The battlefield was wrong.
Not ruined—inverted.
The sky crawled with reflections of Payune's past deaths
The earth breathed through sword wounds
The Eclipse blinked
And with each blink:
The Dragonlord gained a new face (All weeping)
Not-Hayuni lost a glass limb (Each one sprouting teeth)
Payune's shadow ate another piece of her name
The First Blade hummed in her grip—not a weapon's song, but a lullaby sung backwards.
"You feel it now," whispered the Dragonlord, his armor cracking to reveal:
A ribcage full of tiny coffins
Fingers stitched from nursery curtains
Eyes that matched Payune's exactly
Payune moved.
Her strike should have decapitated him.
Instead, she cut open the sky.
What poured from the wound wasn't light.
It was memory given form:
A younger Dragonlord (Kneeling before a thing with too many hands)
A crib (Dripping something thicker than blood)
A whisper: "Choose which one dies first."
Not-Hayuni caught the memory mid-air and ate it whole.
Her glass body shattered, revealing:
Hayuni's skeleton (Wrapped in Eclipse-fire)
The First Blade's missing tip (Embedded in her sternum)
A third eye (Watching from all directions at once)
"He didn't sacrifice us," the eye blinked. "He was sacrificed to us."
The Dragonlord screamed—not in denial, but recognition.
Dragonrend's bones melted in her grip, reforming as:
A key (For a door that shouldn't exist)
A noose (For a neck not yet grown)
A rattle (Filled with tiny teeth)
She plunged it into her own chest.
Her ribs unfolded like a cradle
The Eclipse screamed in unison with Hayuni's corpse
Something in her shadow stood up smiling
The Dragonlord attacked—not Payune, but her shadow.
His mistake.
The shadow caught his wrist and spoke with Payune's first voice:
"Daddy?"
His armor turned to dust.
Not-Hayuni laughed as the Eclipse:
Swallowed the Dragonlord whole
Coughed up the First Blade
Began dissolving into nursery rhymes
The Blade was different now:
Hilt: A child's fist
Edge: Broken lullabies
Pommel: A single unblinking eye
It sang when Payune touched it:
"You made me to break the cycle."
"Why do you keep putting me back?"
Behind her, the Forger stepped from the sky, her tools:
Hammer: Crib wood
Anvil: Frozen screams
Tongs: That left fingerprints on souls
"Finish it," she said. "Like you always do."
Payune stabbed downward.
Not at the Eclipse.
Not at the Dragonlord's remains.
At the battlefield itself.
The earth screamed as:
Every past battle replayed simultaneously
Every dead soldier stood up whispering
The sky ripped open like a birth canal
From the wound poured:
A million stillborn timelines
The Dragonlord's true face (A hollow man holding two tiny graves)
The crib (Now splintered open, its interior breathing)
Hayuni's corpse collapsed into Payune's arms, her last words:
"You were always the better twin."
"That's why it had to be you."
"Now wake up."
The sound came first:
Wet clicking (Like a newborn's first gasp)
Splintering wood (Like a coffin opening)
Laughter (Like your own, but younger)
Then the hand—
—small, perfect, and utterly wrong in ways that made:
The Eclipse vomit black stars
The Forger drop her hammer
Payune's shadow start crying
The fingers curled.
The world held its breath.
The voice spoke:
"Who let me out?"