Location: Crimson Petal Citadel – Upper Corridor (Chamber Wing)
Time: [Cycle 11 : 00:13 – 01:00 Local Drift]
The run through the corridor was tight, pulsing with alarms.
Ren sprinted beside Ravrin, glyphs glowing faint and steady beneath his skin.
They'd slipped past two guardian squads, shorted a drift-lens ward, and were now heading straight for the First Lock — the Mind Seal buried beneath Lira's private sanctum.
Inside his head?
Chaos.
But the familiar kind.
FROST (dry as desert frostbite):
"You do realize you're charging into an elite Guardian's bedroom at midnight. If this were romance, I'd be impressed."
REN (grinning):
"Oh trust me, there's penetration planned. Just not the kind with candles."
VEY'STRYX (gritting steel):
"Weapon of betrayal... That's what I am now?"
"You could've at least bought me dinner before carving me into your fate."
REN:
"You stabbed my hand the first time I touched you."
"Pretty sure this relationship's always been consensual violence."
VEY'STRYX:
"Say 'betray me' one more time and I'll resharpen myself on your ribs."
FROST:
"Can I please be bound to a user with less sexual tension in their weapon slots?"
BLAZE (distant, whispering):
"He likes it when we're dangerous."
Ren grinned, despite everything.
And then—
They turned the final corner.
Location: Lira's Sanctum Gate – Guardian Lockpoint
And there she was.
Riven.
Her back straight.
Armor flawless.
Eyes... harder than Ren had ever seen.
No warmth.
No hesitation.
Just power.
And duty.
"Ren," she said.
"Kaelreth," he corrected softly.
Ravrin stopped beside him.
Scanned her.
"This is the one?"
Ren nodded. "Lira's right hand. Faster than lightning. Hits like guilt."
Riven stepped forward.
"I don't want to fight you."
Ravrin answered before Ren could.
"Then don't. Step aside. Let him finish what must be done."
Riven looked between them.
"I swore an oath. And so did you. You of all people should know what that costs."
"No one enters. Lira must not be disturbed."
Then she struck.
Fast.
Clean.
A flash of blade and blue light.
Ravrin moved — instinct, brute speed — catching her mid-arc.
Swords clashed.
Steel screamed.
Glyphs detonated.
They fought like meteors colliding — strength versus speed, brutality versus precision.
Ren could barely keep track.
FROST (softly):
"He won't win."
REN: "I know."
After the fifth exchange, Ravrin was breathing hard.
A wound opened along his ribs.
Another across his throat.
Riven's blade shimmered with anti-summon toxin.
She whispered: "I'm sorry."
Then stabbed him straight through the chest.
"No!" Ren roared.
Ravrin didn't scream.
He just… exhaled.
Smiled.
"You'll do it… Kaelreth."
"Burn her world down."
Then he fell.
Riven stood, sword raised, eyes shimmering with regret... and rage.
Ren stepped forward.
Alone now.
Summons flaring within.
Vey'stryx on his hip, ready.
"I didn't come to fight you, Riven."
"I came to finish her."
Riven raised her sword.
"Then go through me."
Riven stood over Ravrin's body, her blade glistening with his blood.
Ren's fists were clenched so tight, his glyphs were bleeding through his skin.
"You didn't have to kill him."
Riven's voice didn't flinch. "He gave me no choice."
"That's funny," Ren spat, stepping forward, cloak dropping from his shoulder,
"because I'm about to give you none."
She charged first — straight arc, no hesitation.
Steel crashed.
Frost triggered a time echo around Ren, letting him feint a full half-second ahead. Vey'stryx extended mid-swing — she wanted blood.
VEY'STRYX (in his mind):
"Blood on the floor, blood on her blade... give me the rest."
FROST (dry):
"Control your psycho katana. She's drooling in steel again."
BLAZE (somewhere, warming up):
"Should've been me. I'd have flash-fried her spine out of respect."
Ren parried a thrust.
Countered with a reverse elbow.
Riven dodged.
Kicked him straight into a wall.
Hard.
Ren spat blood.
"Okay.
No more foreplay."
He raised his arm.
Not to draw a glyph.
But to bleed into one.
Just a single word escaped his lips:
"Eclipsis."
The shadows behind him folded.
No glyph.
No flash.
Just silence.
And then… it stepped out.
A man?
Not quite.
Six feet tall.
Clothed in grey and bone-laced silk.
Eyes covered in bandages, mouth sewn with gold wire.
But his presence?
Made the room colder than death itself.
ECLIPSIS
Class: Mythical-Class Echo Being
Type: Anti-Fate Construct
Known As: "The Whisper That Watches Worlds Burn"
Abilities:
– Thread Severance (cancels destiny-based attacks)
– Unmaking Touch (unravels glyphs upon contact)
– Phase Sentence (if it speaks your name, you bleed from every truth you've denied)
Riven froze for a second.
Her eyes widened.
She recognized the name.
"You… summoned Eclipsis?!"
REN:
"Yeah. He's shy. Don't piss him off."
Eclipsis didn't walk.
He glided.
Ren moved with him.
Riven struck again — a full-speed guardian blade dance.
Eclipsis raised one pale hand.
SNAP.
Every glyph on her blade unraveled.
She screamed.
"What the hell?!"
FROST (calm):
"That's what happens when you fight against narrative karma."
VEY'STRYX (ravenous):
"Her wrist is exposed. Can I take it? Just a nibble?"
REN (grinning):
"Be gentle. I want her to remember this."
Riven launched a final strike — blade spinning, eye glowing.
Eclipsis stepped forward.
Spoke one word.
It wasn't heard.
But it was felt.
And Riven fell — knees buckling — coughing blood that glowed with the color of broken time.
Ren approached.
Eclipsis stepped back, dissolving slowly.
His job?
Done.
"I won't kill you," Ren whispered. "You were once on our side."
"But Lira… won't stop.
And you couldn't either."
He turned to the Lock behind her.
It pulsed now — open. A shattered Mind Seal.
Vey'stryx appeared, licking invisible blood from her edge.
VEY'STRYX:
"Next."
Ren stepped toward the door—
hand on Vey'stryx—
mind still spinning from the aftershock of the battle—
When—
Snap.
His leg snared, mid-stride.
A shimmering thread of silver-veined aether snapped up from beneath the floor and coiled around his calf like a serpent on heat.
He didn't even need to look.
"Riven," he muttered.
Behind him, her body shook, bloodied, burned, glyphs flickering—
But alive.
"You're not… done with me yet," she hissed.
"If I have to bind your body and bleed every inch of your power out just to slow you down—"
She screamed—
And pulled.
Ren hit the ground, dragged backwards.
FROST (calmly):
"Really? That's how she says goodbye? Thread play?"
VEY'STRYX (buzzing):
"Permission to remove her spine in cursive?"
Second round, un-fucking-leashed.
Ren flipped mid-drag, summoned Velkrin for a precision slash — thread severed, but Riven was already lunging.
Wounded. Dying.
But fast as hell.
"I'll stop you," she hissed. "Even if I die breaking every fucking bone in your body."
Soldiers poured back into the corridor —
reinforcements from the higher tiers of the citadel, hundreds... then thousands.
Ren's eyes narrowed.
"You idiots picked the wrong ten minutes."
He didn't need to say it out loud.
Because Eclipsis and Vey'stryx heard the blood before it hit the floor and Vey'stryx also turned into her physical form this time.
Eclipsis: walked into their formation like a prayer misheard —
silent, cold, unraveling command glyphs with a glance.
Every name he whispered? Another commander collapsed screaming.Vey'stryx: spun mid-air with a joy only a sentient murder blade could understand —
cleaving through barrier squads, anti-magic squads, even the rear casters.
She wasn't fighting.
She was feasting.
Ren: didn't even draw Blaze or Frost.
Just activated his combat protocols, Arix-style, using raw movement glyphs, pressure breaks, bone shatter blows, and predicted trajectories.
Thirty-five kills in under sixty seconds.
Bare-handed.
FROST (bored):
"You realize you're doing all this shirtless, right?"
REN:
"More dramatic that way."
VEY'STRYX (gleeful):
"He's finally fun again."
In ten minutes, the hallway was a river of corpses.
Silence returned, broken only by—
Now Vey'stryx again turned into sword.
Riven.
Collapsed.
Bleeding.
Eyes wide with disbelief.
"You… monster," she gasped.
"You should've just killed me the first time."
Ren stood above her, flicking blood from Vey'stryx's edge.
"And what? End your suffering?"
"You're not the target."
Riven coughed blood, laughed bitterly.
"You'll regret it.
Mercy's always the blade that comes back to the throat."
Ren turned.
"I'll take that risk."
And he stepped forward—
Through the broken sanctum door—
into Lira's inner chamber.
It smelled of incense and old magic.
Veil-silk curtains danced in unseen wind.
The room shimmered with ancient sigils, hidden time-locked relics, and—
The First Lock.
A sealed structure of spiraling crystal and bone.
And it pulsed as he entered.
Waiting.