The ruined forest remained eerily silent, its shadows stretching long under the slanting light of late afternoon. Kael stood among the half-collapsed towers, the weight of the Forgotten Kingdom pressing down on him like a mantle of grief and memory. Lyra hovered nearby, Codex held close, its living ink pulsing faintly with the echoes of erased history.
Rienne, ever methodical and precise, had been working quietly for hours, crouched over a fractured shard of Kael's flickering armor. The shard shimmered between ruin and pristine steel, the memory of battles long erased embedded within its surface. Her crystalline prosthetic arm glowed faintly, resonating with the shard in a subtle, almost musical vibration.
"This piece…there's something in it," Rienne murmured, voice low, almost reverent. "It's like a memory trapped in metal. The Veil imprinted it when Kael was pulled from his timeline. If we can amplify the resonance…"
Lyra leaned closer, eyes wide. "You mean…see the battlefield he fought on? The one that erased him?"
Rienne nodded. "Exactly. But it's dangerous. The shard isn't just a relic—it's a conduit. If misaligned, it could destabilize the local threads. Or worse…pull us in."
Kael's eyes, flickering with the armor's unstable shimmer, followed their movements. "Be careful," he warned. "The battlefield is not just memory—it's reality folded into itself. Time lingers there. Anger, grief, and blood echo constantly. One misstep could trap you indefinitely."
Ignoring the warning, Rienne positioned her crystalline arm near the shard, adjusting the angle until the faint hum between them became a resonance that vibrated through the forest floor. The shard pulsed, drawing the light of the setting sun into itself, refracting it in sharp prisms across Kael's armor and the surrounding ruins.
Lyra felt the Codex tremble against her chest. Ink spiraled across the pages, forming glyphs she hadn't seen before:
"Thread unstable. Observation critical. Do not enter unanchored. Fragments react to memory and emotion."
Rienne adjusted the angle further. The shard glowed brighter, the hum escalating into a resonance that was almost audible. Then, slowly, the air before them began to shimmer, as if the very space were folding.
A small rift appeared, hovering above the mossy ground, a window of distorted air. Through it, they could see a battlefield frozen in a silent moment—soldiers mid-charge, blades suspended inches from their targets, banners halted in the wind. Dust and smoke hung suspended, a tableau of a war erased from history.
Lyra's breath caught. "It's…like time stopped here," she whispered. "Everything frozen, yet…real."
Rienne's eyes sparkled with a mix of excitement and fear. "The shard and my arm—resonating together—are creating a bridge to his erased timeline. We can observe without entering…if we maintain the threads."
Kael stepped closer, armor flickering as he regarded the rift. "Observation is one thing. Interaction is another. Do not underestimate the pull. The battlefield has a will of its own. It seeks to reclaim what was lost…including anyone who witnesses it."
The air shimmered again, and Lyra felt a tug at her chest, like the Veil itself was reaching through the rift, pulling at the very fabric of reality around them. She staggered, clutching the Codex. The living ink spun into tight spirals, warning her frantically:
"Anchor yourself. Threads fraying. Pull increasing. Do not step through unanchored."
Before anyone could react further, the rift expanded slightly, and the air pressure shifted violently. Leaves whipped through the ruins, stones rattled, and the hum of the shard became a deafening vibration in their skulls. The battlefield's pull intensified, tugging at their limbs, dragging them toward the shimmering surface of frozen war.
Lyra fell to her knees, struggling against the invisible force. "It's…pulling us in!" she screamed.
Kael lunged, armor flickering violently as he slammed a hand against the air near the rift. The hollow resonance of his strike vibrated through the shard, creating a counterforce. Yet the rift's pull was relentless, tugging at their torsos and arms as if the battlefield itself were alive, hungry for them.
Rienne's crystalline arm glowed brighter, beams of refracted light slicing through the dim forest, but even her precision could not hold the threads perfectly. She cried out as her legs began to lift, the force of the rift yanking her forward.
Lyra's Codex spun, pages lifting in a whirlwind of living ink. Words and glyphs formed rapidly:
"Threads failing. Pull cannot be resisted by observation alone. Knight required. Stabilization imminent. Intervention necessary."
Kael's voice cut through the chaos. "Hold onto me! Do not let the Veil consume you!"
He plunged toward them, flickering armor solidifying into a full, shining form that seemed to remember battles lost and fought simultaneously. His hands grasped Lyra's and Rienne's firmly, fingers locked into theirs. The shard pulsed violently against his chest, synchronizing with the rhythm of his heartbeat, the resonance of memory and armor, grief and survival.
For a moment, everything slowed. The battlefield within the rift shimmered, soldiers' frozen movements reflecting in the flickering armor. Kael's eyes burned with focus, and then, with a guttural roar, he slammed a fist into the shard itself.
The rift screamed, light fracturing and twisting around them. The pull intensified for a heartbeat, then shattered. A wave of force threw the trio back, rolling across the mossy forest floor. Kael's armor flickered violently, then stabilized, solid and shining, his chest heaving from the exertion.
Lyra clutched the Codex, pages fluttering in the aftershock. "Is it…over?" she gasped, voice trembling.
Kael rose slowly, shoulders stiff, eyes scanning the now-collapsing shimmer of the rift. "For now," he said, voice low, gravelly. "The battlefield resists containment. Memory of it is…hungry. And it remembers me." He turned, scanning the ruins and forest. "We cannot underestimate what lies in erased time. Threads are fragile, and fragments demand recognition…or they will claim us."
Rienne picked herself up, crystalline arm humming faintly as she retracted it. "The shard…its resonance…it is like a heartbeat from a world that shouldn't exist. We can observe, we can stabilize…for now. But direct interaction is far too dangerous. The battlefield's pull is lethal."
Lyra nodded, still clutching the Codex, ink spiraling into a slower rhythm. "It tried to take us…like it wanted to absorb us into that frozen time. If Kael hadn't shattered it…"
Kael's gaze fell to the shard, now dim and fractured. "Then none of us would be here. Threads snapped, fragments lost, the battlefield reclaimed what was anchored. That is the nature of erased time—it fights to erase all witnesses."
The forest returned to its eerie calm, mist curling among the towers and mosaics of the Forgotten Kingdom. The shard lay at Kael's feet, inert for now, yet still humming faintly with residual memory.
Lyra exhaled slowly. "We survived…because of you."
Kael shook his head. "No. We survived because the threads held. Because the Codex reacted. Because we anchored. And because I remembered."
Rienne picked up the shard carefully, examining its surface. "It's like a mirror of a memory," she said softly. "Resonating with both Kael's presence and my prosthetic…we can observe, stabilize, and perhaps even repair fragments—but interacting directly is near impossible without risk."
Kael's armor flickered, settling into its stable form. "The battlefield will remain a danger. It is a fragment of a past erased yet persistent. One day, it will call again. We must be ready. Threads are fragile—but anchored memory can survive, if we remember and act."
Lyra pressed the Codex to her chest, spirals of ink pulsing faintly. "Then we remember. Step by step. Spiral by spiral. Thread by thread. We anchor what cannot exist, and preserve what should never have been erased."
The shard's faint hum echoed through the ruins, a whisper of blood and steel frozen in time, a reminder that fragments of erased battles could bleed into reality if left unchecked. And in that fragile, fleeting way, Kael, Lyra, and Rienne remained tethered to the lattice of memory, guardians of threads that could vanish at any moment.
For now, the rift was broken. But the battlefield, frozen in silence, waited. And it remembered.