MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 17: SHADOWS IN MOTION
The wind at the mountain's edge stilled.
Then it reversed.
A pull — not physical, but deep, threading into the bones of the world. As if reality had taken a breath… and was holding it.
The Eclipse stood alone at the precipice, cloak rippling in ways that defied nature. Its voidlight limbs shimmered with faint trails of afterimages, like time itself couldn't settle around it. Behind its helmet of onyx and glass, no face. Just hunger. Awareness.
The Blade had awakened.
And with it, the world's last resistance.
"Soon," it whispered, voice layered in echoes not meant for human ears. "The Pale Twin stirs."
---
Back beneath the Vault, the four emerged into the cold light of dawn. Snow had begun to fall — a quiet, ghostly curtain over the shattered path they'd taken to get here. Yet the tension between them was anything but gentle.
Raian hadn't spoken since they left the Eye.
The visions clung to him like a second skin.
Lira walked beside him, eyes on the horizon. She hadn't said anything else about what she'd seen either. But her hand brushed his briefly — and didn't move away.
Kaien led them, her pace brisk. "We'll reach the next outpost by dusk," she said. "From there, we split."
Raian blinked. "Split?"
Kaien didn't look back. "The Pale Twin won't wait. Neither will the Creed."
---
Izek finally broke the silence. "Then say it, Kaien. What aren't you telling us?"
Kaien stopped. Turned. "Three days ago, the northern archives fell. Burned from the inside out. Every bearer record, erased. The Creed doesn't just want the Blade now. They want its history dead too."
Lira's voice was quiet. "Then they know Raian has it."
"They feel it," Kaien corrected. "And worse — so does she."
Raian stiffened. "The Pale Twin."
Kaien nodded. "Once, she was like you. Chosen. Determined. But the Blade showed her a thread she couldn't accept. She tried to change it… and in doing so, lost herself."
"She turned Hollowkind?" Lira asked.
Kaien shook her head. "No. Something else. The first Eclipsed. Her resonance didn't break. It turned inside out."
---
The snow deepened as they descended. Trees emerged — skeletal, bark scarred with burn marks and strange glyphs. A warning.
Raian could feel the Blade tightening in his grip.
"She'll come for me," he said.
Kaien didn't argue. "Yes."
"I need to be ready."
"You're not," Kaien replied flatly.
Izek tensed beside him.
"But you can be. That's why we're going to the Hollow Scar."
Raian frowned. "The what?"
"It's where the first bearer died," Kaien said. "Where the Blade first chose. If there's anything left of its truth, it's there."
Lira's brow furrowed. "And what about me? I still feel it inside me. The mark. The pull. If I turn—"
"You won't," Raian said, suddenly firm. "We won't let that thread become real."
She looked at him for a moment. Then nodded.
---
Elsewhere, far from the cold and snow, the world cracked open.
A child stood in a desert, alone — her eyes mirror-flat, her mouth stitched shut with red thread.
Around her, Hollowkind twisted and danced like puppets on invisible strings. But she controlled none of them.
She was one of them.
And above her, floating like a entity veiled in oil, the Pale Twin watched the sky shatter.
She turned her head sharply.
"The Blade sings," she hissed.
She smiled.
Then began walking east.
---
Back on the mountain trail, Kaien handed each of them a black shard — humming faintly.
"Signal stones," she said. "If one breaks, we all feel it."
Raian raised his. "How long until we meet again?"
Kaien's eyes narrowed. "Depends how long you survive."
Then, for the first time, she cracked a smile.
"Don't die."
She turned and vanished into the trees.
Izek sighed. "She's warming up to us."
Raian looked at the shard. "I think she knows something we don't."
"She knows everything," Lira said, stepping beside him. "And she's still scared."
The wind picked up.
In the distance, thunder rumbled — but not from clouds.
Something was coming.
And it had already started moving.
TO BE CONTINUED