The air turned to glass.
Payune felt it first in her lungs - each breath crystallizing, sharp edges scraping her throat as the atmosphere itself shattered. Above them, the Eclipse revealed its true form:
Not an event.
Not a phenomenon.
A hunger.
The sky peeled back like rotting flesh, revealing an abyssal maw lined with teeth of fractured starlight. Its breath smelled of burnt temples and dying gods, each exhale aging the battlefield decades in seconds. Warriors crumbled to dust mid-scream, their armor rusting through before their bones hit the ground.
Dragonrend screamed in Payune's grip, its voice no longer metallic but fleshly, desperate:
"IT REMEMBERS WHAT WE TOOK FROM IT!"
Then the black rain began.
The droplets struck Hayuni's transformed body and she came undone.
Her obsidian armor melted like wax, revealing pulsating godflesh beneath - iridescent, veined with stolen constellations. Her limbs elongated, fingers splitting into too many joints as her spine arched into impossible curves. The vertical slit of her mouth unzipped to reveal:
A second mouth
Then a third
Then dozens
All singing in harmony:
"Sister-mine, you look..."
"...so much like..."
"...the day we died."
The fox spirit's corpse twitched at her feet. Not-Hayuni stepped on its tail, leaning down with a wet, clicking sound as her neck extended too far.
"Shhh," she told the dead thing. "You'll get your turn."
He arrived in a storm of breaking mirrors, each shard reflecting:
A dead girl (Hayuni)
A burning city (Theirs)
A sword being forged (From what?)
His cloak fell away, revealing the hollow place where his heart should be - a gateway to:
Swirling galaxies of screaming faces
A tiny, glowing figure (Hayuni's soul)
Something moving in the dark
"I took only what the Dragonlord discarded," the Crow rasped, black tears eating through his cheeks.
Not-Hayuni laughed with all her mouths.
"You took the crumbs," she corrected. "While he kept the feast."
Then she lunged—
—and the Crow let her in.
The vision tore through her:
The Workshop
Two tables
Two sisters
One blade (Dragonrend, but different, hungrier)
The Choice
The Dragonlord's hand hovering
"Which heart shall I take?"
The Crow begging (His mouth moves but no sound comes out)
The Sacrifice
Not Hayuni
Not Payune
The Crow ripping open his own chest
"ME. TAKE ME."
The Lie
The Dragonlord smiling
His hands inside the Crow's ribs
"Why choose one..."
"...when I can take both?"
Payune vomited blood as she wrenched free.
The great maw contorted, its teeth grinding against each other as it formed:
A WORD
A NAME
"PAYUNE."
The sound unmade reality:
The sky bled
The ground screamed
Dragonrend melted in her hand, revealing:
A SMALL GIRL'S BONES
"Hello again," whispered Hayuni's soul from inside the blade.