The ember pulsed in my palm, fragile as a heartbeat.
Blue-white light flickered across my face, weak but steady. The storm of ash hissed around me, claws scraping at my skin, trying to tear the ember away.
But I held it tighter.
Because for the first time since the fall, I wasn't holding ash.
I was holding proof.
Arjun was alive.
✦
The Inkblade writhed in my grip, shadows shivering like a trapped beast.
"…release it… false hope, empty fire… it is not life, only delay…"
"Shut up," I muttered, dragging myself to my feet.
The chamber walls pulsed with shifting memories—scenes bleeding into each other, survivors dying over and over. Dev's sword raised. Kavya's defiance. The mother's scream. They looped endlessly, accusing me in silence.
But the ember's glow cut through them, faint but clear.
Like a thread in the dark.
A path.
I followed.
✦
The ash shifted as I walked, trying to bury my legs, to swallow the ember. The whispers grew crueler, sharper.
"You let us burn.""You broke the script.""You were never meant to survive."
My teeth ground together.
"I know," I hissed through clenched jaws.
Admitting it didn't silence them. But it stopped them from cutting deeper.
Because they weren't wrong.
I had broken everything.
And maybe that was why Arjun was still here.
✦
The ember tugged faintly, pulling me deeper into the graveyard. Every step followed the glow, a thread winding through the void. The air grew colder, ash falling in heavier drifts, but the ember's warmth kept my fingers steady.
Then the terrain shifted again.
The path cracked open, splitting into jagged shards of memory. Flames burst upward—illusions of the plaza burning, beasts tearing through streets. The air filled with screams that weren't mine, weren't now.
The graveyard wasn't just trying to distract me anymore.
It was fighting back.
✦
Figures rose from the ash, bodies forming out of sparks. They were half-finished, broken silhouettes, their faces melted into blank masks, their limbs jagged.
But their voices were sharp.
"You weren't strong enough.""You left us to die.""You will fail again."
The Inkblade pulsed hungrily.
"…cut them… take their strength… every false one is a gift…"
The shadows spread across my arm, aching to devour.
But I didn't lift the blade.
Not yet.
Because I recognized the shapes.
They weren't strangers.
They wore the outlines of people I'd fought beside.
✦
One stepped forward, its blank face tilted toward me.
Dev.
The shape was wrong—the arms too long, the shoulders cracked—but the stance was his. Solid. Defiant.
Another emerged beside it. Kavya. Sharp, upright, ready to strike.
And behind them, smaller. Staff clutched in trembling hands.
Arjun.
My chest tightened.
Not real.
Not them.
But the graveyard knew how to hurt.
✦
The constructs rushed me.
Dev's echo swung first, sword of ash crashing toward my skull. I ducked, the blade shattering stone where I'd stood. Kavya's echo struck next, faster, sharper, her strikes screaming through the air.
I blocked with the Inkblade, shadows sparking as ash met cursed steel. The blade hissed in delight, drinking the false impact.
The smaller figure stood behind them, staff raised. Ash flickered in its eyes, glowing faint.
"Ishaan…" it whispered.
Not Arjun.
Just a shape wearing him.
But the sound still cracked me.
✦
They pressed in, three shadows against one. Every strike forced me back, closer to the storm.
The Inkblade screamed in my grip, urging me to give in.
"…cut them down… take their fire… they are lies, nothing more…"
And maybe it was right.
Maybe the only way through was to kill them again.
But as Dev's ash-sword clashed against mine, as Kavya's echo darted close, as the false Arjun whispered my name—
I realized the graveyard wasn't testing my strength.
It was testing my choice.
✦
I drove my foot into the ground, shoving Dev's echo back. Shadows tore through the ash, scattering sparks. Kavya's blade of embers scraped across my arm, searing through skin. I hissed but didn't drop the ember in my other hand.
Because that was the real test.
I couldn't let go of Arjun's light.
Not for the fight.
Not for the blade.
Not for anything.
✦
I roared, slashing wide with the Inkblade. Shadows tore through the ash-constructs, scattering them into fragments. The false Dev howled, dissolving into sparks. Kavya's echo shrieked, body crumbling into dust.
But the smallest one lingered.
The false Arjun clutched his broken staff tighter, staring at me with blank eyes that still seemed to accuse.
"Ishaan…"
The ember in my hand pulsed once, violently, as if answering.
And the false Arjun shattered.
✦
Silence fell.
The storm recoiled, ash swirling upward in fury. The ember burned hotter, pulling forward. A thread stretched from its light, weaving into the distance, pointing toward a door of brilliance at the far end of the graveyard.
A door made of light.
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
And beyond it, I felt him.
Arjun.
✦
The system's voice bled faintly through the storm.
[ Trace stabilized. ][ Survivor tether active. ][ Warning: Path unstable. ]
The ground trembled beneath me. The storm howled.
But none of it mattered.
Because I had a path.
And I would follow it.
The path wasn't solid.
Every step forward was like walking on glass that hadn't decided if it wanted to exist. My boots sank into shifting ash, then struck something harder, then nearly plunged into nothing.
But the thread of light in my palm pulled me onward.
The door at the end of the graveyard shone brighter with every step. Its glow carved through the dark, steady, patient, waiting.
The storm hated it.
Ash rose higher, swirling in violent eddies. Whispers sharpened into screams.
"You'll tear it apart!""You were never meant to see this!""Turn back before it swallows you!"
I didn't.
I couldn't.
Because if Arjun's voice had reached me through all of this, then he wasn't gone.
And I refused to let this place keep him.
✦
The first guardian emerged from the storm.
Not ash this time. Not a half-memory, not a broken echo.
This one was built. Deliberate.
A creature of fractures, its body a puzzle of jagged shards, each piece flickering with someone's face before twisting into another. Dev's eyes, Kavya's snarl, the mother's scream—every second, the pieces shifted.
A monster built from memory itself.
It blocked the path, towering, its voice a chorus of the dead.
"You will not take what belongs to the grave."
✦
The Inkblade vibrated in my grip, shivering like it was laughing.
"…yes… finally… something real enough to cut…"
I steadied my breath, raised the blade, and charged.
The creature swung, its arm splitting into a dozen jagged limbs, each lashing out with sparks. I ducked one, sliced through another, shadows tearing shards apart. They burst into sparks, but more reformed instantly, new faces screaming as they struck.
I slashed again, each strike harder, faster, pushing through. Sparks rained down, scorching my skin.
The monster's chorus screamed louder.
"You failed us!""You will fail him too!"
The blade pulsed, whispering in my ear.
"…they are right… you will lose him… unless you give me more…"
I ignored it and drove forward.
✦
The ember in my hand flared, blue-white light cutting through the ash. The storm hissed, recoiling. The monster staggered as if burned.
I swung the Inkblade into its chest, shadows exploding outward.
The creature shrieked, its faces fracturing, its body shattering into fragments of broken light.
When the storm cleared, the path was open again.
The door pulsed brighter, steady as a heartbeat.
Arjun's heartbeat.
✦
I stumbled forward, chest heaving, skin blistered from sparks. Every step felt heavier, like the storm was trying to glue me down.
But the ember's warmth in my palm didn't falter.
And the door was closer.
I reached it, finally, standing before the light. It wasn't stone or wood. It wasn't even solid.
It was a threshold, woven from threads of memory and truth.
The storm howled in fury, ash lashing against it, but the light held.
I lifted the ember.
It pulsed once, twice, then surged, brighter than anything in this graveyard.
The door opened.
✦
Light swallowed me.
Not warmth. Not peace.
But truth.
I stumbled into a void filled with fractured mirrors, each shard reflecting moments of Arjun's life. His laughter in the plaza. His staff breaking against the beast. His final stand, shielding strangers who couldn't move fast enough.
And there, in the center—
A figure.
Faint. Fading. But real.
Arjun.
✦
He wasn't whole.
His body was light stitched together with cracks, his staff broken in half, his eyes dim. But when he saw me, his mouth moved.
"…Ishaan?"
My chest clenched.
He was alive.
Barely.
But alive.
The system's voice stuttered, faint and broken:
[ Survivor trace secured. ][ Stabilization required. Risk of dissolution high. ]
I stumbled closer, falling to my knees.
"Arjun. It's me. I found you."
His cracked form flickered, light bleeding from the gaps.
"You… shouldn't… be here," he whispered.
✦
I reached out, gripping his shoulder. My hand passed through light for a second, then caught.
"I couldn't leave you."
His dim eyes searched mine.
"You'll… break too."
"Then I'll break," I said. "But I won't leave you alone."
For a moment, silence.
Then his lips curved, faint, tired, but real.
"You're stubborn."
"Yeah." I almost laughed, almost cried. "And you're still alive. That's enough."
✦
The system's voice cut in again, louder this time.
[ Survivor partially recovered. ][ Binding unstable. ][ Warning: Divine interference detected. ]
The void shook. Cracks spread through the mirrored walls. The storm outside screamed louder, furious.
And then—
A voice that wasn't the system, wasn't the storm, pressed into my skull.
Deep. Cold. Ancient.
[ You are binding threads that were never meant to meet. ]
I froze.
The gods were watching.
✦
The ember in my hand flared one last time, its light weaving into Arjun's broken form, steadying it.
The storm roared, the void cracked, the divine gaze pressed heavier.
But I didn't let go.
Because I'd already chosen.
And nothing—not gods, not storms, not scripts—was going to take him from me.