Two days after the waystation, Nexus found the first sign.
Not much. Just a disturbance in the snow—already half-filled by fresh fall, almost invisible unless you knew what to look for.
A footprint.
Too large to be human. Clawed. Canine.
Atlas.
Nexus crouched beside it, brushing away loose snow with careful fingers. The print was maybe six hours old. Not fresh, but recent enough to matter.
"He's moving the same direction we are," Maris observed, kneeling beside him.
Her breath fogged in the air. She'd gotten better at managing the cold over the past few days—or more accurately, she'd gotten better at hiding how much it hurt.
Nexus could see the strain around her eyes. The slight tremor in her hands that had nothing to do with temperature. The way she moved more carefully, like someone aware their body might fail them at any moment.
But she didn't complain. Didn't ask to turn back.
Just kept walking. Kept searching.
"Northwest," Nexus confirmed, studying the print's direction. "Toward Uncle Retro."
"Do you think he knows where Retro is?" Maris asked. "Or is he just following the same pull we are?"
Nexus stood, brushing snow from his knees.
"Does it matter? Either way, we're on the right track."
He looked ahead at the endless white expanse. The landscape had grown even more desolate over the past two days—no trees now, no landmarks, just rolling hills of snow under that perpetually gray sky.
Navigation was becoming difficult. Without the sun, without stars, with every direction looking identical—
If not for The Night Slayer's constant pull, they'd be hopelessly lost.
"Let's keep moving," Nexus said. "If we're lucky, we'll catch up to him before—"
He stopped.
Frowned.
Crouched again, looking more carefully at the snow around Atlas's print.
"Before what?" Maris prompted.
"Before whatever else is following him catches up first."
He pointed at a second set of tracks.
These were different. Smaller. But there were many of them—overlapping, crisscrossing, forming a pattern that made Nexus's skin crawl.
Not random. Not wandering.
Hunting.
Maris sucked in a sharp breath.
"What are those?"
Nexus traced one track with his finger. Four-toed. Clawed. But wrong somehow. The spacing was off. The depth inconsistent. Like whatever made them didn't quite understand how feet worked.
"I don't know," he admitted.
That was becoming a common refrain. I don't know. More and more questions, fewer and fewer answers.
The tracks circled Atlas's path. Followed it. Converged on it from multiple angles. Like a pack coordinating.
And they were fresher than Atlas's print. Maybe three hours old.
"They're gaining on him," Maris said quietly.
Nexus stood, hand finding The Night Slayer's hilt instinctively.
"Then we move faster."
They found the forest two hours later.
It shouldn't have existed.
The landscape had been barren for days—nothing but snow and rock and the occasional frozen stream. No vegetation. No shelter. Nothing alive.
Then suddenly—trees.
Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Rising from the snow in twisted profusion, bare branches reaching toward the gray sky like skeletal fingers.
But they weren't trees.
Not quite.
Nexus stopped at the forest's edge, every instinct screaming wrong wrong wrong.
The trunks were too white. Too smooth. Lacking bark or texture. And the way they grew—
"Those aren't trees," Maris whispered.
"No," Nexus agreed.
They were bones.
Massive bones, driven into the earth like posts. Ribcages the size of houses. Femurs thick as ancient oaks. Vertebrae stacked and fused, forming columns that defied normal anatomy.
The skeletal remains of creatures that shouldn't exist, arranged in patterns that suggested something between forest and graveyard and warning.
"What were they?" Maris's voice shook.
Nexus shook his head slowly.
He'd studied anatomy in his father's archives. Had learned to identify remains from dozens of species—predator and prey, mundane and magical.
These matched nothing in his knowledge.
Too large. Too wrong. Bones that curved in impossible angles. Joints that connected in ways that defied function. Like someone had taken pieces from a dozen different creatures and forced them together without regard for biology or physics.
"Titans, maybe," he said. "From before. From when the world was different."
"Before what?"
"Before it broke the first time."
Maris looked at him sharply.
"You think this has happened before? Reality tearing apart?"
"The gods don't talk about what came before them," Nexus said quietly. "But there had to be something. The world didn't just spring into existence with Gaia. Something was here first."
He gestured at the bone forest.
"Something that died when the old world ended. Or was killed to make room for the new one."
The wind picked up, whistling through the skeletal branches with a sound like distant screaming.
Maris hugged herself tighter.
"We have to go through there, don't we?"
Nexus checked the tracks.
Atlas's prints led directly into the forest. So did the hunting pack's—more numerous now, closing in from all sides.
"Yes," he said.
"I was afraid you'd say that."
They entered the bone forest as evening approached.
The temperature dropped immediately—not just cold, but a deeper chill that had nothing to do with weather. Like the warmth of living things couldn't penetrate here. Like this place existed in permanent winter regardless of season or sun.
The bones rose around them, creating a canopy that blocked what little light remained. Shadows pooled thick as oil between the massive ribs and femurs.
Perfect territory for Nexus's powers.
Terrible territory for almost everything else.
"Stay close," he murmured to Maris.
His shadow spread without conscious command, reaching out to touch the darkness around them. Tasting it. Understanding it.
And recoiling slightly.
Because the shadows here weren't empty.
They were occupied.
"Nexus—" Maris's hand found his arm, gripping tight. "There's something here. Many somethings. I can feel them but I can't—they don't have auras. Or they have wrong ones. Backwards ones."
"I know." His voice came out steady despite the fear crawling up his spine. "Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't look too long at any one shadow."
"Why not?"
"Because some of them are looking back."
They walked for what felt like hours but might have been minutes. Time stretched strange in the bone forest, elastic and unreliable.
The tracks remained visible—Atlas's large prints, the hunting pack's clustered marks. Both sets fresher now. The gap between hunter and prey narrowing.
And then—
Maris gasped.
"What?" Nexus spun, blade half-drawn.
"There." She pointed at a massive skull embedded in the ground ahead. "Look at the tracks."
Nexus approached carefully.
The tracks converged here. All of them—Atlas's and the pack's. Meeting at this point.
And then—
Only Atlas's tracks continued. Leading away from the skull, moving faster now. Running.
The pack's tracks simply stopped.
Not diverged. Not turned back. Just stopped, as if whatever made them had ceased to exist mid-step.
"That's not possible," Maris whispered.
Nexus crouched, studying the final prints. Fresh. Very fresh. Maybe an hour old.
"Atlas fought them," he said slowly. "Fought them here. And won."
"Then where are the bodies?"
Nexus looked around the clearing. Searched for signs of battle—blood, disturbed snow, scattered weapons.
Nothing.
Just those ending tracks and the silent bones surrounding them.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
They stood in silence, both trying to understand what they were seeing.
Finally, Nexus straightened.
"We keep following. He's alive. That's what matters."
"For now," Maris said quietly.
They moved past the skull, following Atlas's trail deeper into the forest.
Behind them, in the shadows they'd left, something stirred.
Watched.
Waited.
They found Atlas's camp as true night fell.
Not much of a camp—just a small clearing where he'd stopped long enough to catch his breath. The snow was disturbed, compressed where he'd sat. A few drops of blood frozen on the white surface.
Injured, then. Not badly, maybe, but hurt.
Nexus examined the blood while Maris kept watch.
It was fresh. Still tacky despite the cold. Less than thirty minutes old.
"He's close," Nexus said. "Very close. He might have heard the same thing we—"
A sound cut through the forest.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just a soft click-click-click, like claws on bone.
Nexus and Maris froze.
The sound came again. Closer now. From somewhere in the shadowed spaces between skeletal trees.
Click-click-click.
Multiple sources. Surrounding them.
Nexus's hand found The Night Slayer's hilt. His shadow spread wide, probing the darkness for threats.
And finding them.
Shapes moved in the shadows—low to the ground, quick, coordinated. The same hunting pack that had been following Atlas. Except now—
Now they were circling Nexus and Maris instead.
"They've changed targets," Maris breathed, her True Aura Sense flaring. "Their auras are backwards. Inside-out. Like looking at people through broken mirrors."
Click-click-click.
The shapes emerged from shadow into the small pool of twilight illuminating the clearing.
Nexus's breath caught.
They looked like wolves. Moved like wolves. Had the basic structure of wolves—four legs, lupine heads, bushy tails.
But the details were wrong.
Their fur grew in patches, revealing skin that glistened like wet leather. Their eyes were too large, too numerous—some had three, some had five, arranged in asymmetric clusters. Their jaws didn't close properly, teeth jutting out at angles that suggested broken geometry rather than biology.
And they didn't breathe.
Chests didn't rise and fall. No fog escaped their mouths despite the cold. They moved with the mechanical precision of puppets, lacking the small inefficiencies that marked living things.
"What are they?" Maris whispered.
Nexus drew The Night Slayer slowly.
The blade sang as it cleared the sheath—a sound like breaking glass, like shattering ice. The three gems pulsed with that sickly red light, casting strange shadows across the clearing.
The not-wolves paused. Heads tilting in perfect synchronization. All those mismatched eyes focusing on the sword.
On the gems.
They recognize it, Nexus realized with cold dread. They know what these fragments are.
Then—
They attacked.
Not chaotic. Not frenzied.
Coordinated.
The pack split into three groups, each moving to flank from different angles. Some lunged high. Some went low. Others circled, cutting off escape routes.
Like they'd done this before. Like they'd been designed for exactly this purpose.
Nexus met the first wave with shadow and steel.
His blade cut through the lead creature's neck—and found no resistance. The head separated cleanly, tumbling away. But the body kept moving, leaping, claws extended toward his throat.
He shadow-stepped backward, appearing ten feet away. The headless body crashed into empty space, landing in a heap.
And started reassembling itself.
The head rolled across snow, somehow orienting on the body. Dark fluid seeped from the severed neck—not blood, but something thicker, moving with purposeful intent.
The pieces crawled toward each other.
"They don't stay dead!" Maris shouted.
She'd conjured water from somewhere—probably melted snow, shaped through will and magic into blade-sharp edges. She fought with the flowing, evasive style of her people, striking and retreating, never staying still long enough to be pinned.
But every hit she landed—no matter how precise, no matter how devastating—the creatures just reformed.
Reassembled.
Refused to die.
Nexus tried fire next. Shadow-fire, specifically—the volatile mix of darkness and flame he'd inherited from his bloodline.
The flames caught. The creatures burned.
But they kept coming, wreathed in fire, moving like living torches. The flames consumed their flesh but not their function. They attacked with the same mechanical precision, just coated in burning death.
"Nexus!" Maris's voice carried panic now. "I can't hold them all! There's too many!"
He counted quickly. Eight. Ten. Twelve. More emerging from the shadows every second. The pack that had been hunting Atlas, redirected to new prey.
To the fragments.
They were going to be overwhelmed.
The Night Slayer pulsed in his grip. The gems burned hotter, their red light flaring.
And Nexus felt something in the blade reaching.
Not toward him. Not toward Maris.
Toward the creatures.
Toward whatever wrongness animated them.
Use me, the sword seemed to whisper. I know what they are. I know how to end them.
Nexus hesitated.
He'd been warned. The blade kept secrets. Held pieces of Retro's soul. Touching it too deeply, relying on it too much—
But they were out of options.
He opened himself to The Night Slayer. Let its presence flood through him. Let the blade guide his movements.
The sword moved.
Fast. Faster than Nexus could consciously control. His body followed, pulled by instinct that wasn't his own.
The blade struck—not at flesh, not at the creatures themselves.
At the spaces between them.
At the connections holding the pack together. At the invisible threads linking each puppet to its puppeteer.
Reality screamed where the edge passed through.
The not-wolves froze mid-attack. All of them, simultaneously, like someone had cut their strings.
Then they collapsed.
Not dying—they'd never been alive. Just ceasing. Falling apart into component pieces that had never belonged together in the first place.
Silence fell.
Nexus stood panting, The Night Slayer extended, the gems' light slowly fading back to that dull pulse.
Around him lay scattered parts. Pieces of creatures that had never existed as cohesive wholes. Fragments waiting to be puppeted again by whatever force had animated them.
"What—" Maris's voice shook. "What did you do?"
Nexus looked at the blade in his hand. At the gems pulsing with secrets he wasn't allowed to know.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "The sword knew. It... showed me where to cut."
He sheathed the weapon carefully, suddenly very aware of how much it had just controlled him. How easily it had taken over his movements.
How willingly he'd let it.
Maris moved to his side, looking at the scattered remains with undisguised horror.
"What were they?"
Nexus crouched, studying the pieces more carefully now that they'd stopped moving.
"Something old," he said slowly. "Look at this—the joints don't match any living species. The bone structure is wrong. Like they're made from pieces of different things."
He picked up what might have been a paw. It was ice-cold, already stiffening.
"Atlas fought these. Beat them somehow. Left them scattered at that skull."
"Then why did they reform?" Maris asked. "Why come after us instead of staying destroyed?"
"Because—" Nexus dropped the paw, realization hitting him. "Because they're not hunting Atlas specifically. They're hunting the fragments."
He touched The Night Slayer's hilt.
"They sensed these three gems. Came after them. And Atlas—"
His blood ran cold.
"Atlas has one too. The fourth fragment. That's why they were following him. And now that we're here, carrying three more—"
"We're a bigger target," Maris finished, horror in her voice.
The ground trembled.
Just slightly. A vibration that traveled up through the snow, through the bones, through their feet.
Nexus and Maris looked at each other.
"That can't be good," Maris whispered.
Another tremor. Stronger this time.
In the distance, between the bone-trees, massive shapes began to shift. To rise. To remember they'd once been alive.
"We need to leave," Nexus said, his voice tight. "Now."
"What's happening?"
"I don't know, but—"
A sound like thunder rolled through the forest. Deep. Resonant. The sound of stone grinding against stone, of massive weight shifting after millennia of stillness.
Something was waking up.
Something vast.
"RUN!" Nexus grabbed Maris's hand.
They ran.
They crashed through the skeletal forest, snow flying, breath burning in their lungs.
Behind them came sounds that shouldn't exist—grinding bone on bone, the scream of dead matter forcing itself back into animation, the roar of something vast and ancient and furious at being woken.
Nexus led, pulling Maris along. She was flagging badly now, the cold and exertion and sheer terror taking their toll. Her merfolk physiology was at its limit.
"There!" Nexus pointed ahead—the forest's edge, visible as a line between shadow and open snow. "Almost—"
The ground erupted ahead of them.
Massive. Skeletal. A ribcage the size of a house forcing itself up from beneath the snow, vertebrae reconnecting, bones finding each other across impossible distances.
A titan rising.
They skidded to a stop, changing direction, looking for another exit.
But more shapes were emerging. More pieces waking. The entire forest activating at once.
"We're trapped!" Maris cried.
Nexus looked around wildly. The bone-trees were closing in. Massive skeletal forms pulling themselves together. Remembering shapes they'd once held.
The Night Slayer pulsed at his back. Demanding to be used.
He drew it, uncertain what he was doing.
The gems flared immediately, recognizing need. The blade wanted to cut. Wanted to prove its worth.
Show me, he thought at the sword. Show me how to get us out.
The blade pulsed once—
And he saw it.
The threads. The connections. The invisible fabric holding space together. And the places where that fabric was already torn, stretched thin by the instability of this place.
Nexus raised the sword and swung.
Reality screamed.
A line appeared in the air—not a cut in the physical sense, but a gap. A space between spaces. A shortcut that shouldn't exist.
Through it, he could see open snow. The forest's edge. Safety.
"Go!" he shouted at Maris.
She didn't hesitate, diving through the impossible gap.
Nexus turned for one last look at the bone forest.
The titans were fully awake now. Massive skeletal forms pulling themselves together, remembering shapes they'd once held, becoming again what they'd been in that older, stranger world.
Beautiful and terrible and completely wrong.
He jumped through the gap—
And as he did, he heard a voice. Not from the titans. Not from the forest.
From the sword.
From the fragments screaming inside the gems.
We remember this. We remember when the world died before. We remember what comes next.
Then the gap closed behind him, and he was tumbling through snow beside Maris, the bone forest, a distant line of white against gray sky.
They didn't stop running until the tremors faded.
Until the sounds of grinding bone became memory.
Until they could breathe without feeling like the air itself was trying to strangle them.
Then they collapsed in the snow, gasping, alive.
For now.
Nexus looked at The Night Slayer in his hand.
"What are you?" he whispered.
The blade offered no answer. Just that steady pulse from the three gems.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
Calling to the other fragments. Drawing them closer.
Somewhere ahead, Atlas carried the fourth piece. Still moving northwest. Still following his own path toward whatever waited at the end.
Somewhere behind, in the waking bone forest, something ancient stirred and wondered what had disturbed its sleep.
And somewhere in between—
Three fragments called to their siblings across impossible distances.
Trying to reunite.
Whether the world survived that reunion—
That remained to be seen.
Maris grabbed his arm, her voice hoarse.
"Nexus. We can't keep doing this. Those things nearly killed us. The forest tried to eat us. And we're still days away from wherever we're going."
She met his eyes, fear and determination warring in her expression.
"What happens when we get there? What happens when all five pieces come together?"
Nexus looked northwest. At the endless snow. At the dying world.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I know what happens if we don't."
He gestured back at the bone forest. At the landscape of death and wrongness spreading around them.
"This. Everywhere. Everything hollow. Everything dead. The world ending not with fire or darkness, but with nothing."
He stood, offering her his hand.
"So we keep going. Because we don't have a choice."
Maris took his hand, letting him pull her up.
They stood together in the snow, two small figures in a vast dying world.
And they kept walking northwest.
Following footprints that led to truths they weren't ready to face.
Carrying fragments that desperately wanted to be whole.
Even if becoming whole destroyed everything.