The light that struck the earth did not fade. It breathed.
Waves of silver fire pulsed outward from the impact site, each beat slower, steadier like the heart of a sleeping god stirring for the first time in ages.
Arka and Kael reached the outer rim of the crater, their boots sinking into molten glass. The air shimmered with heat and static, warping their reflections into ghostly shapes.
Kael raised her visor. "No radiation, no toxins…" She frowned. "But the air itself feels alive."
Arka's gaze was fixed at the crater's center.
There, half-buried in ash, lay a sphere of crystal, cracked and leaking pale light. Around it, fragments of something organic feathers, bone, metal scattered like remnants of a celestial body that had fallen too far.
"The tear of the Second Descent," Arka murmured. "It's not an object… it's a vessel."
Kael crouched beside the edge. "You mean something's inside it?"
Arka nodded once. "Or someone."
As if responding to his words, the crystal pulsed.
A sound rippled through the air not heard, but felt. The sigil on Arka's chest blazed in answer, lines of light spreading across his arm, up his neck, wrapping around his pulse.
Kael stumbled back. "Arka your mark!"
He didn't hear her. The energy was pulling him forward, drawing him toward the crater's heart. Each step he took made the light respond slow at first, then rising in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"Wait!" Kael shouted. "You don't even know what it is"
"I do," Arka whispered, eyes glowing faintly silver. "It's calling me by name."
He reached the crystal and laid his palm against it.
The moment he did, the world exploded into light.
Images flooded his mind stars folding into cities, angels forging weapons of light, beasts kneeling beneath twin suns. Then, a memory not his own: a throne of silver flame, surrounded by beings half-machine, half-divine.
At its center, a woman stood her hair like starlight, her eyes mirrors of Arka's own.
Her voice echoed through the visions:
"Sire of Balance… the cycle begins anew."
The light faded.
Arka gasped, his knees hitting the glass. The crystal sphere before him was gone shattered into dust. But from its center now rose a figure, floating inches above the ground.
A girl.
Her skin glowed faintly like moonlight through fog. Wings of fragmented energy flickered at her back, half-formed, fading in and out of existence. Her eyes opened pure silver, reflecting not the world around her, but something deeper.
Kael froze. "Is she… human?"
Arka stared, unable to answer. The mark on his chest glowed once more, and the girl's gaze instantly locked onto it.
She blinked, tilting her head slightly. Then, in a voice soft and melodic the same voice from the crystal she spoke a single word.
"Father."
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Kael's breath caught. "Wait did she just"
Arka's expression was unreadable. "She's not flesh. Not spirit either. She's made of the same balance that remade me."
The girl floated closer, stopping just before him. She reached out, fingertips brushing the sigil on his chest. The contact sent a pulse of silver through the ground, spreading outward like veins of light through the city's foundation.
Buildings flickered.
Drones dropped from the sky.
Every sensor in New Aurion screamed the same phrase:
BALANCE PROTOCOL REACTIVATED
Kael grabbed her communicator, shouting over the noise. "Control, we have an Omega-level phenomenon repeat, Omega-level! Send a containment"
The voice on the other end was drowned by static. Then, a whisper cut through the interference cold, familiar.
"You cannot contain balance. You can only choose which way it tilts."
Arka's eyes widened. "The Primarch."
The girl turned her head sharply toward the sky, as if hearing it too. "He watches again," she murmured, her tone neither fear nor reverence only awareness.
Arka rose slowly. "Why call me 'Father'? What are you?"
She smiled faintly, eyes glowing brighter.
"I am what you refused to become. The embodiment of your choice born from the moment you denied both paths. I am the Balance given form."
Kael took a step back. "You mean she's… you?"
Arka shook his head. "No. She's what I left behind in the Rift. The part that wanted to merge everything. The part that remembers."
The girl tilted her head again. "The world is breaking because the cycle cannot end without you, Father. You opened the path once. You must open it again."
He clenched his fists. "And if I refuse?"
Her silver eyes flickered. "Then the heavens will open themselves."
A tremor ran through the ground. In the distance, the sky tore a single vertical line of golden light appearing once more, far larger than before.
Kael stared upward, whispering, "It's happening again, isn't it?"
Arka's gaze hardened. "No. Not again."
He turned to the girl to Balance itself and said quietly,
"Then we end it this time."