The moment the crib splintered open, the world stopped breathing.
Payune's fingers tightened around the First Blade, its edge humming with a sound like a child's first scream given form. Before her, the Thing unfolded itself from the broken cradle—not standing, not crawling, but existing in a way that made the air itself recoil.
It was small.
It was perfect.
It was wrong.
Its skin shimmered with the afterimage of a thousand unborn futures, its mouth a jagged seam that spilled not drool, but half-remembered lullabies. When it turned its face toward Payune, she saw—
—her own reflection.
But younger.
But older.
But hungrier.
"You named me once," it said, its voice the echo of a memory she couldn't place.
And just like that, the Eclipse shattered.
The older-younger-wrong Payune—the Forger—staggered back, her tools clattering to the ground. The hammer of crib wood splintered in her grip, the anvil of frozen screams weeping black tears.
"No," the Forger whispered, but the Thing was already crawling toward her, giggling.
"Liar," it crooned.
"Liar," it sang.
"Liar," it hissed.
With each word, the Forger's form unraveled—her skin peeling back to reveal another Payune beneath, then another, and another, an endless recursion of selves, each more desperate than the last.
"I did this to save us!" the Forger screamed, but the Thing only laughed, its small hands pressing against her chest—
—and pushing.
The Forger fell apart, her body dissolving into threads of fate, each one snapping with the sound of a breaking spine.
Payune's shadow had stopped mimicking her long ago.
Now, it curtsied, its edges too sharp, its smile too wide.
"She tastes like you, Mother," it whispered, holding out its hands—hands that were no longer hers, but Hayuni's, if Hayuni had been flayed open and stitched back together with vengeance and silence.
Payune recoiled.
"You're not mine," she breathed.
The shadow tilted its head.
"No," it agreed. "I'm what you left behind."
And then it lunged, not at her, but at the Eclipse's corpse—
—and ate its heart.
The Dragonlord's corpse twitched, his hollowed-out armor collapsing like a discarded chrysalis.
"I didn't sacrifice them," he rasped, his voice no longer his own, but something older, something worse. "I sacrificed to them."
The battlefield rippled, reality itself peeling back to reveal the truth:
A younger Dragonlord, kneeling before the original Eclipse—not a god, not a force of nature, but a thing with too many hands and a voice like a cracked nursery rhyme.
Two infants.
One choice.
And the Eclipse's cooing whisper:
"Which one will you give me?"
Payune understood, then.
He hadn't chosen.
He had gambled.
Hayuni's body to the Eclipse.
Payune's soul to the Blade.
And his own name—erased—so the Thing would hesitate.
The Thing reached for Payune, its fingers brushing her sternum—
—and pulled.
Not her heart.
Not her ribs.
But a tiny, perfect crib, nestled inside her chest like a forgotten wound.
A doll with her face.
A needle threaded with her veins.
A note in the Dragonlord's handwriting.
"Break the cycle," it read. "Kill me properly this time."
The Thing laughed, high and sweet, and ate the note.
Then it handed her the First Blade, now reshaped—
—into a key.
Payune understood.
She raised the Blade.
Not at the Thing.
Not at the Eclipse.
At the story itself.
The cut split the world, and from the wound poured:
A thousand weeping Payunes, each one a failed iteration.
The Dragonlord's last sigh, twisted into a lullaby.
The Thing's open mouth, yawning wide enough to step inside.
From the darkness within, a hand reached out.
Familiar.
Hers.
And a voice—
—Hayuni's, but not—
—whispered:
"Will you stay this time?"