MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 21: SHADOWS OF THE FIRST SWORD
The Pale Twin turned her gaze toward the temple as the rift pulsed behind her, warping sound and space like breath on glass. Every inch of her presence screamed contradiction — a being both living and not, her resonance folding over itself in rhythms that even Izek struggled to interpret.
"I'm not your enemy," she said, lowering her half-mask just slightly. "Not yet."
Raian kept the Blade angled downward, though it hummed sharply at her nearness. Lira flinched as her mark pulsed again — brighter now, resonating in tune with the March itself.
"Then what are you?" Raian asked. "Hollowkind? Human? Something in between?"
The Hollowkind behind her stirred — not with hostility, but reverence. Its voice echoed like crystal shards falling through water.
"She is what the Creed calls the Threshold."
"The Threshold of what?" Izek asked.
The Pale Twin's smile returned, empty this time. "The edge of the world you've always known. Beyond this temple lies the truth the Order tried to erase."
Raian's knuckles tightened around the Blade. "The Order?"
Lira stepped forward, her voice laced with pain and clarity. "The Creed… and the Order. They were never separate, were they?"
"No," the Pale Twin whispered. "Once, they were one. Bound by a single oath — to protect the first wielder of the Eternal Blade."
The wind of the Aether March howled around them as those words hung in the air.
---
They followed her inside.
The temple was both ruin and miracle — ceiling torn open to stars that didn't belong to this world, walls humming with encoded memory. Echoes of past wielders lined the halls in statues woven of resonance stone, their faces worn down by time — and intention.
In the central chamber, a mosaic glowed faintly underfoot. It depicted a towering figure cloaked in flame and steel, blade in one hand, the other raised to the sky.
Beneath it, a single name repeated in fractured scripts:
The Skybreaker. The Voidheart.The First Resonant.
The original owner of the Blade of Eternity.
---
"The Order turned on him," the Pale Twin said softly. "Not out of malice. Out of fear."
Raian stared at the mural. The figure looked nothing like him… and yet, the Blade pulsed as if in recognition.
"They sealed him beneath the March," she continued. "Broke the Creed into pieces. Some tried to continue the truth. Others… founded the Order."
"The Sable Creed followed his philosophy," the Hollowkind added. "That all resonance flows toward freedom."
"And the Order?" Izek asked.
"They chained resonance," the Pale Twin said. "Just as they'll try to chain you."
---
Lira gasped — her mark igniting, flooding her vision with a brilliant shape: a man wrapped in broken armor, breathing but still, deep beneath the temple. His chest rose and fell with glacial patience.
"The First Wielder…" she whispered.
"He waits," the Pale Twin said.
"Then this is where we free him?" Raian asked.
"No," she replied.
"This is where you choose not to."
---
A tremor ripped through the temple. Walls cracked. Resonance threads snapped like violin strings.
The Pale Twin's expression turned grim.
"They've found you."
Far above, winged constructs cloaked in glyphs descended from the warped sky — Order Sentinels, shining with purity and silence.
At their head, a figure in gold armor, his eyes white-hot with artificial resonance.
The First Spear of the Order.
The one who had been hunting Raian since he first drew the Blade.
---
To Be Continued…