Mirror earth
Year 200
The ruins behind them smoldered in silence as Zenith and Ires pushed deeper into the wilds. The sky above was gray, bloated with unmoving clouds. Even the wind had forgotten how to howl. Each step echoed louder than it should have — like they were walking into something ancient and waiting.
The crystal floated behind Zenith, dim and cold. No pulses. No flickers. No whispers.
"Chaos," Zenith called softly, more breath than voice.
Nothing.
Ires shot him a look. "Still quiet?"
He nodded. "Too quiet."
"Maybe he's done with you."
That struck harder than it should've, but Zenith didn't answer. He couldn't.
They moved in silence, stepping around shattered statues, fallen trees, and bones buried in the moss. The path felt wrong. Off. The further they walked, the more the pressure built in the air — like the forest itself was holding its breath.
Then it came.
A scream — sharp, panicked, real — ripped through the air ahead.
They ran without a word.
Branches clawed at them as they crashed through the underbrush, dodging debris, leaping over twisted roots. The forest thinned.
In a clearing, a girl stood surrounded by a ring of torch-wielding figures. Her black cloak flared in the wind, torn and caked with blood. Her blade — long, dark, and humming with violent energy — shimmered at her side, held in one trembling hand.
"She's the reason the beasts came!"
"She talks to the shadows!"
"She's cursed! Kill her!"
The mob surged forward.
She moved like a storm.
The blade screamed through the air. One man fell, then another, then another. She turned like fire — deadly and untouchable. Sparks burst. Bones cracked. A scream gurgled as a man flew into a tree, spine snapping like dry wood.
Zenith stopped dead.
The girl spun, sensing them. Her eyes locked onto his.
The crystal behind him flared — faintly.
She lunged.
Zenith blinked, moving back. She appeared where he'd been, blade carving through empty space.
"You have it," she hissed. "You have the voice!"
"I'm not your enemy!" he shouted, dodging another slash. He reached for the crystal — please — but it remained cold. Useless.
Ires unsheathed her blade and struck from the side. The girl blocked without looking, her dark weapon sparking against Ires' steel.
"Back off!" the girl shouted.
"We're not with them!" Ires said through gritted teeth. "We're not here to fight!"
"You followed them. You have the voice. I've seen it in my dreams — in the void!"
Her eyes were burning. Not madness — something worse. Desperation.
Zenith backed up, breathing hard. The crystal still refused him. No power. No whispers.
Chaos wasn't watching.
He was ignoring him.
"Enough!" Ires shouted. "We're not the ones hunting you!"
The girl paused. Her chest rose and fell fast, the blade still trembling in her grip.
The mob was gone — scattered. Only the three of them remained.
"What's your name?" Zenith asked, steadying his breath.
"…Kira," she said after a moment.
"I'm Zenith. This is Ires. We're not here to hurt you."
She studied them, eyes flicking from their faces to the floating crystal, then back. Her blade lowered a fraction — not from trust, but from exhaustion.
"You shouldn't be out here," she said coldly. "Something else is coming. Something worse."
Zenith didn't answer. He couldn't. He felt it too.
Kira turned away. "If you want to live, don't follow me."
She walked into the dark.
Ires looked at Zenith.
He glanced at the crystal. It pulsed once — soft, hesitant.
Still no words from Chaos.
Still no answers.
But something was shifting.
And in the silence, the shadows began to stir again.
They didn't speak. They simply followed her.
Kira moved through the dying forest like a shadow — silent, deliberate, unafraid. The blade strapped across her back hissed faintly as the wind touched it, and the closer Zenith got to her, the heavier the air around the crystal became.
Ires stayed close, hand on her weapon, eyes scanning the trees. But Zenith's focus stayed locked on Kira.
She'd said something… something that hadn't left his head.
"You have the voice."
After what felt like a mile in silence, Kira finally spoke, without turning.
"I told you not to follow me."
Zenith's voice was calm, but firm. "You said you heard the voice."
Kira stopped. The trees above creaked in the dead wind. Her shoulders tensed.
Zenith stepped forward. "What did you mean?"
She turned to face them, her eyes dark, but not hostile. Not anymore. Just tired.
"It started about five days ago," she said. "The sword… it belonged to my father. He gave it to me when the world started falling apart. Said it was passed down for generations. Nothing more than a relic. I believed him."
Her hand slid over the hilt. The blade shimmered faintly with a strange tension — almost as if it was listening.
"But when the sky cracked and the ground trembled, something changed. The sword started shaking. Not like a weapon in danger. Like something trapped was waking up."
She slid the large scroll bag from her back — a heavy, cylindrical pack similar to the kind warriors used to carry ancient scripts. It was black, scuffed from battle, and sealed tightly with faded red thread.
"This was embedded in the sword's hilt. I didn't even know it was there until it cracked loose."
Ires narrowed her eyes. "That's a crystal, isn't it?"
Kira nodded. "Not just any crystal. The moment it fell out, the sword lit up with power. The blade was no longer dormant. It moved on its own. Stronger. Hungrier. I couldn't control it."
Zenith's crystal began to pulse faintly.
Kira continued, "That same night, the sky tore open. World Eaters rained down on my village. I barely escaped. The others… they weren't so lucky."
She looked at Zenith then. "That's when I heard the voice. Just once. Deep. Cold. Ancient. It spoke through the noise — like thunder beneath my skin."
Zenith's pulse quickened. Ires shifted her stance slightly, hand hovering near her dagger.
"But I'm no vessel. It never spoke to me again," Kira said. "I realized later it wasn't speaking to me at all. It was reacting to something else."
Her eyes moved to the crystal spinning faintly behind Zenith.
"You," she whispered. "You woke it."
Zenith looked at her. "Why didn't it draw the World Eaters to you again?"
"I found a way to keep it quiet."
Kira turned sharply, motioning for them to follow. They moved through overgrown ruins, past half-buried statues and broken rooftops, until she stopped in front of a leaning stone house, swallowed by roots and vines.
"This place was abandoned long before the fall," she said, pushing open the broken door. Inside, it was dark and cold, with moss covering the walls and old scribes faded into the stone.
She knelt in a corner and set the scroll bag down carefully, fingers trembling.
"I found this scroll bag among a dead priest's belongings. It's old magic — designed to suppress energy signatures."
She began to unseal it.
"Wait," Ires said. "Are you sure—?"
Kira opened the scroll bag.
The moment the thread unraveled and the flap lifted, the second black crystal floated up slowly — dull, pulsing with dormant power.
Then, a low rumble. Distant… growing.
Zenith's eyes widened. "No…"
Screams echoed from the woods outside.
The sky above the ruin cracked.
The World Eaters were coming.