Battle Within the Battle
The Temple of Howls split itself open in a scream of stone and magic.
From the pillars, from the altar, from cracks that bled light and dark alike, surged her army—creatures neither living nor dead, shaped by stolen essence. The air cracked with the force of colliding realities as Mira's warnings came to life. The horrors that fell upon them weren't just monsters—they were nightmares made flesh, amalgamations of doubt, memory, and fear given fangs.
Alaric stood at the center of the storm, blade drawn, his silver-edged weapon humming in the unnatural energy. To his left, Caelen tore through the creatures with brutal precision, blood marking each arc of his blade. To his right, the dreamwalkers formed a protective ring around Mira, anchoring her spirit as she descended into the deeper currents of the dreamline, where the true battle began.
Mira's eyes rolled back, her body still, suspended between heartbeats. Inside, in the layer beneath waking thought, she ran through a world shaped by mind and soul. The Temple here was not stone, but memory—a web of possible fates where she faced the Woman not as a physical enemy, but as a god of thought.
The Woman stood on a dais of mirrored glass, cloaked in the forms of the people Mira loved—her mother, her younger self, even Alaric. Her voice came from all mouths at once.
"Do you truly know him, child? Do you know what he was made to do?"
Mira raised her hand, shaping a lance of silver dreamfire. "I know what he chooses to be. That's more than you can say."
In the waking world, Alaric crashed through a cluster of twisted werebeasts, each one bearing a distorted version of his own face. They snarled his name, their eyes filled with betrayal and rage. For a moment, his grip faltered. He saw Ridgefall burning. He saw Mira dead. He saw himself, crowned in blood, ruling a world of ash.
"No," he growled, driving the blade through his own mirrored double. "I choose what I become."
From above, the Woman unleashed her power. The air thickened, pressing down with the weight of a mountain. She sent her creatures at him not to kill—but to make him doubt. To remind him of every life he'd taken, every order that had cost more than it earned. She tried to break his will.
But Alaric was not alone.
Caelen fought back to back with him, bleeding from a dozen wounds, yet laughing through gritted teeth. "You always did draw the attention of cosmic nightmares, didn't you?"
A deafening howl split the chamber as one of the greater nightmares surged forward—a beast stitched from the memories of every fallen comrade. It struck Alaric hard, sending him skidding across the floor. The creature loomed, fangs like swords, its body a patchwork of guilt and pain.
And then it froze.
Mira had found the source—the core of the Woman's dreamweb. Her spiritual form plunged a dagger of raw truth into the illusion's heart. The mirrors cracked, and with them, the hold on the nightmare beast shattered. The creature dissolved into ash and smoke.
In that instant, the battle shifted.
The dreamwalkers, connected through Mira's focus, sent waves of clarity across the battlefield. The nightmares slowed. Some disintegrated, their illusions undone. Others shrieked and fled into the deeper shadows.
The Woman screamed—not with pain, but with fury. "You cannot change what has already begun!"
Mira stepped into the waking world, eyes alight with radiant fury. "Then we'll end it."
Alaric charged, driving his blade toward the altar as Mira wove a web of runes in the air. They moved as one—warrior and seer, fury and vision.
Their powers collided with hers in a storm of magic, steel, and will. The chamber trembled. The ceiling cracked.
And the Temple of Howls—alive, remembering, ancient—decided to choose.
With a blinding explosion of red light, everything went still.