"Dravok," I whispered into the bond, pushing my awareness toward him with everything I had.Come back.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then, faintly—so faintly I might have imagined it—I felt the edge of him, distant and cold. And underneath it, a pressure that didn't belong to him at all.
Watching.
Waiting.
Learning.
My hands trembled around the palmtop.
"Oh no," I said one last time, and it wasn't denial anymore. It was cold certainty. Whatever was down there with him wasn't trying to kill him. It was trying to irrevocably change him.
The darkness didn't takeover all at once. It came in increments, small permissions granted without conscious approval. A narrowing of options. A thinning of resistance. With every step deeper into the Cryon ruins, the world simplified.
Cross the chamber. Forward. Down. Remove obstacles. The false Space Guardians emerged in staggered intervals now, no longer hiding. They moved with increasing coordination. Their bodies were wrong—too dense in some places, unstable in others—energy cores flared like dying stars barely held together by Ohrur arrogance.
I dismantled the first few with minimal effort. The second wave required more force. By the third, I fully stopped trying to spare them. Each kill made the next easier. That should havealarmed me. It didn't. I was used to killing. And this felt… efficient.
Nythor's voice grew steadily louder, less fragmented, his thoughts crashed against my mind like waves breaking against stone. —paths bend paths break?—
—Earth was first Earth was lie—Caelor burned. Ashera watched?—
"Be silent," I ordered.
He laughed. Not with sound, but with pressure, with fractured delight that rattled through the chamber. —you cannot unsee what you remember?—
The false Space Guardians rushed me again. I tore through them with escalating brutality, and my aura darkened further with every act. Gold continued to recede. Black threaded through it, edged with something sharp and red. I felt powerful. More than powerful.
Clear.
And beneath that clarity, something coiled and approved.Yes, it whispered, not as a voice, but as alignment.This is what you are.
I struck another Space Guardian down and did not even register its fall. Nythor's containment field flickered as I approached. His form shuddered, energy bled off him in irregular pulses.
"You are not an Oracle," I said, advancing. "You are a conduit."
—I was never meant to speak—I was meant to draw you?—
The admission slid into me too easily. An image flared in my mind, unbidden. A female. Human. Fragile. Brilliant. She stood in light, and stars threaded across her skin in living patterns. There was warmth in her presence, an ache that tightened something deep in my chest. I stopped. The longing hit without warning; it was sharp and disorienting. I missed her. Therealization made no sense. I searched my memory for context and found… nothing. No name. No history. Only the certainty that she mattered. Or had. Or was supposed to. Confusion irritated me. The new voice inside me seized on it instantly.
—she is the root?—
—she disrupts the pattern?—
—she is why you fracture?—
The darkness inside me agreed.Yes. That was why the clarity kept slipping. Why something in me resisted the pull. Why the gold was fighting the black.She is interference.The thought settled like a solved equation.
"She needs to be eliminated," I said aloud. The words felt right.
Peace lay on the other side of that conclusion, clean, absolute.
Nythor's form convulsed.
—Caelor knew?—
—Earth remembers what you forgot?—
