The Spire stood in oppressive silence, a long shadow extending out over the ruins of hope. It was a cold weight against Kaelen's chest, pressure from the inescapable void. Whispers in the walls spoke of a long time past; whispers that twisted around his mind, contorting his thoughts into something barely recognizable.
Erynn knelt before the ancient device, the strange artifact that had waited for centuries—waited for a soul willing enough to summon the Rift. The Rift. A tear in the very fabric of existence. A rift into the unknown, where laws of reality bent and broke like fragile glass. It was alive, not in the way a living thing breathes or eats, but in the way it absorbs every fragmented emotion, every whisper of despair, every ounce of regret. And it thrived on them.
Erynn's voice shook with every word, a shake not born of fear, but of resignation. The tune she hummed sent a shiver down his spine, so beautiful yet so terror-provoking, with its harmony hung from the single drops of sorrow, each note pulling at the very strands of his soul. It was her song-the one that had always reached deep inside him, connecting them in ways words never could. But now, this song was different. Now, it was a cry for release.
Kaelen's heart stuttered in his chest as he stepped closer, the air crackling with the energy of the Rift. The walls flickered like dying stars, the space between them stretching and warping as if the very dimensions were bending at the force of her song.
"Erynn, no," he whispered, the words strained and desperate, yet somehow hollow. The realization crept in, in a slow ache of clarity: She was beyond him now, out of reach, out of the sphere of his being able to do anything to save her.
Erynn lifted her head, and her eyes met his, but there was no fear in them, only acceptance. "It has to be this way, Kaelen," she breathed, her lips curling into a faint, bittersweet smile. "The Rift. it's become part of me. I am not able to outrun it. But you. you can."
**Over every dream, over every hope, loomed the shadow of what could have been. A shadow that would persist until life's last breath. He had always thought he would be the one to make the sacrifice. That he would be the one carrying the weight of this world. Now, the truth was unbearable to face. She was the one. She had always been the one to hold the light for him through the darkness, and now she was letting go.
"Please, Erynn. You don't have to do this."
Her hands shook as they stroked ancient runes upon the device, releasing the mechanism's intricacies. It began humming to life as its energy grew in a dark crescendo. The Rift was reacting violently; its power surged out in an explosive wave against the shore. Even reality seemed to shudder beneath its weight.
"I do, Kaelen," she whispered soft, her words so quiet amidst a growing hum in the Rift. "I have no choice anymore; thus is the manner of your survival to be ensured."
Her eyes blazed with an intensity he could no longer turn from. There was no fear in her gaze, only the cold certainty of a soul that had long since chosen its fate. She had known this moment would come, and she had made her peace with it. But Kaelen. he hadn't. He wasn't ready to lose her.
"Erynn, you can't just give up!" His voice cracked, raw with emotion. "I won't leave you. I'll find another way. There's always another way."
But deep down, he knew the truth. There was no other way. Not this time. She had made her choice, and the Rift was not something you could bargain with.
Her song reached its haunting climax, the last note booming through the Spire as a pealing of a bell; the world seemed to fold in upon itself as the Rift tore open-a chasm in reality. The power surged violently, tugging at Kaelen's very being, threatening to unravel him.
Yet somehow Erynn's voice didn't break. In that moment, she was both light and darkness, sacrifice and offering to the Rift. As the Rift tore open wide, jaws yawning and swallowing the Spire in a cacophony of destruction, Kaelen felt her slip away. A space between them that had grown small indeed now stretched out into an impassable chasm.
Her body crumpled as the Rift claimed her, her last breath a whisper lost in the roar of the storm.
Kaelen dropped to his knees as his brain reeled in. The world around him seemed to pulse with a new, terrifying rhythm. The Rift was no longer some distant force; it was here, inside of him. He could feel its presence at the edges of his thoughts, prodding and digging into his very soul. In its wake, there was nothing-no light, no warmth, just the cold, empty void.
"Erynn." The name was a guttural sob, a raw plea that hung in the air, unanswered.
The Spire around him was little more than a hollow shell, its walls cracking and crumbling as the Rift's energy continued to rip through reality. It was as if the very foundation of the world was being unraveled, piece by piece.
But it was impossible for Kaelen to focus on destruction, to concentrate on the disintegration of a world around him. He was thinking about only one thing-she, her expression, her quiet acceptance, and her sacrifice. For him, she had given everything-living, her soul, her future. She turned into a bridge between him and the Rift, and with it, she condemned herself.
His mind was a turmoil. What was he? He had let her go, really? Was his desperation to live, his need for vengeance, so consuming that he let the only person who had really cared for him be taken by the darkness?
The Rift swirled around him, its presence suffocating. It was alive, and it watched and felt him. It called to him, reached into the depths of his soul.
He felt it, the pull, the hunger gnawing within his existence to give into the darkness already claimed by Erynn-promising power, promising release from the torment, promising everything he'd ever wanted.
But even more it promised something more.
It promised that he would become nothing.
Kaelen breathed shallowly, his hands shaking as they clutched the cold stone floor. He could feel the heat of the Rift in his chest, its power radiating from within him. And as the dark tendrils of the Rift reached for his mind, he made a choice.
He would not give in.
He would not be what they wanted him to be.
He stood, and his eyes hardened with a cold determination. The grief-the loss-would not break him. He would use it. He would channel it, sharpen it into a weapon that would pierce right through the heart of the Overseers. They had taken all he had ever had from him, but they'd made one fatal mistake.
They had underestimated his rage.
Kaelen turned toward the exit of the Spire as the energy of the Rift continued to crackle through the air around him. Yet, as he walked away, a single thought lingered in the dark corners of his mind.
"I will make them pay."
Yet, even as the words echoed in his ears, he knew they weren't enough. Vengeance was a fleeting thing, an empty promise that would only deepen the wound.
And yet, it was all he had left.
Kaelen stood motionless in the now-ruined Spire, the Rift swirling like a wound in the fabric of existence. Its presence was suffocating, pressing down on him with the weight of inevitability. The walls of the Spire were crumbling, pieces of stone and shattered glass floating aimlessly as if the very concept of structure had lost its meaning. The sound of Erynn's final song still echoed in his mind, an anguish of melody that had torn through him in ways that nothing else ever could.
He closed his eyes, but her face-her smile, the bittersweet resolve in her gaze-lingered. The emotion inside him was a tempest of rage, loss, and a deep, gnawing emptiness. He had failed her. There was no other way to put it. She had sacrificed everything for him-her song, her soul, her life-and he had done nothing but stand by and watch as she slipped into the darkness.
The call of the Rift whetted through, a pressure deep into his bones; inside now, deeper than a wound seeped in through his being. Undenied was the seduction-its pull that gave promises, answer, and a key with the strength to recraft all in their way. But soft and murmured voices-the whispered breeze on the lips-only brought poisonous despondency with them.
"You are nothing without it," the Rift seemed to say, its voice no longer far away but inside him, with every second a little louder. "You have lost everything. She is gone. Your world is shattered. There is nothing left for you here."
Kaelen's stumble was a silent one, his mind cast back to what was and what would never be again. Erynn's voice remained, a vague memory of when he had faith in something more than surviving, more than vengeance. Yet even now, those sounded like the distant echoes of childish fantasy, ones that no longer held a place within this cold, endless world.
He clenched his fists, digging his nails deep into his palms. No. He would not let the Rift claim him. He could not.
But the doubt, the fear, lingered. What if it was true? What if there was nothing left but the darkness? What if this was his only path, the only way to end the gnawing emptiness? He had always been defined by his struggle, by the weight of the world pressing against him, by his desire to survive. But survival had never felt so hollow, so pointless, as it did now. What was he fighting for?
"What is the price of your soul, Kaelen?" The question came from nowhere, burrowing deep within his mind to stir something dark, ancient. "You are no hero. You never were."
He fell to his knees, his mind spiraling into chaos. The Rift's energy hummed within him, sending waves of cold dread through his body. "What was I, then?" Kaelen thought, his thoughts broken and jagged. "Just a broken man pretending to be whole. Pretending I had a purpose when all I ever had was a need to survive."
"Exactly."
The voice was no longer from the Rift. It came from the very core of his being. It was his voice, yet not. A twisted reflection of himself, which he had long buried under layers of lies and half-truths. A reflection that now clawed its way to the surface.
He struggled to his feet, his eyes vacant and far away, the weight of his decisions weighing on him like some unseen pressure. There was no turning back. Erynn had shown him the only truth worth knowing-everything was transient. All the things they had fought for, all ideals they clung to-meant nothing in the face of the Rift's terrible power. In the end, nothing mattered but the now, the present moment, the urge to exist.
But desire. desire was the abyss.
And Kaelen realized, in the silence that followed the echo of that thought, that he was already lost.
The journey to the Rift had not been one of physical distance; he had crossed that threshold. The Rift wasn't a tear in reality but the undoing of it. This world, as he had known it, was no longer solid, no longer unyielding. Fragile, like glass, it threatened to shatter at the merest touch of a finger.
The voices continued to swirl around him, mumbling in languages he could not understand. Every word, every whisper, seemed an intrusion into his mind, a desperate attempt to understand something he had no right to grasp.
"We have always been here."
The words were low and guttural, seeming to emanate from the Rift itself, not spoken but felt in his bones. It was alive, and it had waited for him. Waited for him to succumb, to break under the weight of its power.
"What are you?" Kaelen whispered, his voice hoarse from the weight of his own doubt.
"We are what you have ever been. We're your hopes and your desires- your ultimate fears. We are your violence, your stuttering rage, your every waking moment of need. You think you control it but you never had. You've never controlled anything. You've never been anything but what your bodies have made you."
It seemed to laugh-the Rift-a terrible and sad sound that, for a moment, resounded through the silence like the cry of some ancient creature.
"You are nothing, Kaelen. You always have been."
The words cut deeper than any blade could. Truth could not be escaped. He had been a man governed by his need to survive, to outlast the suffering. But in the end, what was survival if it led to nothing but a hollow shell? What was survival if it meant losing your soul in the process?
"You think Erynn's death was a sacrifice?" The voice was mocking now, cruel in its derision. "She gave everything. But you? You are already lost."
Kaelen felt the Rift surge again, its power pulsing through him, its influence creeping into the very corners of his mind. It was a terrible hunger, an unquenchable thirst that threatened to consume him whole.
But then, a flicker—a spark of clarity.
He remembered, deep in the recesses of his mind, Erynn's last words: She had given everything, not for survival, but for him-for a hope he had yet to understand. And in that moment, he knew what he had to do. Not to defeat the Rift. Not to survive it. But to end it.
He stepped forward then, the hand outstretched to the heart of Rift, as the power coursed through him-not his power, the power of the souls consumed by the Rift, the memories of those who had fallen before him. He would use it. But he would not become it.
And as his hand reached to the heart of the Rift, he heard her voice once more, faint, yet unmistakable.
"Find your truth, Kaelen. Not in survival. Not in vengeance. But in the choice to end."