The night tore itself open.
Lightning split the sky in veins of white and crimson as Aria stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. The world below churned with fog and thunder, the Rift pulsing beneath the mountain like a second, furious heart. Each beat resonated through her body — ancient, relentless, alive.
Damian called her name again, but she no longer heard it as sound.
It came to her as memory — as if her soul had always known the shape of his voice, long before her birth, long before this world had been made.
"Aria!" His voice cracked, raw and human. "Don't do this!"
She turned slightly. Rain streaked down her face, mingling with tears she didn't remember shedding. "You said once you'd follow me anywhere," she whispered. "Did you mean it?"
Damian took a step toward her, rain slicking the dark hair to his forehead. "Even into hell. But this—" He pointed toward the abyss. "This isn't hell. It's the end of everything."
"Then maybe that's where I belong."
The air shattered. The ground beneath her feet fractured like ice. Darkness poured out — not as shadow, but as liquid night, spilling upward, swallowing the rain and the light and the sound. The Rift opened its mouth to the world.
And Aria stepped forward.
---
There was no falling.
One moment, she stood on the edge of the living world. The next, she was suspended in a void that wasn't empty, but crowded — filled with whispers, faces, and fragments of time. The Rift was not a place. It was a pulse, a consciousness older than creation.
It breathed through her.
Welcome back, little spark.
The voice was not one, but many — each syllable echoing through her bones. It wasn't sound; it was remembrance.
Aria floated amid endless shadow, her body dissolving into streams of light and smoke. Below her — or perhaps within her — she saw shapes moving: titanic forms, chained to the void. Their eyes burned like dying stars, their mouths whispering words that made the air tremble.
She knew them.
The Forgotten Gods.
The ones the Moon had buried when she claimed dominion over light and order.
"You should not be here," a voice said — a softer one, clearer, human.
Aria turned and saw her reflection.
Or something wearing her face.
The other Aria stood across the void, barefoot, her hair floating in unseen currents, her eyes pale and unblinking. The mark on her chest was gone. Her skin glowed faintly, not with power, but with truth.
"Who are you?" Aria asked.
"I am what you were before you were born," the reflection said. "The fragment the Rift left behind."
Aria felt her pulse quicken. "That's impossible."
The other smiled faintly. "You were made to forget. That was the Moon's kindness. But the Rift remembers all things."
As she spoke, the void rippled. Images bloomed around them — flashes of worlds unmade, stars devoured, gods kneeling before an unseen flame. Aria saw herself in all of them — sometimes human, sometimes divine, sometimes something in between.
The Rift whispered: You were our hand. Our voice. Our wrath.
"No," Aria gasped. "I'm not—"
You are what remains of us, the Rift thundered. The vessel of what the gods feared.
Pain ripped through her — not physical, but existential. Every cell in her body burned as the truth unfurled: she was not chosen by the Rift. She was the Rift — or a piece of it, wrapped in mortal form.
"You want me to destroy them," she whispered.
No, the Rift replied, its voice tender now, almost loving. We want you to finish what they began.
Her reflection stepped closer, the void flickering with light and memory. "You can't fight it, Aria. The moment you used its power, you started becoming it."
Aria's hands trembled. "If I accept it, what happens to me?"
"You stop being you."
The silence that followed was immense.
And then she heard Damian's voice — distant, muffled, yet cutting through the void like sunlight through water.
Aria! Come back!
Her heart clenched. She could see him through the Rift now — on the cliff's edge, drenched, desperate, his hands pressed to the ground as if he could pull her back by will alone. His howl echoed through the storm, raw enough to make the void itself shiver.
"He's calling you," her reflection said softly. "But if you go, you'll weaken the bond. You'll lose the Rift's power."
"Maybe that's the point," Aria said.
The reflection tilted her head, curious. "You'd choose him over eternity?"
"I'd choose myself," Aria whispered. "And I'm not this."
She reached out — toward the voice, toward the world, toward the one thing that still tethered her to who she was.
But the Rift screamed.
The void convulsed. Chains broke. The titans below roared, their eyes snapping open for the first time in ages. The voice turned furious, desperate.
You cannot leave, little spark! You are what keeps us alive!
Aria's pulse thundered in her ears. "Then you'll die with me!"
She reached for the mark on her chest. It burned — brighter, deeper — until it wasn't just light, but fire. A fusion of shadow and divinity. She tore it open.
The void exploded.
---
Damian saw the sky rip apart.
A column of light shot from the cliffs, spiraling upward like a storm of black and gold. It carved through the clouds, through the heavens themselves. He fell to his knees, shielding his eyes, his heart screaming her name.
"Aria!"
Then — silence.
The light collapsed inward, devouring itself. The rain stopped. The Rift sealed shut with a sound like a sigh.
For a long moment, there was nothing but stillness.
Then — a breath.
Damian lifted his head.
Aria lay on the ground a few feet away, her hair splayed like spilled ink, her skin pale but warm. He stumbled to her, his chest tightening with every step.
"Aria," he whispered, touching her cheek. "Come on. Open your eyes."
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then — she did.
Gold, soft and human. No black. No divine glow. Just… her.
"Damian," she rasped, her voice barely audible.
He exhaled a laugh that was half sob. "You're here."
She smiled faintly. "I think… I closed the door."
But as he pulled her into his arms, Kael's voice echoed faintly from behind them. "You didn't close it," he said, his tone grim. "You became it."
Damian turned sharply, but Kael was already walking away, his cloak dragging through the mud, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the storm had broken.
Aria stirred weakly in his arms, her fingers clutching his shirt. "What does he mean?"
Damian hesitated. "It doesn't matter."
But he knew it did. He could feel it — the faint hum beneath her heartbeat, not the Rift's rage, but its rhythm. Subtle. Waiting. Watching.
As the dawn broke over the shattered valley, Damian held her tighter, knowing the truth he couldn't say aloud.
The Rift hadn't been destroyed.
It had simply found a new shape.
And it was breathing through her.
---