MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 13: MEMORIES-SPLIT TUNDRA
The north was broken.
What once had been a high plain of soft grass and icy ridges was now a fractured scar in the earth — torn by the Third Collapse and the chaos that followed. Twisted veins of crystal jutted from the ground like the bones of a fallen giant, and flowstorms still howled in pulses, sweeping through the landscape like ghosts repeating old deaths.
They reached the Flow-Split Tundra by dusk of the second day.
Raian led with purpose, his cloak whipping behind him in the wind. The shard pulsed in rhythm with the ambient flow around them — not reacting to danger, but guiding them forward. Drawing them toward something.
Izek scanned the terrain with his scope-lens, brow furrowed. "The storm patterns are thinning. That's not natural."
"Kaelith's near," Raian said.
Lira's fingers grazed her chest, where the red mark — once dormant — now flickered with faint, angry pulses.
"This place remembers pain," she murmured.
"Or anticipates it," Izek muttered.
---
They pressed forward.
In the distance, the shattered spires of Kaelith loomed — each one bent at impossible angles, as if gravity had turned sideways during the Collapse. Light shimmered unnaturally around the ruins, and pieces of architecture floated mid-air, frozen mid-fall.
Then they heard the song.
Low. Fragmented. Not from any throat — but from the land.
Izek spun, blade half-drawn. "Resonance?"
"No," Raian said. "Something older."
They followed the sound to a basin where the tundra dipped — and there, half-buried beneath frost and dust, lay a monolithic structure: a gate shaped like a ring, carved with shifting runes. At its center stood a man — kneeling, unmoving.
Raian's steps slowed.
He recognized the posture. The sword at the man's side. The way the dust around him hadn't settled, as if the world held its breath.
Raian approached.
And the man raised his head.
His face was weathered. His left eye was gone, a long scar replacing it. But his right eye — blue, sharp, tired — widened when it landed on Raian.
"You came back."
Raian froze. "I… don't know you."
The man stood, slowly. "But I remember you."
---
His name was Kaelrin, once a sentinel of the Flowguard — long thought dead during the Third Collapse.
"I was stationed here when the city fell," he said, voice brittle with years. "You were here too, Raian. You and two others."
Raian shook his head. "That's impossible. I've never been north of Mirewake."
Kaelrin's eye darkened. "Then the Blade has already started."
Lira stepped forward. "What do you mean?"
"The shard," Kaelrin said, motioning to the piece in Raian's hand. "It doesn't just show the future. It rewrites memory. It buries pieces of you until the Blade needs them."
He touched his temple.
"I remember your oath beneath the Moon-Arch. I remember your voice when the city collapsed. You told me to guard the gate until the time came again."
Raian's breath caught.
"What gate?"
Kaelrin turned — and the runed ring behind him shimmered, revealing a spiraling path of starlight suspended in impossible space.
"The Sanctum of Echoes," he said. "Where the Blade first sang."
---
Suddenly, the air shattered.
A blast of pressure knocked them backward — and from the far ridge, a figure stepped through a tear in the sky.
The Pale Twin.
Its mask was smooth as bone, its robe flowing like shadowlight. And beside it, taller and darker, strode the Eclipsed Shadow — its armor whispering with every movement, runes writhing like hungry veins.
"They've found us," Izek said, drawing his blade.
Raian and Lira flanked him.
But Kaelrin raised a hand. "No. You can't win here."
He stepped in front of them, drawing a blade forged from star-glass and grief.
"I will hold the threshold. Just like I did before."
Raian grabbed his arm. "You'll die."
Kaelrin smiled — just a little. "So did I, last time."
---
As Kaelrin strode toward the oncoming enemies, Raian turned to the others.
"Into the Sanctum. Now."
The three ran through the gate — starlight swallowing them whole.
Behind them, Kaelrin stood tall beneath the fractured sky. The Pale Twin raised a hand — and time slowed, the ground groaning beneath unnatural weight.
Kaelrin struck first.
His blade met the Twin's mask with a flash of pure resonance — a song of old debts, of cities burned and rebuilt. The impact rang across the tundra like the bell of mourning.
Then the sky burned white.
---
Within the Sanctum of Echoes…
The trio stumbled into darkness — then light poured upward.
They stood in a realm outside space, surrounded by fractured reflections of themselves: moments from the past, echoes from forgotten timelines, futures not yet shaped. Floating platforms led deeper into a memory-constructed city — Kaelith as it once was, unmarred and radiant.
"The shard brought us here," Raian whispered. "To remember."
"No," Lira said, voice trembling.
"To choose."
And far ahead, at the heart of the memory-city, a figure stood on a raised platform.
Waiting.
Raian stepped forward.
The shard in his hand burned white.
TO BE CONTINUED…