[From Novan's Perspective]
The sky above was ashen — a forgotten gray streaked with copper light twisting like open wounds.
I no longer felt my shackles — not because they'd been removed, but because my body had stopped recognizing them.
Every step I took echoed strangely, as if the ground remembered my tread only to swallow it, refusing to let me leave a complete trace behind.
Siran walked ahead, bearing that look that wavered between faith in the truth and fear of its price.
Marin followed two paces behind me, her hand ever on the hilt of her weapon.
She hadn't spoken since we left the camp, but I could hear her thinking — or maybe I only imagined it.
Each heartbeat seemed to ripple through the air, drawing the attention of something unseen.
"How long will we keep walking without direction?" I finally asked, watching clouds move against the wind.
Marin replied without turning her head:
— "We're walking toward the answer. If you're part of the riddle, you'll understand soon enough."
Her tone was taut — not angry, but sharpened by instinctive caution.
I smiled faintly.
"Are you afraid of me?"
She stopped for a breath, then answered, cold and sure:
"I only fear the things that don't fear."
I didn't respond.
She was right — in a way that couldn't be denied.
---
After hours of walking, we reached a strange place — like a wound torn into reality itself.
The hills weren't hills anymore; they were layers of wrinkled stone, folding over themselves and whispering faintly.
The air was heavy — metallic, almost alive.
Everything here felt sick with existence.
Faris stepped forward first, dragging his spear along the ground.
"This area… it wasn't on any old map."
Siran nodded.
"That's the distortion we're tracking. The first mark of the Twilight Rings."
I glanced around — shadows moved along the stone walls, though there wasn't enough light to create them.
The shadows were moving on their own.
Marin whispered behind me,
"Step back, Novan."
But I couldn't.
Something in that place called to me, like an unfinished promise between me and it.
---
[From Marin's Perspective]
I'd been watching him since he woke from the coma, and every moment confirmed one truth —
this man wasn't like anything I'd ever seen.
When he walks, the air itself changes.
The world either breathes with him… or fears him.
I didn't believe Siran when he said Novan wasn't a threat.
I've fought curses before — seen children turn to ash after just looking into their eyes.
But curses scream. They devour. They burn.
He doesn't.
He's too quiet — and that's what terrifies me.
When we reached the distortion, I felt the earth beneath us start to breathe.
A whisper rose from the rocks — words in a tongue that shouldn't exist.
Then the ground opened, slowly, like an eye widening awake.
"Back!" I shouted —
but Faris didn't hear.
A black thread emerged from the crack — not smoke, not shadow, but a substance that moved against the light, against logic.
It wrapped around his arm, pulling. His skin began to split — not from the outside… but from within.
His veins turned into glowing red symbols.
Siran shouted,
"Elena! Silence the sound!"
Elena covered the area in eerie silence — Faris's scream vanished, though his agony didn't.
Novan didn't move an inch.
He stood before the distortion as if staring into the mirror of his own past.
I drew my sword.
"Don't you dare—!"
He whispered, without looking at me:
"It's not an attack… it's a call."
---
[From Novan's Perspective]
The black thread crawled like a mad thought, and something deep in my soul knew it —
as one knows their first name in the body's oldest memory.
I reached toward it.
Marin screamed:
"Novan! No!"
But I couldn't stop.
When the thread touched my skin, it didn't hurt — it recognized me.
Images flooded my mind: underground cities, bodies without shadows, beings kneeling before black eyes breathing through stone.
And then, the ancient voice returned — closer this time:
> "You have found the first trace of your blood, O Shadow of Eternity."
The ground ignited.
The thread burst into black sparks — shards of inverted light.
Marin screamed; Faris and Siran shielded her from the blast.
I raised my hand, letting the energy within me surge —
a flood of luminous smoke moving against the wind, wrapping around the distortion, sealing it back into the earth's womb.
In one breath, silence fell.
The stones began to crumble softly, as if drifting into sleep.
---
[From Marin's Perspective]
When the dust settled, I saw Novan standing in the wreckage —
his breathing steady, his eyes glowing with a color I'd never seen before, somewhere between silver and black.
The world around him was silent, but I swear I heard the earth whisper his name.
I approached cautiously.
"What did you just do?"
He answered without turning:
"I sent it back. That distortion… was only a memory. It was trying to remember me."
I didn't know if he was mad or right.
But deep inside, between fear and awe, a strange feeling was born — trust.
Trust that whatever he was, he might be the only one who could lead us to the truth.
---
[From Novan's Perspective]
I looked at her — that woman unsure whether she hates me or wants to protect me.
"You know the problem?" I said quietly.
"This world thinks curses are things outside us… but they live inside everyone, just waiting to be provoked."
She didn't reply, but I saw something new in her eyes —
a flicker of honesty no words could disguise.
In the distance, the violet light of twilight shattered across the mountains.
And I knew —
this was only the beginning.
The Source was opening its eyes…
and we were walking straight toward it, with no way back.
---
End of Chapter Nine — "Fractures of Twilight"
---