The sky was an open wound. Forgotten Entities swarmed like vultures circling the corpse of reality, their voices layered into a storm of hunger and grief. Beneath them, the ruined city burned — a broken skeleton of towers and streets where survivors fought with scraps of metal and shattered resolve.
And at the center of it all, suspended in the rift, was Kael.
Half of him shimmered with Spiral light, woven into threads of control. The other half writhed with shadow, fractured by the Forgotten's invasion. His skin flickered with strangers' faces — millions of lives long erased, bleeding through him. His body trembled, every moment a war he could not win.
The Entities had stopped their assault, frozen by the strain of his command. But their pause was not submission — it was the stillness before an avalanche.
Kael knew it. The Abyss whispered in his mind, merciless and clear:
You are not their master. You are their fracture. Break, and they will flood.
Blood streaked down his face, his voice cracking across both realms:"I cannot hold them… unless I break myself apart."
On the ground, Lira stared upward, her breath caught in her throat. Around her, fighters clutched their weapons, waiting for the onslaught to resume. Some dared hope — others only cursed Kael's name.
But Lira saw something they could not.
Even through the chaos, Kael's silhouette trembled with hesitation. He was still there, beneath the flood of shadow — the man who had once fought beside her, who had stood against Spiral corruption when no one else would.
Yet now he hovered on the edge of something worse.
She realized the truth: Kael's sacrifice might destroy the Forgotten… but it would erase everything else with it. The world, the survivors, memory itself.
If she let him fall, humanity would vanish in silence.
"Damn it, Kael," she whispered, tightening her grip on the Spiral-forged blade. "You don't get to choose for us. Not alone."
Kael's body flared with light as he prepared to shatter himself. Energy screamed through the rift, bending gravity, shaking the ruins to rubble. His voice was no longer entirely his own.
"Better annihilation than slavery," he said — or perhaps the Entities said through him.
Then came another voice, sharp, defiant, cutting through the storm.
"No."
Lira's cry rang out, louder than the Entities' howls. She sprinted toward the fissure, her armor cracking under the strain, her lungs burning with poisoned air. Behind her, survivors shouted in protest, but none dared follow.
She leapt into the light.
For a heartbeat, she was falling through a storm of memories — children she had never borne, battles she had never fought, futures she had never lived. The Forgotten tried to claim her, clawing with visions. But her will burned hotter than their hunger.
And then she was there, face-to-face with Kael, her body half-consumed by the rift, her blade glowing with Spiral resonance.
"You don't get to end us this way," she spat.
His eyes flickered, one bright with Spiral fire, the other dark with Forgotten shadow. For a moment, she saw Kael again — exhausted, broken, but still human.
"Lira…" His voice cracked. "If I let go—"
"Then let me hold with you," she said. Her blade flared, latching into the lattice of his unraveling body, anchoring him. The strain nearly tore her apart, but she didn't waver.
Below them, the survivors watched, stunned, as two wills — one breaking, one unyielding — bound the Entities in place.
The Forgotten shrieked, their freedom clawed away by something they couldn't comprehend: shared defiance. They twisted, their forms collapsing inward, bound not by Kael's desperation but by the resonance of two human memories refusing to vanish.
The rift buckled. Reality cracked.
Kael screamed, light pouring from his body. Lira screamed with him, refusing to let go.
And for the first time since the Spiral's awakening, the Forgotten recoiled.
The war had not ended. But the tide had shifted.
🔥 End of Chapter 68 🔥