and a vortex of mirror-shards and unmoored illusion swept toward Korrak—
Who roared, shattering the nearest mirror with a fist.
But there was no glass.
Only blood.
His own.
And in the reflection, he saw a younger version of himself kneeling before Kaelith, swearing to protect him always.
---
Selene Starwhisper stood motionless, her hourglass pendant spinning faster with each heartbeat. She was surrounded by visions of futures—dozens, hundreds. In some, Kaelith ruled as a god of light. In others, the world burned. But in every single one, she saw herself beside him—sometimes as ally, sometimes as executioner.
She whispered, "You didn't just see fate. You crafted it."
---
And above them all, Kaelith stepped through the mirrorlight like a dream given breath.
To Thorin, he was the daughter.
To Vaelorith, he was the lover.
To Lyra, he became her sister—laughing, reaching.
To Korrak, the oath-giver.
To Selene, the vision unspoken.
To Aelric…
Kaelith stood before him unchanged. Golden-eyed. Cloaked in starlight. And smiling the smile from their youth—when they still believed they could fix the world.
"I never wanted to fight you," Kaelith said, voice barely a whisper.
Aelric's blade burned with stormlight.
"You left me no choice."
The temple groaned. Mirrors cracked. Illusions buckled.
And for a heartbeat—just one—the Six remembered themselves.
But in their eyes now burned confusion, pain, and fury.
Kaelith stepped back into shadow, satisfied.
"Let them come unraveled, one thread at a time."
--
---
Silence clung to the shattered temple like fog.
The illusions had faded—but their aftertaste lingered: blood on the tongue, memory in the marrow. The mirrors lay in fragments across the marble floor, reflecting broken pieces of each of them.
Aelric stood first, breathing hard, sword still drawn. His stormlight flickered—fading now, uncertain. He looked around, accounting for them all.
"Everyone alive?"
Korrak grunted, binding his knuckles with a strip of cloth. "Alive. Less sure about sane."
Vaelorith sat against a pillar, robes scorched from his own backlash. "He was inside my mind. Inside all of us. He's not fighting to kill us—he's trying to unmake us."
Thorin paced like a caged flame, jaw clenched. "He made me raise my weapon against her. I saw her." He didn't say his daughter's name, but they all heard it in the crack of his voice.
Lyra leaned against the wall, bruised but quiet. Her eyes hadn't left Thorin. She was the one most shaken, though she masked it well. "He turned us into each other's nightmares."
Selene finally spoke. "He's not testing our strength. He's testing our memory. If we forget who we are—what binds us—he wins."
They were silent for a moment, each carrying a different kind of wound.
Then Aelric stepped into the center of the room and drove Tempestheart into the stone floor. A tremor of thunder echoed through the ruin. Not as threat—but as anchor.
"We don't break here," he said, voice low but commanding. "Not in the house of forgotten gods. Not under the weight of our pasts."
He looked to each of them in turn.
"To remember Kaelith is to remember our own fractures. But that's why we fight. Because even shattered things can be reforged."
Vaelorith gave a bitter laugh. "Even if the reforging burns?"
"Especially then."
Korrak nodded. "Spoken like a war-smith."
Thorin finally stopped pacing. He looked to Lyra—then dropped to one knee before her.
"I'm sorry," he said simply. No pride. No armor.
Lyra studied him for a long moment. Then she offered a hand and pulled him up. "Next time," she said, "if you swing at me—make sure it's real."
Aelric drew Tempestheart free. "We move at dawn. The temple was a trap. The city's heart lies ahead."
Selene stepped forward, gaze distant. "He's retreating to the moon-tree. The visions say he's preparing something... final."
Vaelorith's eyes narrowed. "Then we tear the root from the rot."
Together, they stepped from the temple—scarred, unsteady, but united.
Above them, the sky cracked with faint thunder. A storm was coming.
And Kaelith... Kaelith waited beneath the silver blossoms, hands outstretched not in welcome—but in prophecy.
---