The world held its breath.
From the shattered peaks of Wyrdspire to the rain-starved jungles of Sah'Raek, from the frost-veined deserts of the Okkarn Wastes to the floating lantern-cities of Tsun Vey, every living thing paused. They did not know why. They could not explain it. But all life—beast, plant, sentient or otherwise—felt the same stillness descend like mist over the bones of time.
The end was near.
And so was something new.
Haraza Genso stood on the edge of a floating ley-bridge, miles above the ground, his cloak whipping like a banner behind him. Around him, the members of the Accord moved with grim purpose. Caela was etched with glyph-burns, half-drained but focused as she bent a ley-map into form, crafting their route across the unbound sky. Lirien checked her blades with mechanical efficiency, but her eyes stayed fixed on Haraza, silently weighing the man he had become. Brannock paced like a storm coiled in flesh, the haft of his hammer stained from too many gods he'd broken. Ryve had no words left—only resolve.
The Rift was opening ahead.
It bloomed in the sky like a bleeding eye, dark tendrils of fractured reality stretching outward, sucking in light and meaning. A black sphere hung at its center—The Choir's Maw, where the final verse would be sung. And somewhere within that storm of shadow and sorrow, the Riftborn pulsed in preparation.
Caela finished her ley-sequence.
("Bridge is ready,") she said. ("But it'll only hold if Haraza threads the tones while we move.")
("I'll handle it,") he said. His voice carried not just strength but resonance. Since bonding with the keystone, he had become something more—a mortal echo of the First Tone. He was not a god. But he could speak to them now.
The ley-bridge flared to life, a road of shimmering blue light stretching across the chasm between worlds.
They ran.
As they crossed into the storm, the air changed.
It thickened—not with vapor, but with memories. Each step forward brought echoes of the past. Cities long dead. Children never born. Worlds that might have been. The bridge flickered with the pressure of possibility.
Brannock roared as a phantom lunged at them—a creature of mirrored armor and inverted time. His hammer connected with an echo of steel, and the beast vanished with a sound like sobbing thunder.
("They're not real,") Caela shouted. "They're failed songs! Rejected realities!"
("They bleed well enough!") Brannock growled.
More came.
Silhouettes of broken gods, beasts stitched from forgotten names, chimeras of unspoken regrets.
But Haraza walked at the front, and where he stepped, the song steadied.
The ley-bridge sang beneath him—notes aligning, the world bending ever so slightly in acknowledgment.
Then the storm parted.
And they saw it.
The Choir's Maw.
A swirling, living sphere the size of a city, suspended by tendrils of harmonic gravity. It pulsed in time with a song no mortal voice could mimic—a verse written in the bones of dying stars. Around it, figures floated in trance—The Choir, cloaked in veils of dusk, mouths open in eternal syllables. Each one had once been mortal. Each had sung their soul into oblivion.
And at their center…
A single throne of obsidian.
Empty.
Waiting.
Lirien whispered, ("Where's the Riftborn?")
As if in answer, the Maw cracked.
And the Riftborn emerged.
It was not one being.
It was many—fused, layered, unfolding like an orchestra of flesh and light. Its limbs were concepts. Its eyes were paradoxes. Its voice… its voice was not heard, but understood, as if your thoughts were being rewritten mid-sentence.
It hovered above the throne and turned its many gazes upon Haraza.
("You are not the First Voice,") it said without speaking. ("But you are a possibility.")
Haraza stepped forward.
("I'm the last one you'll ever meet.")
The Riftborn smiled—if such a thing could be called a smile.
("Then come, Haraza Genso. Let us sing the end.")