The land around them changed with every step.
Jack walked at the front, his hand always on the Blade of Echoes. With each passing hour, it grew warmer—humming like it sensed something ahead, something ancient. Time itself began to stutter around them: clouds reversed direction, shadows stretched too long, and sometimes, a single step took them miles farther than expected.
"This place isn't right," Marek muttered, scanning the fractured horizon. "It's like the world forgot how to hold itself together."
"It's not the world," Lola said. "It's the Blade. It's starting to unmoor time."
They passed through a dead forest where the trees whispered things they hadn't said. Their own voices echoed out of order—sometimes repeating past conversations, sometimes speaking future ones. Jack felt like his soul was being peeled apart, thread by thread.
Nyssa walked beside him, silent but watchful. She hadn't commented on the changes, but the way her hand clutched her blade spoke volumes.
Then they reached it.
Elarion.
Once the heart of the Starlighter Dominion, now reduced to towers that bent sideways, as if gravity had forgotten which way was down. Crystalline spires jutted from cracked earth, and rivers ran backward in the distance. In the center stood the Mirror Hall—a cathedral of broken glass, its reflection visible in the sky above like a second, shattered heaven.
Jack halted. "This is where the Shards are?"
Lola nodded. "The last of them, buried within the Mirror's cradle. But they won't be still. They're fragments of the original Sundering. They resist being whole again."
As they approached, time bled around them.
Jack blinked—and saw himself ahead, walking the same path.
He blinked again, and it was gone.
"What the hell was that?" Nyssa asked, sword drawn.
Jack didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because deep inside, something had started to stir. Not just the Blade—but Thalon. The echo of the Devourer's whisper slithered through his thoughts like oil through cracks. The Blade of Echoes vibrated harder, reacting to the presence of the Shards.
When they entered the Mirror Hall, reality cracked.
The inside was infinite. Thousands of versions of the same chamber spiraled out in every direction, each one a different possibility—one where they never came, one where they failed, one where Jack had fallen. One where he had become the Devourer.
Lola's eyes glowed faintly. "This is what remains of the Mirror of Threads. The Shards still live. They remember all the paths that could've been."
"And which one's the real one?" Marek asked.
"There isn't one anymore," Lola said softly. "Only the one we choose."
Jack stepped forward, toward the altar at the room's center—though it wasn't in just one place, but every place at once. The Blade of Echoes flared, and time folded around him. For a moment, he saw himself as a child, running through the woods. Then as a king, seated on a throne of ash. Then—nothing at all.
He gritted his teeth and focused.
The Blade began to sing.
Its resonance reached out like a tuning fork, harmonizing with the Shards. And slowly—agonizingly—they began to rise from the fractured space. Four glowing shards of celestial glass, each humming with power.
Jack reached for them.
They cut him—deep, through flesh and soul.
But he did not let go.
The pain was worse than fire. It was memory, every failure, every death, every moment he'd hesitated. But he held on. And as he did, the Shards fused with the Blade of Echoes—sinking into its core. Its glow changed, no longer fractured, but whole.
And for one moment—
Jack heard everything.
The Sundering.
The gods that had fallen.
The thing that had broken the first world.
He heard his own voice speaking in another lifetime: "Let it be undone."
Then silence.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping.
Nyssa caught him. "Jack!"
"I saw it," he whispered. "The beginning. The real one. And the end, too."
"What did you see?" Marek asked, pale.
"That there's no stopping it," Jack said. "Only choosing how it ends."
Lola stepped forward, steady. "Then choose well. Because once we leave here, the Blade will guide us to the Maw. There's no turning back after that."
Jack looked down at the Blade—now pulsing like a living thing.
"We go to the place where the world cracked," he said. "And we carry the last light."
The Mirror Hall shuddered.
Behind them, the path began to collapse—time folding inward, reality rejecting them.
They ran.
Out into the open.
And as they reached the edge of the wasteland, Jack looked up—and saw the sky tear.
A single line of black flame split the heavens.
And from the wound, a voice whispered:
"The bearer wakes."