The first thing Silas noticed was the silence.
It wasn't the calm kind of silence—the kind that followed a storm or a piece of music's final, fading note. This silence was jagged, broken, and filled with gaps where sound should exist but didn't. Even his own breath seemed uncertain, as if the world had forgotten the rhythm required to keep him alive.
His eyes opened to a sky of splintered glass. Shards of starlight hung above him, suspended in the air as though frozen mid-collapse. He lay on a blackened plain where fragments of cities jutted from the ground at impossible angles—half of a cobblestone street dangling upside down in the air, the broken arch of a cathedral standing alone like a tombstone.
Silas pushed himself up, heart pounding. This… this isn't the battlefield.
The memory of the tyrant's defeat came rushing back—blood, discordant shrieks, the final surge of music that tore reality open and sealed their victory. And then… nothing. Darkness.
Now he stood in a world that looked like it had been pulled apart and reassembled by trembling hands.
"Silas…"
Her voice broke the silence.
Lyra stood a few paces away, her pale hair catching fragments of glass-light. But even she seemed… different. Her eyes held an unease he had never seen before. The bond that tethered their souls—a connection forged in melody and fire—felt faint, like a thread fraying at both ends.
"You're awake," she said, though her tone lacked relief.
"I should be dead," he muttered, steadying himself. "Or… something close to it."
Her gaze flickered. "Perhaps you are."
The words chilled him more than the void air.
He tried to recall their last moment together—her voice, guiding him, pulling him toward the final strike against the tyrant. But the memory slipped like water through his fingers. He remembered her hand in his… or was it the shadow of her hand? He remembered her song intertwining with his, only to vanish in dissonance.
Fragments. Just fragments.
"What happened?" Silas demanded, his voice sharp. "Why does it feel like…" He paused, struggling for words. "…like parts of me are missing?"
Lyra lowered her head. "Because they are."
The silence returned.
Before he could ask, the world itself shuddered. The glass-like sky cracked further, a spiderweb of fissures spreading across the heavens. A sound followed—low, guttural, like the groan of an ancient instrument dragged across stone.
Silas instinctively reached for his violin. It was there, in his hands, though its strings quivered as if aware of the distortion around them. He set the bow against them, ready to summon a note.
That was when he saw it.
From the fissures above, something slipped through—a creature of shadow and memory. Its body was an unfinished thought, half-formed, faces and voices twisting across its surface. It screamed, and the sound was like dozens of his own forgotten moments being torn from his skull.
He staggered, clutching his head. Images of his childhood flickered—brief, incomplete: a woman's lullaby, a friend's laughter, the scent of rain-soaked parchment. Then gone, devoured by the creature's cry.
Lyra's hand shot forward, summoning threads of silver light. Her song rose—haunting, resolute—and wrapped around the beast like chains.
"Play, Silas!" she cried. "Before it takes more of you!"
His fingers trembled. He set the bow to the strings, forcing out a jagged chord. The sound lashed against the thing, splintering its form. He shifted into a faster rhythm, each note a weapon, each strike tearing fragments of it apart.
The creature shrieked—his memories spilling from its form like blood. He saw himself as a boy, clutching a violin too large for his hands. He saw Lyra standing on a cliff, singing to the sea. He saw a battle he could no longer name.
Then the images shattered into dust.
The beast collapsed into silence.
Silas dropped to one knee, chest heaving. His violin buzzed in his hands, strings smoking faintly from the violence of his playing.
Lyra approached slowly, her face pale. "That was a temporal predator," she whispered. "Born from fractured timelines, drawn to memories. They should not exist here—not unless the multiverse has been… compromised."
Silas looked up at the shattered sky. The fissures spread wider, more shadows writhing beyond them. His pulse thundered.
"This isn't over," he said hoarsely.
Lyra knelt beside him, her hand hovering near his shoulder but never quite touching. "No. It's only beginning."
Her words rang with finality, and for the first time since defeating the tyrant, Silas felt true dread.
The battlefield was behind them.The war… had only just started.