The Half-Light Between
Selene drifted in the liminal space between reality and death - a place neither warm nor cold, neither black nor white. She floated, suspended in light like diluted ink, where the air itself held the taste of old ash and starlight.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been here. Minutes? Years?
Time didn't pass here. It remembered.
Her thoughts were fragmented, stitched together from old wounds and half-healed regrets.
Kael.
The sword.
The betrayal.
Her father's voice.
The scream she never let out.
Selene had thought death would be silent - a stillness void of feeling. But here, in this broken corridor between worlds, everything was louder.
The blood still roared in her ears. The grief echoed. The truth - the one she'd tried to drown - whispered to her again and again:
"You were meant to die."
"No," she murmured. "Not like this. Not here."
A surge of warmth pulsed through the space.
Something - someone - was pulling her back.
A crack split across the sky above her. Thin and golden, it shimmered like a tear in the fabric of this false world. Through it, she heard a voice.
Familiar. Steady. Anguished.
"Selene."
Her fingers twitched.
Then her heart beat once - hard.
And the world shattered.
Ashguard Rising
Kael stood at the mouth of the old Kaeysth vault, sword drawn and nerves splintered. His armor - forged not in flame but in resolve - bore the ash-mark sigil of their rebellion. Behind him, the remnants of a crumbled world gathered.
The Ashguard.
Once a myth. Now a truth that burned.
Voren stood to his right, leaning against his blade. Dried blood caked one his of his temple. "She's not coming back," he said quietly. "Kael, you have to stop."
"She's not gone." Kael said. "I Would feel it if she was."
"And if she's somewhere worse?"IKael didn't answer. Instead he stepped forward and pressed the Darksword into the vault's seal. Magic resisted, pushing back, but the sword pulsed - once, twice - and the stone cracked.
The vault groaned.
Runes bled.
The gates opened, not with ceremony, but like a wound forced to gape.
The Vault of Threaded Fates
The vault's interior was unlike any place Kael had seen - and he had seen entire cities fall. Here, the walls wept ink. Runes floated midair, constantly rearranging, forming sentences in dead tongues.
At the heart of the chamber rested a chained tome: The Book of Binding.
It beat like a living thing.
"This is a bad idea," Voren muttered as he followed Kael in. "These relics are not tools, They're traps."
Kael didn't respond. He approached the book and unsheathed the Darhsword again.
The sword trembled.
The chains writhed in protest.
He lowered the blade across the binding.
And whispered:
" Give her back."
The book hissed. "She entered of her own will. She belongs to the space between."
Kael's voice was steady. "Then I"ll go in and pull her out."
The chains fell away like water.
The book snapped open.
And the vault - and Kael - vanished.
The Memory Prison
Selene opened her eyes to fire.
No flames - memories, burning and devouring each other.
She stood in a corridor of her own life but the walls shifted, showing different paths. She saw herself as a child in white robes, bowing before the old Seers. She saw herself refusing the sword. Accepting it. Throwing it away. Dying. Living. Betraying Kael. Saving him.
Every choice was laid bare, and each one burned.
She fell to her knees.
A shadow emerged beside her - Kael, wild-eyed and breathless, as though he had sprinted through a storm to find her.
"You shouldn't be here," she whispered.
"I couldn't leave you behind."
They embraced, and the world trembled.
But the fire around them intensified.
"You brought the sword," she realized.
"I had to."
The voice of the vault echoed above them:
"Two souls bound by the same fate cannot exist unchanged. One must stay. One must rewrite."
Kael gritted his teeth. "Then I stay."
"No!" Selene grabbed his face. "You idiot. You always think suffering equals love."
He laughed bitterly. "And you always think martyrdom equals power."
A third voice - familiar, ancient, cruel - whispered: "Choose."
Ink and Blood
The realm began to collapse.
Walls folded into themselves. The ink ran dry. The book cold not hold them both.
Selene reached out to the Dark sword hovering midair, it's tip buried in a memory of war. Her fingers wrapped around it's hilt.
It responded - not with power, but with pain.
Kael shouted something, but it was drowned by the roar of falling timelines.
Selene screamed.
The sword answered.
In that scream, a new word carved itself into reality:
"Rewrite."
A blinding light exploded around them.
Outside the Book
Voren watched in stunned silence as the vault pulsed with golden fire. The air was thick with tension - the kind that comes just before a kingdom breaks.
Then - silence.
The book flew shut. The Darksword clattered across the floor.
And from the ashes stepped two figures.
Kael, holding Selene.
Both alive.
But different.
Their eyes glowed faintly - touched by the magic of rewritten time. Their bodies shimmered as though caught between frames.
"You did it," Voren whispered.
Kael collapsed.
Selene didn't cry.
She simply turned her face to the sky.
And smiled.
The New Truth
Across the continent, something shifted.
In the Dreadlands, the wound closed.
In Velderyn, the corrupted river ran clear.
In the Southern Peaks, the Seers dropped theirs mirrors, eyes bleeding from the truth.
The world didn't remember the old reality - only those bound by the Ashguard's vow did.
In this new version of the story:
. Kael was never the chosen one.
. Selene never died.
. The sword was a key, not a curse.
. The Council of Mirrors fell before it could ascend.
The rewrite had worked.
But there would be consequences.
Dawn Over Kaesyth
Weeks passed.
Selene sat atop the high wall of Kaesyth, the wind teasing her newly cut hair. She stared into the horizon where old wounds had once opened - now sealed by choice, not force.
Kael joined her, carrying two cups of blackroot tea.
"You still don't sleep," he said.
"Sleep is for people who aren't stitched together by time, magic and divine interference."
He grinned. "You're still dramatic."
"You're still bleeding." She pointed at his bandaged hand.
"Comes with the job."
She took the tea and sipped quietly. Then:
"You left something out when you rewrote the world."
He raised an eyebrow.
"You left me."
Kael flinched. "I didn't mean-"
"I know," she said. "But i remember. All of it. The dying. The silence. The in-between."
He reached for her hand.
She didn't pull away.
"Let's not rewrite again," she said.
"Deal."
The Darksword sleeps
In the catacombs below the city, the Darksword was laid to rest in a cradle of stone and spellcraft. Runes wrapped around it like vines, binding it not out of fear, but reverence.
It had ended an age.
It had loved. Lost. Broken. Healed.
And it dreamed - not of war, but of the hands that had held it without hate.