Ashardio stood in the Hollow of Still Echoes, where the sands did not fall and the stars above whispered in reverse. The realm bent here—time stilled, not by choice, but by something older than fate. It was a place even the Architects avoided, a graveyard of forgotten cycles and erased tomorrows. The perfect place to make a stand.
The air was brittle, laced with metallic stillness, and Ashardio could feel the pull of the Ascendant's presence long before it arrived. Kaelthar.
He stepped from the folds of shadow as if peeling himself from the night. Towering, wrapped in armor etched with fractal patterns of extinguished stars, Kaelthar's face was veiled by a helm of mirrored obsidian. His voice, when it came, wasn't sound—it was gravity folding into meaning.
"You've unstitched threads that were never yours to hold, exile."
Ashardio didn't answer immediately. He was studying Kaelthar—not just his form, but the subtle shifts in his shadow, the way the ground recoiled beneath his feet. A being of judgment. A being designed for finality. And yet… even perfection cast cracks under enough pressure.
"I take only what memory tries to bury," Ashardio replied coldly. "Truth does not need permission."
Kaelthar's cloak flared like wings of void as he stepped forward. "Truth is a weapon. And you—are unworthy to wield it."
Ashardio summoned his blade—not one of steel or light, but shaped from distilled memory: fragments of time, bound in runes of rebellion. The blade shimmered, showing flashes of Kaelith's face, of dying cities, of a child once named Ashar before the fall. Each image a scar, every cut it promised a defiance.
Kaelthar raised his hand.
Reality bent.
The first strike came like a collapse—Kaelthar's presence crashing down, forcing the Hollow to tremble as if it remembered all it had forgotten. Ashardio barely rolled aside, the blow slicing a fracture into the ground that bled time itself.
He countered with a swipe aimed at Kaelthar's helm. The blade connected—briefly—sparking against a barrier made of layered judgment. Still, a single rune flickered on Kaelthar's armor and dimmed. A crack in inevitability.
"You are not of their design," Kaelthar said, voice colder now. "You were never meant to be remembered."
"I was never meant to be used," Ashardio spat, and hurled a sigil-marked shard into the ground.
A detonation of inverted time burst around them—forcing both combatants into a realm between seconds. Movements became echoes, decisions mirrored themselves, and cause blurred with effect.
Here, Ashardio could see more than Kaelthar's blade.
He saw his hesitation.
In the memory-space between strikes, he glimpsed a flicker beneath Kaelthar's armor. A moment—buried deep. A memory the Harbinger should not have. A memory… of a face. A woman. A past before he was forged into judgment.
Ashardio pressed the advantage. "They took you too, didn't they?"
Kaelthar faltered—but only for an instant.
Then came the roar of reasserted purpose. He surged, cloak flaring, and with a gesture, summoned a tether of divine law—a binding meant to sever Ashardio's soul from existence.
Ashardio fell to one knee, the tether burning across his chest. Blood—or something older—poured from his mouth.
But even as the pain blinded him, he reached into his coat, pulled free a cracked obsidian pendant. A relic older than Kaelthar's forge. One that pulsed not with divinity—but with choice.
He whispered a name. Not a spell. Not a curse. Just a memory.
And the tether snapped.
Kaelthar stumbled back.
Ashardio rose, panting, light fading from his eyes—but not from his will.
"This isn't judgment," he said, pointing at the Ascendant. "This is obedience. You can feel it, can't you? The fracture within."
Kaelthar said nothing.
But his blade lowered. Just slightly.
The fight was not over.
But something had changed.
In the distance, the sky cracked like porcelain, a silent herald of the coming storm.
The other Ascendants would follow.
And Ashardio had just bought time… but at a cost he had yet to understand.