The explosion wasn't sound. It was memory given form.
The Silent Crow's hollow chest ruptured in a supernova of liquid mirror-shards, each fragment screaming with the voices of stolen lives. Payune barely raised Dragonrend in time - the bone-blade shrieked as it absorbed the impact, the force carving trenches through cursed earth as she skidded backward.
"Pathetic," crooned Not-Hayuni, her shadow-limbs constricting around the Crow's convulsing form. "You always—"
The mirrors answered.
Every shard detonated simultaneously, becoming:
A thousand knives of crystallized time
A storm of reflected atrocities
The Crow's last gift
Not-Hayuni's many mouths gaped as the shards impaled her from every angle, pinning her thrashing form to the disintegrating battlefield. The Eclipse above wailed in sympathetic agony, its great eye weeping black tears that burned craters where they fell.
"RUN!" The Crow's voice echoed from the dissolving mirrors. "WHILE SHE'S—"
His remains vaporized into starlight.
The Eclipse inhaled.
Not-Hayuni laughed around the spears in her throat.
"Sweet Crow," she gurgled, shadow-blood bubbling between needle teeth. "You never learn."
Her flesh drank the mirrors.
Each impaling shard dissolved into her, triggering grotesque metamorphosis:
Her crown of glass grew antlers of fractured light
The Eclipse-core in her chest birthed swirling constellations
Her ribcage bloomed open like a grotesque flower
Dragonrend vibrated in Payune's grip, the bone-blade's voice shrill with terror:
"SHE'S BECOMING THE VESSEL!"
Payune didn't think.
She plunged the blade into the earth, unleashing a cataclysm of black fire that:
Turned the battlefield to molten glass
Carved Elder Script into reality itself
Awoke the dead beneath their feet
Not-Hayuni stepped through the inferno unharmed, her new crown drinking the flames.
"Adorable," she sighed, licking char from her claws. "Father's parlor tricks on a child's toy."
Then she moved.
0.3 seconds:
Not-Hayuni's elbow-spikes extended - crystalline shards aimed to puncture Payune's eyes.
0.5 seconds:
Payune pivoted, Dragonrend singing upward in a gut-rip that should have bisected a mountain. The blade bounced harmlessly off Not-Hayuni's Eclipse-core with a sound like breaking universes.
0.7 seconds:
A shadow-tendril whip-cracked around Payune's ankle. The impact when she hit the ground birthed new faultlines in reality.
1.2 seconds:
Dragonrend mutated - bone segments sprouting serrated teeth as it became something hungrier. The counter-slash severed six of Not-Hayuni's grasping limbs. They regrew before the severed shadows hit the ground.
1.9 seconds:
Not-Hayuni caught the blade bare-handed.
Dragonrend screamed in Hayuni's voice.
Payune headbutted the Eclipse-core.
The world went white.
The library of burning memories stretched infinitely in all directions. Payune stood ankle-deep in:
The ashes of her childhood
The ink of rewritten histories
The liquid mirrors of stolen lives
"ONE TRUTH," the Eclipse boomed, its voice the sound of collapsing stars. "ONE LIE."
The nearest mirror showed her mother's death - but now Payune saw:
Her own infant hands clutching the killing blade
Hayuni's tiny fingers trying to stop her
The Dragonlord's smile as he guided the strike
"LIE," hissed the Eclipse.
Another mirror shattered, revealing:
The Dragonlord weeping over their crib
His knife plunging toward Payune first
Hayuni reaching out with celestial fire in her palms
"TRUTH," the Eclipse sighed, as Dragonrend materialized in Payune's grip, now dripping fresh blood.
"TAKE THE TRADE," it begged in Hayuni's voice.
Reality snapped back with the sound of breaking bones.
The sky tore like rotten parchment.
First came the scent - burnt ozone and dying magic. Then the sound - a blade being drawn across the throat of the world. Finally, the light - not illumination, but the terrible absence of it.
The Dragonlord descended on wings of screaming metal, his true form revealed:
His face a mosaic of stolen visages
His chest a cage for a dying sun
His right arm fused with Dragonrend's twin
"Daughters," he sighed, the word carving fissures in the earth. "Must we always meet over corpses?"
Not-Hayuni's laugh was the sound of shattering sanity as her transformation completed:
Her body became living stained glass
Her Eclipse-core birthed new constellations
Her face split vertically into a perfect mirror
Reflected in its surface, Payune saw:
Not her current form
Not a possible future
The thing she'd been before the Dragonlord stole her memories
Dragonrend screamed a warning as Not-Hayuni lunged.
The true battle began.