The black desert air had thickened, as if time itself had coagulated. Kael watched as the once lifeless sand began to move with rhythmic pulsations, like the hide of a sleeping animal dreaming nightmares. Each grain of black sand glittered in a nonexistent light, reflecting constellations that belonged to no known sky.
Lirya was beside him, but she was no longer the same. Her once perfectly defined body showed barely visible fractures, like antique porcelain repaired with mercury. Her silver tears no longer fell; now they orbited her head in a slow dance, forming impossible equations that burned briefly before fading.
"We shouldn't be here," she whispered, but her voice sounded distorted, as if someone else were speaking through her. "This isn't just a place. It's a wound."
Kael didn't answer. She couldn't. Since his fear had been ripped from him, the world had become a stage of infinite possibilities, none more important than the other. He could kill Lirya right now or kiss her, and both options seemed equally valid.
That was when The Silent Executioner materialized.
It didn't arrive with a roar or a portent of power. It had simply always been there, like a forgotten piece of furniture in an abandoned room. Its armor wasn't metal, but something older: bones of dead realities, fused into a black shell that absorbed the light. The helmet had no eye slits, only a void that seemed to extend inward, infinitely.
And then, the word:
"Never."
It wasn't a sound. It was an infection in Kael's mind, a worm of meaning that coiled around his thoughts. There was no emotion in it, only an irrevocable fact, like gravity or death.
Lirya stepped back, her feet leaving bloody footprints on the crushed glass.
"He is one of the twelve," she said, and for the first time, Kael detected something like terror in her voice. "The one who purges what the Council counsider... defective."
The Executioner slowly turned his head toward them. Inside the helmet, something moved.
The air rent with the sound of a million pages being torn out at once.
Where once there had been desert, there was now a table.
It was endless in both directions, made of a black wood that groaned under the weight of the plates. And what plates. Kael saw things his mind refused to process: meats still breathing, fruits with pupils that followed their movement, wine running down the table legs like blood from an open wound.
And in front of him, the Primal Hunger.
It wasn't a being. It was a concept made flesh, or something that had forgotten how to be flesh. Its shape changed with every blink: sometimes a faceless mouth, sometimes a toothy emptiness, sometimes only the idea of hunger given form.
"You have stolen a Path that does not belong to you," he said, his voice the crunch of bones being ground in a cosmic mill.
The Silent Executioner moved toward the table. Each step left a gap in reality, as if the world itself refused to remember its weight. When he stopped, he extended a gloved hand.
In his palm, three objects floated:
A broken mirror, its reflection showing Kael as he had been before: human, fragile, terrified.
A mercury necklace, pulsing like a freshly ripped heart.
A small bone, polished by time, with runes that wriggled like worms in the sun.
"Choose," the Executioner didn't say. The word simply existed, like a law of the universe.
Lirya struggled against invisible forces.
"Don't do it!" she shouted, but her voice was muffled, as if someone had turned down the volume on the world. "It's another trap of the Council. Every choice is a curse."
Kael looked at the objects. Fearless, the decision was only a calculation.
"What if I don't choose?"
The Primal Hunger leaned across the table. The plates screamed.
"Then he will purge you."
The Silent Executioner drew his sword. It wasn't metal. It was Never, the very essence of that word, and the mere sight of it made Kael's eyes bleed quicksilver.
The Silent Executioner extended his gloved hand. Above his palm, the objects floated in an aura of impossible geometries:
The broken mirror that would return his fear.
The quicksilver necklace to control the Shard.
The child's bone that would erase everything.
Lirya struggled against invisible forces.
"Whoever you choose will destroy you!" she warned, but her voice was muffled, as if someone had sealed her lips with black tar.
Kael looked at the objects with eyes that no longer blinked. Fearless, the choice was simple.
He took the mercury necklace.
The instant his fingers closed around the necklace, the banquet screamed.
The plates became mouths spewing black goo. The Primal Hunger writhed, its teeth grinding like dimensional doors closing. The Silent Executioner… bowed its head. It was almost a gesture of respect.
"Interesting," the Hunger's voice echoed, and this time it burned with perverse curiosity.
The necklace fused with Kael's quicksilver arm. The silver veins coiled like living snakes, forming a new pattern: a circuit, an alien nervous system.
Lirya fell to her knees.
"No..." she whispered. "That doesn't control the Shard. It's its muzzle."
Kael felt the change.
The quicksilver in his veins was no longer a parasite. It was a pact. He could feel the limits of power now, as if someone had given him the keys to an infinite prison.
"What have I done?" he asked, but his voice was no longer human. It sounded like metal bending under cosmic pressure.
The Executioner approached. For the first time, he spoke without words:
Images.
A cell of mirrors.
A throne made of figurines like Lirya.
Himself, sitting on it, with eyes that were perfect eclipses.
"You always knew which Path led you," the Hunger said, as his form dissolved into black smoke. "Welcome to the Council, Eclipse Bringer."
Lirya tried to touch him. Her hand passed through his chest.
"Kael, please..." but her voice trailed off when she saw his eyes.
He no longer had pupils. They were black mirrors that reflected something moving behind her.
The desert began to collapse. The sands spiraled downward, revealing the City of Broken Mirrors in the depths.
The last thing Kael heard before falling was the Executioner's whisper:
"It was never... your choice."