Color bled back into the world.
Slow, reluctant.
The girl still stood there, cradling the bloodied cloth in small, pale hands.
She represented the spirit of the village.
Her face was blank. Not calm, not frightened.
Just empty. A porcelain mask with no cracks to read through. No grief. No fear.
Without a word, she turned and began to walk away. Body fading through the remains of the broken chapel around them.
Her hair was deep red and impossibly straight. It flowed behind her like silk in water, unmoving even as she passed through low branches and twisting vines.
The forest parted for her.
It bent without touch.
Katsu took a step forward, but the vision blurred at the edges, as if resisting him.
The Leviathan hand stopped him herself.
"Who is she?" Sydney asked behind him, her voice hushed, almost afraid to interrupt.
"I don't know," Katsu murmured. "But she's not supposed to be here."
The Leviathan's voice slipped into his mind, low and deliberate.
She's not of this time, Katsu. Dance.
The forest swallowed the girl without a sound.
Then—thud.
The bloodied cloth hit the earth, limp and wet.
A beat of silence.
Then the world shuddered.
From the heart of the vision, reality tore like paper. A shape burst forward—skipping frames as it moved, half-animated, half-horrifyingly real. Its body bent wrong, limbs jittering as though time couldn't decide how to contain it.
It didn't crawl.
It snapped into place.
Too large.
Too fast.
Its claws carved up into the sky like it was trying to rip the sun out of it.
The shockwave hit a moment later—ground rupturing, air cracking open. Debris exploded outward. The entire party was flung into the air, yanked toward floating chunks of stone, gravity unraveling around them.
Katsu gritted his teeth mid-air. Ice flared from his palms, anchoring him to the side of a jagged boulder as it twisted through the void. His boots slid, but the ice held.
Juju snapped her fingers—frost hissed from her limbs as she did the same, landing gracefully, crouched like a cat on her drifting platform.
Sydney wasn't so lucky.
"Aaah—!"
She slipped, catching the edge of her rock with both hands, legs dangling over nothing.
Juju barked a laugh. "Back to copying my element, huh, Serpent Boy? Stick to water!"
"Kind of hard when ice is frozen water, Juju," Katsu shot back, already forming another tether.
"Shut the fuck up about semantics and help her. We're a little busy getting murdered here."
Sydney, scowling even as her arms shook, blew a puff of flame beneath herself. The burst of heat rocketed her back up onto the rock.
"I had it handled," she muttered, cheeks flushed.
"Sure you did," Juju smirked. "Any longer and you'd be a pancake in the next timeline."
Katsu's gaze snapped back to the creature as its body rippled again, twitching through different positions, never quite syncing with the world. Its face—if it had one—was a void, all teeth and suggestion.
It shrieked, but the sound hit late, delayed, like the world couldn't process it in time.
"That thing…" Katsu muttered. "It's not just magic. It's corrupted memory. It's feeding off the fracture."
Juju's smile dropped. "Then let's make sure it chokes."
The monster reared back—distorting the air around it with a groaning screech of pressure and motion—
And the fight began.
Katsu exhaled sharply, water curling from the sky and broken stone around him, drawn into his hands like threads of raw power. The atmosphere compressed, thick with energy.
"Levii," he muttered under his breath, eyes locked on the creature, "what the hell is that thing?"
The Leviathan's voice slid into his mind, dry and calm.
"What do you mean? It's a Fracture, Katsu. We've been over this."
"Not like this, we haven't."
"Fractures are places where time's been ruptured—where too much Ancient Magic collects and folds in on itself. Centuries of unresolved memory, grief, death, trauma—poof—it breaks reality. Not exactly what I'd call a warm-up mission, no."
She paused.
"…Definitely above your pay grade, little king."
Juju narrowed her eyes at the creature, frost gathering along her fingertips. But something didn't sit right. Her breath caught.
She turned sharply, scanning the chaos behind them.
"Wait… Katsu."
He glanced her way.
She didn't look back. "Where the hell is Rei?"
"What?" Katsu's heart skipped. "He was just—"
But his voice faltered.
Because the space where Rei had stood was empty. No stone, no light, no trace.
Just air.
And silence.
Then—
The sky split with a sudden roar.
Clouds churned into spirals of red and black. Boiling with pressure, pulsing with fury.
A jagged rock hovered high above the field, and on it stood Rei Dravantiir, lightning coiling around his form like a living serpent.
His staff struck the stone beneath him with a sound like thunder cracking through bone.
The monster twisted its head up just in time to see the storm—and feel it crash down on its body with divine precision.
The strike didn't just hit.
It judged.
Lightning peeled the sky open.
The monster screamed as its limbs spasmed, the corrupted time around it warping in agony.
Katsu shielded his face as a shockwave tore through the air.
And above them, Rei raised his staff to the heavens. His voice cutting through wind and magic with the full force of Wrath.
Velan kai, teshkai Nar'zul.
By my will, awaken the godbound storm.
Tairn lun varash-kael.
Chains of silence, shatter at dawn.
Nar'drakar vel suun'tai.
Sword of storms, carve through the veil.
Satan ven varak esh-raen.
Satan, by oath and rage, strike in my name.
Vorran dei, teshk valkaar.
Burn the traitor, break the gate.
Krevai lun, Krevai lun.
Unleash the flame, unleash the flame.
The clouds didn't just part.
They tore open.
A spear of blood-red lightning screamed from the heavens, spiraling as it descended.
It struck the monster clean through.
Time around it froze as Juju widened her eyes in... Interest.
The beast jittered, limbs half-formed and phasing between positions, trying to rewrite itself.
Undo the hit.
It couldn't.
Because this wasn't just lightning.
It was judgment.
The bolt unraveled everything false about the creature.
It's shape, its weight, its voice.
QThe lie of its existence peeled back, frame by frame, until all that remained was raw, corrupted memory writhing in the shape of pain.
Katsu gritted his teeth as the magic pressure surged around them. "Is it… dying?"
The Leviathan's answer was quiet.
"No. It's remembering."
The monster twisted, body cracking in reverse as if folding inward—pulling something out of the past with it.
Juju cursed. "It's summoning. It's pulling memory into the present—trying to anchor itself."
Rei didn't wait. From atop his platform, he slammed the staff again and pointed toward the vortex growing at the creature's core.
"Syd! Katsu! Lock the zone. Juju, hold that channel shut!"
Katsu didn't hesitate. "On it."
Water burst from the stones around him, weaving into sigils across the battlefield. Ancient glyphs flared blue as he swept his hand across the air.
"Valen kaar, esh veran—seal the present."
Sydney hurled fire across the leyline, her flames bending into tight rings that circled the monster's base like prison walls. "You're not dragging anything else out!"
Juju blurred, appearing beside the stormcore with a glimmer of ice forming in her throat.
She didn't speak a spell.
She breathed it.
A freezing mist escaped her lips, thick with magic. It froze the air itself, locking the monster's temporal anchor in place—just long enough.
Rei roared one last line:
"Nar'zul varan, sa'el Satan—judgment is done."
The final bolt didn't fall.
It detonated.
A sunburst of red-white energy exploded from the eye of the storm, swallowing the monster whole in a sphere of Wrath-fueled lightning.
The scream it gave was garbled—half-child, half-nightmare, a glitch in sound and soul.
Then it collapsed inward.
Gone.
Silence slammed over the battlefield like a lid snapping shut.
No echo. No wind.
Just the fading hiss of steam, ice, and divine rage crackling in the aftermath.
Rei lowered his staff. His breathing was steady.
He looked down at them, voice low, sharp:
"Next time," he said, "try not to lose track of me."
Katsu let out a breath. "Noted."
Sydney collapsed back on her rock, laughing breathlessly. "Holy shit…"
Juju rolled her shoulder, already cooling off her limbs with frost. "Okay, okay... I might let him show off more often."
Katsu glanced at the shattered field—the cloth still lay there, untouched by the battle.
Only now, it wasn't soaked in blood.
It was empty.
The stain had vanished.
And somewhere, deep in the trees, the red-haired girl was smiling.