The storm above I'Zun-Tel cracked into a spiral of inverted light, sucking sound into itself.
From its heart descended the Unvoice—a formless wraith clad in robes of stillness, with a face stitched from stolen memories. Each step it took deleted the space beneath it. Reality itself recoiled.
Ashira's breath caught in her throat. Her voice—gone.
Joryn tried to scream a warding spell, but the syllables melted in his mouth.
Krael raised the Severance Edge, feeling the weight of the three spoken names pulsing beneath his ribs.
The Godseed child stood silently behind him, eyes wide.
"Not this time," Krael growled.
He stepped forward.
---
The Unvoice raised its hand, and a ripple of null swept outward.
Joryn vanished.
Not killed. Erased.
Ashira lunged, glaive spinning in a spiral of mirrored light. As she struck, she forced her mind to remember Joryn—his voice, his fire, his soul.
Her blade sang, even if her throat could not.
The Unvoice caught the blow mid-air.
"You wear names not yours to speak," it said, not with sound—but with forgetting.
Ashira's form flickered. Her past began to fade.
"Krael—!" she gasped. "If I vanish—don't stop. Speak them all—"
"Not happening," he barked, and leapt.
---
Krael clashed with the Unvoice in a maelstrom of silence. The Severance Edge burned in defiance—its every strike a statement, each parry a remembering. The battle was like cutting into a dream that refused to die.
"Speak not," the Unvoice hissed. "He will erase you."
Krael's blade met the Unvoice's palm.
"And still—I speak."
The Unvoice recoiled, shrieking as its palm cracked.
"You are becoming the Prophecy," it whispered. "You are becoming the name."
Krael's voice roared, even as the world tried to mute it:
"KHA'TUR. THAEL. ZURAEL!"
The three names surged in him, shielding his allies.
The Unvoice faltered.
---
Ashira, nearly translucent, pressed the Nidus Veil to her chest, whispering memories of Joryn into its threads.
And then—
A pulse. A flash.
Joryn returned, coughing, flame in his eyes.
"I remember me," he gasped.
The Unvoice screamed. "You have undone forgetting. You break the silence. You are—"
Krael lunged.
"We are the Accord."
With a final arc, the Severance Edge sliced the Unvoice in two—unmaking the silence.
Sound returned like a crashing tide.
---
The sky wept fire above I'Zun-Tel.
The Godseed child walked between the rebels, touched each of their shoulders, and said its first word:
"Next."