MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 33: When the Horizon Breathes
Raian did not remember closing his eyes.
One moment, he was staring at the fractured edge of the watchtower's ceiling, tracing the gaps where fire and weather had chewed it away. The next, the stone above seemed to swell — as if the sky itself had crept closer, pressing down through the cracks.
The hum in his chest had not faded. If anything, it was clearer now, like a thread pulled taut inside his ribs. Every breath felt like it belonged to someone else, given to him on loan.
He opened his eyes fully.
The watchtower was wrong.
The same riders lay sleeping against the wall. Lira was curled in her cloak. Izek still sat with his axe across his knees, but the slow, steady drag of his whetstone had stopped. His hand was frozen mid-motion.
The wind had stopped. The night had stopped.
Only the hum remained.
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A faint glow trembled along the edges of the tower's broken stones, like moonlight passing through water. Shapes drifted just outside the ruin — tall, warped silhouettes. Their edges swayed in ways that flesh and cloth never could, bending one direction while the rest of the figure leaned another.
Messengers.
Raian reached for the Blade. His fingers found it, but the moment his hand closed on the hilt, the hum changed pitch — not louder, but deeper, as if acknowledging the touch.
One of the messengers stepped into the tower. The glow followed it like a tide, spilling over the cracked stones, reaching toward Raian's boots.
He tried to move. He could not.
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The figure didn't walk so much as accumulate forward, like smoke curling into a human shape. Where its face should have been was a smear of darkness, with the faintest suggestion of features shifting beneath.
"You…" The voice wasn't in the air — it was in his teeth, in his bones. "…are the one it marked."
Raian wanted to ask what it was, but his jaw wouldn't obey. The Blade trembled in his grip, not resisting, not yielding, simply aware.
The messenger tilted its head. The hum rose again. And then, outside, the sky bent.
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Not the stars this time. The horizon itself curved inward, pulling the treeline toward them without moving the ground. The trees leaned in, their black limbs groaning though there was no wind. The air thickened. Raian's lungs labored.
The messenger's head turned toward the distortion.
"It is almost here."
Another voice — the Intervener's — cut through the stillness like a knife.
"Not tonight."
Raian's body unlocked. The riders were moving again, pale mounts already stamping the ground as if ready to crush anything in their path. The Intervener stood between him and the messenger, her hand raised. Her shadow on the wall did not match her stance — it was taller, thinner, and seemed to shift on its own.
The messenger recoiled, but did not step back.
"You cannot ride beyond it. The Fourth will anchor where you stand."
"Then we'll tear up the ground before it does," the Intervener said. Her voice was calm, but Raian saw the faint tension in her jaw.
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The moment broke.
Sound returned — all of it at once. The groan of the leaning trees, the scrape of Izek's whetstone, the shallow, panicked breath of Lira waking beside him. The glow faded from the stones. The messenger was gone.
But the hum in Raian's chest remained.
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They didn't speak while saddling up. The riders moved with quick precision, every strap and buckle pulled tight. Raian swung into the saddle, his heart still mismatched to his own body.
The eastward ride began again. But this time, the landscape didn't stay still. Shadows along the road flickered without any flame to cause them. The air was too thick to feel cold.
At first, Raian thought the noise in the distance was the wind coming back. But no wind carried a rhythm. This sound was like something massive drawing breath — slow, deliberate inhalations that made the horizon swell and shrink.
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By the time the first hints of dawn brushed the sky, Raian could see the war's remains again. Burned siege towers rotted along the edges of a battlefield where no carrion birds had come. Helmets lay where their owners had fallen, filled with black water from the last rain.
Lira's voice was a whisper. "Creed."
Izek grunted. "Not all dead."
And he was right. As they passed the ruins, movement stirred. Shapes rose — men and women, armed but slow, their eyes glassy as if only half-awake. Survivors, perhaps. Or what was left of them.
The Intervener didn't slow. "Don't engage. They're not here for us."
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But Raian knew that wasn't true.
The survivors didn't follow the riders. They turned east — the same direction the messengers had been walking.
The same direction as the hum in his chest.
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That night, they wouldn't be allowed to rest.
The Fourth had seen them.
And the next time it bent the sky, it would step through.
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TO BE CONTINUED...