The village that once had been a long-ago memory of refuge now lay in fragments. It was a mockery of hope, a place which had lived too long under the shadow of death. Every step Kaelen took upon the decaying soil was betrayal, weight upon the fragments of his soul. He had looked for answers and found his reality crumbling, his purpose unspooling like a torn thread.
Kaelen stood alone in the middle of the village square, his breath shallow and cold in the damp air. The last remnants of the storm had passed, but the world still felt suffocating. The flickering light of the horizon seemed to him like the last ember of a fire long dead. And it was then, at that moment, that the Rift chose to speak once more. It pierced through the dark recesses of his mind, not as some whispering voices, but like some viscera force, ghostly caress tracing lines on his thoughts. It was not intrusion; it was invitation.
The vision came unbidden.
The sky fractured to open into a dark red rent-like wound across the heavens. And through that rip in reality, Kaelen saw the figure: great, eldritch form, impossibly huge, leaning over him. It was not of a thing of substance but of energy, fluidly weaving within the very fabric of creation that birthed the Rift. This being bent upon its existence the very essence of reality, warping the air before it and sending shudders through the firmament with a weight unnatural in this world.
Then it spoke.
"Do you understand yet, Kaelen?"
Kaelen's chest tightened as the words broke through his thoughts, too clear, too profound to ignore. The voice was deep and not a sound but a vibration that resonated within his very core. The Rift, no longer just a crack in the world, had become an entity-a consciousness so ancient it defied comprehension.
"The Overseers are not your true enemy," it whispered, "they are but shadows of a greater force, a greater will. To destroy them is but a momentary victory. You must reach deeper, to the very root of what binds this world together. If you wish to be free, you must destroy the foundation upon which everything is built."
Kaelen recoiled, his heart pounding. Poisonous words, draped in salvation. The Rift was offering him true, unbridled power, but at what cost? In flashed the picture of the Overseers: their cold calculated faces, their cruel grasp upon the world. Yes, they had to be stopped, but destroy them at the cost of everything?
In setting this world free, Kaelen, you would need to break it apart: tear asunder the fabric of reality itself, everything that you know, everything that you love. You will be the one collapsing the walls of existence.
The vision blurred again, and Kaelen's breath caught in his throat. The Rift spoke to him, showed him-the world unraveling, collapsing in chaos, a flood of destruction so total it consumed all that had ever been. Stars blinked out, earth fractured, and even time seemed to lose its meaning. There was no escape from the destruction-the world would fall, and he would be the one to bring it down.
He woke with a jerk, and the world snapped back to its fractured, poorly lit reality. His mind reeled as the words of the Rift boomed louder and louder in his ears. It was a call to arms and a death sentence all in one. The temptation to be done with it-to destroy the Overseers and this whole world that had ever chained him-was too great. And yet, part of him drew back in horror.
Was it really freedom? Was the world worth saving? Or was this a test, some kind of trap devised by the Rift to push him toward something darker, toward something far more terrible?
His musings were cut off by a faint sound-a voice on the wind, soft enough that it might have been a product of his imagination.
"Kaelen?"
Adria's voice pulled him from the abyss of his own mind. She stood in the distance, her silhouette outlined against the dying light, her expression filled with concern.
"Are you—" she began, but Kaelen held up a hand, cutting her off.
"I'm fine," he said, his voice colder than he intended. His eyes were distant, unfocused, as if he were staring through her and into something far beyond. "Just. thinking."
Adria stepped closer still, her gaze piercing through him. "Thinking?" Her voice came softer but insistent; a whispered promise of some thing unspoken between them. "Or perhaps. lost in the Rift again?"
For a moment, Kaelen didn't answer. His eyes flickered then, a brief betraying of vulnerability before the walls came slamming shut once more. "You don't understand," he muttered, his face twisting as he turned away. "None of you do.
He turned to walk away, but it was Adria's voice that stopped him once again.
"Kaelen, you can't carry this alone. You're not the only one who has suffered. who has lost. Still, you need to understand-whatever this 'Rift' is-it is not the answer; it is manipulation, not salvation. And it must not make you so blind as to think destruction equals freedom."
Kaelen turned, his face tight with emotion. "You don't get it. You can't. The Overseers-what they've done. What they are. This world isn't worth saving. Everything I've lost, every person I've loved-they're all gone. All of them. And the Rift is the only thing that can give me the power to make it stop. To end it all.
She moved then, her features a mask of pain and steely determination. "What happens when everything is gone-when you tear every part of your own life down to the last shard? Will there still be enough strength within you to let you look inside the mirror at you-and find something salvable?"
For once in ages, fire flared in Kaelen's eyes. "It doesn't matter. There is nothing left there anymore. Nothing at all.
Adria's gaze softened, a mixture of pity and understanding. "Then maybe that's the problem. You've given up on yourself before the battle has even begun."
Kaelen said nothing. He couldn't. The Rift's words still echoed in his mind, louder than anything she could say. The path was clear—destroy the Overseers, or destroy everything. And yet, the weight of that decision bore down on him, the uncertainty gnawing at his soul.
As Kaelen stood there, the weight of Adria's words pressing upon his chest with unseen force, the world wavered ever further away, dimly filtering in through clouded thoughts that grasped for his balance between the stark truth of this vision the Rift had shown him and remnants of the humanity that residually whispered an ancient conscience-a presence still latching onto himself with tenuous grip.
He looked at Adria, her figure now bathed in the dim light of the setting sun. The shadows cast long and dark across her face, and for a moment, she seemed like a specter—a ghost of something Kaelen once understood. But what was it? Hope? Compassion? Was there still room for such things in this world?
"I don't want your pity, Adria," Kaelen said, his voice colder than before. "You don't know what I have seen, what I've been through. The Rift is. it is everything now. It's the only thing that matters. Once I lost all I had; I won't let that happen again."
The lines in Adria's face softened, her eyes reflecting an abyss of sadness. She moved a step closer to him, not in defiance but as if she wanted to fill the chasm separating them.
"Kaelen, you are never alone in this. Never were. The Rift is not the answer. It's a mirror; it reflects that which one desires to see, that which one fears most. And when that mirror breaks-what of you then?
But he buried it deep inside himself. "I don't care what's left of me," he whispered-low, so low. "There's no other choice, Adria. The Overseers will fall. The world. this world. it deserves to end. It deserves to burn."
The air between them thickened with unsaid words, with tensions unspoken, with a thousand unspoken truths. Kaelen's body quaked, but not from fear. No, it was something more insidious that scratched at the back of his mind-doubt. He had long since abandoned the need for hope, but now it clung to the back of his mind like a cancerous whisper. What if she was right? What if, in desperation to destroy the Overseers, he'd go so far as to burn the world itself?
"What if you're wrong, Kaelen?" Adria asked quietly, as though reading his thoughts. "What if there's another way? What if. there's still a chance to save what's left of this world?"
Kaelen's gaze hardened, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He had been through too much, suffered too much. There was no turning back. No redemption for this broken world.
"The Overseers are the architects of suffering," Kaelen spat, his words trembling with his anger and his pain. "They've taken everything from me, from us. They've built their empire on the backs of the dead and the broken. Do you think I would let them continue? Do you think I would stand idly by while they destroy everything that still matters?"
Distorted by the agony, her face nonetheless didn't betray the slightest backtracking. "And yet, you are ready to destroy everything-including yourself-to stop them. You're becoming them, Kaelen. Can't you see it?"
Kaelen recoiled as if struck. Her words hit him harder than any physical blow ever could. Becoming them. He had heard the accusation before, from the shadows of his mind, and every time it had felt like an insurmountable wall. He had sacrificed so much. Was he to be no better than those that crushed his world?
The Rift stirred inside him, a fevered heartbeat beneath his skin, urging him onward. A voice, its whispers now clear, more insistent.
"Yes. Yes, you are becoming them. But in so doing, you will be invested with the power to destroy them. It is inevitable. You were always meant for this. You were always meant to be the harbinger of the end."
The breath caught in Kaelen's throat, and his gaze rose to the horizon, where the torment of his own soul wrestled with the promises of the Rift. He could feel the weight of the decision weighing down on him, that weight an ocean above his head.
Adria reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she laid it on his shoulder. The warmth of her touch, despite everything, felt like an anchor in the storm that raged inside him.
"You're not the only one who's lost everything, Kaelen," she whispered, her voice laced with quiet resolve. "But that doesn't mean we have to become monsters. We can fight. We can resist. We can find another way."
Kaelen closed his eyes as the image of the Rift flared before him in its endlessness, its promise of power, its promise of finality. Whispering his name in a lovers' whisper, beguiling and beckoning to just let go. But there was Adria's touch-bracing him against the realness of something human, tethering him.
But was he even human anymore?
"How can you say that?" Kaelen's voice was hoarse, cracking under the weight of his emotions. "How can you believe in something as fragile as hope when all I've ever known is loss? The Rift is the only thing that's real now. And it promises an end to it all."
Adria's grip tightened. "I don't know what the future holds, Kaelen. None of us do. But I know that destroying everything-everyone-will never bring you peace. It will only continue to bring more pain, more bloodshed. You have a choice. We have a choice."
Kaelen turned away, his heart heavy, his mind muddled. A long moment fell between them in silence, broken only by the faraway cry of a bird.
In the end, Kaelen knew which way he had to go. The Rift was insidious; it promised him that very thing that he wanted above all else, which was a release from this pain. That would not be an end but simply a beginning for something far more terrible, a twist far sharper.
And with that, he pushed the temptation away as hard as he could. He would not be a monster. Not yet. He would fight. And in that fight, he would find what little humanity he had left.