The silence before her words was suffocating.
Dozens of puppets hung in the air, strings quivering in anticipation, as if the battlefield itself leaned closer to hear what Clara might say. The fire on her fingertips wavered crimson, threads snaking along her wrists, searing lines into her skin like brands.
Damien's voice broke through, raw with desperation. "Don't do it. You can fight this, Clara!"
But his voice was drowned beneath the whispers clawing at her skull. Command. Shape. Rule. They weren't just sounds; they were urges bleeding into her thoughts, rewriting her instincts. The threads weren't foreign anymore—they pulsed with her heartbeat.
Her lips trembled. "I… I can't stop it."
Yurin's calm voice slid into her storm. "Then don't stop it."
She looked at him, horrified. He stood untouched amid the chaos, his threads already dissecting another wave of crimson beasts with surgical precision. His face betrayed nothing but certainty.
"You hold power that could end this battle now," Yurin said evenly. "So stop pretending you're powerless. Speak."
"Don't listen to him!" Damien shouted, flames bursting chaotically around his fists. His eyes were wild. "Once you give in, you'll never come back!"
But Clara's hands shook with fire that wasn't her own anymore. Her body ached under the weight of restraint. The fissure pulsed again, its glow spreading wider, cracks spidering across the ground. The air grew heavy, thick with a strange pressure, as though the world itself demanded she choose.
The puppets leaned closer, waiting, trembling like dogs at her heel.
Clara squeezed her eyes shut. She hated this. Hated the hunger in her veins. Hated the way the battlefield bent toward her flame.
But most of all, she hated the truth Yurin had spoken: if she didn't command them, they would command her.
The words slipped out before she realized. "Fight each other."
The stillness shattered.
The puppets convulsed violently, threads snapping taut. Then, with horrifying grace, they turned on each other. Faceless heads twisted as blades of thread and claw lashed out, slicing, tearing, ripping through their own ranks. The battlefield erupted into carnage, crimson cords unraveling in showers of sparks and ash.
Clara gasped, staggering backward, clutching her chest as if she'd been struck. The puppets' destruction reverberated through her body—half-ecstasy, half-agony. She could feel every thread as it broke, as though she were tearing parts of herself away.
Damien froze, staring at her with horror etched across his face. "What have you done…"
Evelyn's laughter rang high and sharp over the chaos, delighted, merciless. "Oh, darling, that was beautiful! Do you feel it? That rush? That control? Tell me, did it taste like victory, or like blood?"
Clara's voice cracked. "I didn't… I didn't mean—"
But the fissure roared.
The ground buckled beneath their feet as the crack widened, vomiting out a wave of crimson light. The surviving puppets collapsed into heaps of unraveling threads, only for the fissure to drink them back in. The glow intensified, rising like a monstrous heartbeat.
Yurin's eyes sharpened. "It's reacting."
The fissure pulsed again, louder this time, and from within its depths, something vast began to stir. Not puppets. Not beasts. Something heavier. Older.
The battlefield trembled as jagged hands of crimson thread clawed upward, pulling free a massive figure cloaked in cords, its body hunched and monstrous. Unlike the others, this one wasn't faceless. Its mask was cracked porcelain, its hollow eyes burning with crimson flame.
It moved with purpose.
Damien swore under his breath. "That… that thing isn't like the others."
Evelyn clapped her hands together, grinning wide. "Oh, finally! A proper dance partner."
But Clara barely heard them. Her vision blurred, her body shaking violently. She had given a command. She had made them fight. And though the power thrilled through her veins, her soul recoiled.
Her first command had answered her.
And now, the fissure had too.