MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 8: BROKEN-LIGHT
The wind carried a strange scent — smoke, iron, and something faintly sweet, like rotting blossoms. It swept through the crumbling remains of Muraei as Izek and Raian stood near the old well, where only moments ago a Hollowkind Warden had met its end. The silence left behind was haunting, almost hollow.
Izek flexed his fingers, the weight of his own power still buzzing in his bones. That pressure — the gravity within him — was becoming harder to ignore. It was no longer just a force he summoned… it felt alive, watching, and growing.
Raian stood nearby, shirt torn, a trail of blood still fresh along his forearm. But his eyes weren't on his wound — they were fixed on the well.
"Did you feel it?" he asked.
Izek nodded slowly. "It wasn't just the Warden… there was something beneath it. Something deeper."
Raian's brows furrowed. His fingers twitched faintly, and for a brief moment, arcs of shimmering energy danced along his knuckles — not lightning exactly, but something fluid, like folded layers of light bending around his hand.
Izek noticed. "You've been holding back."
Raian didn't answer right away. "I don't understand it fully. It's like… when I move a certain way, time folds with me. But it only lasts a second. I think it's still evolving."
"Resonant Flow," Izek murmured. "The way it's shaping us... it's different for each of us."
Raian looked down at his hand, then clenched it. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing."
Before Izek could respond, the wind shifted. Fast. Violently. It whipped around them in a spiral, then stopped — dead still.
A groan echoed from inside a collapsed structure across the square. Izek raised his guard instinctively, stepping in front of Raian. But it wasn't a Hollowkind.
It was a girl.
She limped out from under a cracked archway, holding her side, eyes wide with fear and disbelief. Her hair was streaked with dirt and ash, and her cloak — once a pale silver — was nearly black from soot. But it was her presence that struck them most.
She glowed faintly. Dim pulses of fragmented light bled from her skin, like cracked glass barely holding its form.
Raian moved forward, cautious. "Are you hurt?"
She stared at him for a moment too long, like she didn't understand the question. Then: "No. Not physically."
Her voice was strange — soft, distant, like it came from a place far away.
Izek stepped beside Raian. "You were here during the attack?"
She nodded. "I was beneath during the resonance surge. I thought… I thought I could hold it back. I failed."
Raian raised an eyebrow. "You fought the Warden?"
Her eyes darkened. "No. I was trying to contain the breach it came from. There's a chamber below. Or… there was."
Something clicked in Izek's mind. "You're a Resonant-user."
The girl gave a hesitant nod. "Not by choice."
"What's your name?" Raian asked.
She hesitated. "Call me Lira. Lira Cael."
The name echoed faintly in Izek's mind. He'd heard it before — mentioned briefly by one of the village scouts before they went missing. A girl who could manipulate fragments of light — not light itself, but residual energy left behind by dying stars. "Broken-light flow," they'd called it. Unstable. Dangerous.
And powerful.
Lira looked between the two of them, her eyes settling on Izek. "You're the one with the gravity core."
Izek stiffened. "How do you know that?"
"I felt the weight," she said. "When you crushed the Warden. It shook the old chamber walls. There's a reason it came here, you know."
Izek and Raian exchanged a glance. "Why?"
"Because this village sits on a resonance fracture. And it wasn't just the Warden that came through."
Raian's jaw clenched. "So there are more?"
Lira nodded, swallowing hard. "I think something followed it. I couldn't see it… but I heard it."
Izek narrowed his eyes. "What did it sound like?"
She looked up, face pale.
"Breathing. But not from lungs. From everywhere."
---
Later, as night returned and the sky cleared just enough to reveal fractured stars overhead, the trio sat around a small campfire near the edge of the village ruins. Lira had wrapped her arm in cloth, still glowing faintly with residual light.
Raian sat with his blade on his lap, sharpening the edge with slow, thoughtful strokes.
"So," he said finally, glancing at Lira, "you're joining us?"
She nodded, slowly. "If I go alone, it'll find me. If I stay behind… it'll find others."
Izek looked to Raian. "We could use another set of eyes. Especially someone who's seen the other side of the fracture."
Raian smirked. "Fair enough. But if she turns into a Hollowkind in the night, I'm blaming you."
Lira didn't smile. "If I do, kill me fast."
A long silence passed.
Then Izek stood, eyes drifting toward the west. The road stretched beyond, torn and uncertain. But something was calling to him. Pulling. As if gravity itself were tied to fate.
He whispered under his breath, not even sure why the words came.
"Blade of Eternity…"
Lira looked up sharply. "What did you say?"
He turned. "It's what we're looking for."
Her expression twisted. "Then you should know this — the Blade doesn't just choose heroes."
Izek's brow furrowed. "What does it choose?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Catalysts."
TO BE CONTINUED