The sky tore open.
The Remembered descended like a storm given form a vast amalgamation of faces, voices, and histories twisted into one abomination. Its body was not flesh but memory itself, layered and shifting: a child's laughter, a dying scream, a lover's whisper, all woven into a single roar that rattled the ruins below.
The survivors collapsed to their knees, hands clamped over their ears. Some bled from their eyes and nose, others clawed at their heads as if trying to tear out memories that no longer belonged to them.
Serin shouted above the chaos, firing uselessly into the sky. "It's not just attacking it's inside us!"
In the rift, Kael and Lira felt the strike more intimately.
It wasn't claws or fire. It was a flood.
The Remembered hurled waves of stolen lives into them. Kael's mind twisted as he saw centuries he had never lived: a soldier burning in a war of ashes, a mother burying her child in the snow, a king watching his empire crumble. Each memory stabbed into him as if it were his own.
Lira screamed as her vision fractured. She saw her dead brother alive again, reaching for her hand. She saw a daughter she had never borne, growing in a world that never existed. The weight of it nearly shattered her spine.
The tether strained. Their bond flickered.
Kael's voice cracked, heavy with despair. "They're trying to drown us in everything we can't endure. Every failure. Every life we didn't live."
Lira clenched her jaw, forcing herself to breathe, her grip on the Spiral-forged blade unyielding. "Then we endure together. That's the difference."
The Remembered's eyes burned brighter. Its voice was a thousand overlapping tones:
"Together? You are dust. You are unfinished echoes. We are the chorus. We are everything. You will be nothing but silence."
It struck again.
The ground split, entire blocks of the ruined city vanishing into black light. Survivors screamed as buildings crumbled into memories that didn't belong to them, their identities warping in real time.
One man aged decades in seconds, clutching a wedding ring that had never been his. A child sobbed, calling for parents who were long-dead strangers. The survivors' fragile hope shattered into madness.
Kael roared, forcing the tether to expand. His body seared with light and shadow, stretching beyond human form. "No more!"
But the Remembered's strike pierced deeper, targeting the place even Kael couldn't guard. His own memories.
He saw himself as a boy, before Spiral's touch. A frightened child, powerless, crying in the dark. He saw his mother's face soft, fading, gone. He felt the loneliness that had forged him into this weapon.
The Remembered whispered through that image, venomous:"This is who you are. Broken. Alone. You wield power, but it is built on emptiness."
Kael staggered. His grip slipped.
The rift trembled.
Lira saw it. She felt it. And she knew if Kael gave in, their tether would collapse, and the Remembered would consume everything.
Her lungs burned, her veins screamed, but she pulled harder on the blade, pouring her own defiance into him. Her voice cracked through the storm:
"You're not alone, Kael! Not anymore!"
For an instant, the blade's resonance surged, a heartbeat stronger than the storm. Kael's eyes flickered, clearing.
And in that fragile space, the Remembered recoiled not in fear, but in rage.
"Then we will strip you both. We will bury you in what you deny."
The storm deepened. The next strike gathered. The world shook, waiting for annihilation.