The forest clearing was no longer a place of nature; it was a wound in reality.
James was on his knees, his chest heaving. Golden cracks rippled across his skin like lightning veins trapped beneath the surface. He wasn't just breathing; he was radiating. Every gasp released a pulse of mana that flattened the grass and charred the leaves of nearby oaks.
"A-Alex… I can't… it's too much!" James screamed.
From the shadows of the warped trees, a hooded figure stepped forward. They didn't walk; they glided, the light around them bending in a distorted halo.
"How exquisite," the figure whispered, their voice a layered harmony of a thousand dead souls. "The First Sun ignites, and the Regressor trembles. The prophecy is a hungry thing, isn't it?"
Alex stepped in front of James, his hand on his dagger, his eyes burning with a dark, fractured light. "Get back. He isn't yours to claim."
The hooded figure chuckled. "He belongs to the sky, Alex Black. Just as you belong to the dirt of a dozen failed timelines."
With a flick of the figure's wrist, the sky above the forest tore. A second fracture—not violet, but pitch black—opened like a hungry mouth. A colossal, clawed hand of obsidian starlight reached through, dripping shadows that extinguished the sunlight where they fell.
"The Fallen Sun comes to greet its sibling," the figure announced.
Alex roared, his own suppressed power—the fragments of the Demon King's soul—erupting in a shroud of black flame. "I said… STAY AWAY FROM HIM!"
James's eyes snapped open, glowing with the brilliance of a dying star. The two forces—Alex's dark regression and James's solar awakening—slammed into each other, creating a shockwave that turned the forest floor to glass.
The True Eclipse had begun. And this time, Alex wasn't just a witness. He was the catalyst.