The Rift had changed.
The light no longer shimmered. It pulsed.
A slow, sick heartbeat rolling through the ash-washed air. Kaelen stood at the edge of the platform where he'd carved his myth into stone, where he'd been named by the Wyrd itself: The One Without Light.
His mark still burned not with fire, but with meaning. Memory. The stone slab lay split behind him, smoking faintly as though what he had written still bled.
He hadn't carved a name.
He had carved a feeling. A truth he could no longer hold in silence.
A blade of guilt. A promise broken.
"I am what's left."
The Wyrd had answered: The One Without Light.
And now it had sent something to test him.
The Rift groaned.
At the far edge of the obsidian platform, the air shimmered then ruptured.
It didn't tear like cloth. It peeled like skin.
From the wound stepped the thing.
Twisted.
Tall.
Wrong.
Its body was made of flickers. Of memory scraped raw. Its face shifted from shadow to shadow until finally, it settled on Auren's face.
Not smiling. Not whole. Just… accusing.
Kaelen froze.
"No."
The thing took a step forward. Its hands were too long. Its ribs jutted like knives. Its mouth didn't move, but a voice spilled into Kaelen's skull.
"You watched."
Kaelen's hand found his blade.
"You're not him."
"You let me die."
Kaelen screamed and charged.
Kaelen struck first low, wide, desperate. His blade caught nothing but a smear of air.
The Wyrdbeast moved like a memory not faster, but earlier. Every swing Kaelen made, it was already past.
It slashed his chest.
He fell back, rolled, and slashed upward again blade whistling.
This time, it caught.
The beast shrieked. Not in pain in recognition. Like it remembered that wound.
Light bled from the cut golden, flickering, corrupted.
Kaelen pressed the attack, his Wyrdmark igniting with each strike. His pain became power. His grief, a razor.
He Soulcast not with spell or chant, but with will.
A memory of Auren teaching him how to parry.
The feel of warm spring wind.
The sound of laughter before everything broke.
That moment projected, wrapped around his blade.
The steel pulsed with silver-blue energy a weapon born not of magic, but remembered love.
He slashed again.
The beast reeled. Half its face flickered now wearing Kaelen's. Now Auren's again.
From the Master's voice, distant and grim:
"Wyrdbeasts are myth made rotten. Born from the pieces you bury. They cannot be reasoned with, because they are what you refuse to believe is true."
Kaelen's breath came ragged.
"They're nightmares."
"No. They are truths with the skin torn off."
The beast lunged.
Kaelen Leysteped instinct kicking in. The world folded for a heartbeat.
He stepped through the space between rage and remorse, and reappeared behind the beast.
He slashed deep.
It screamed again, this time in his brother's voice.
"Kaelen, help me-!"
He faltered.
Just for a moment.
The beast turned, its hand reforming into a curved sickle of light.
It plunged it into his side.
Kaelen cried out, staggered back, blade falling.
The beast loomed.
"You can't run from what you are."
Kaelen fell to one knee.
His vision swam.
Blood poured from his ribs. His Wyrdmark flared again trying to hold him together.
But the beast kept changing.
Now it wore his own face.
But not the Kaelen he was.
The Kaelen he could become.
Colder.
Crueler.
Unforgiving.
"You're not strong enough yet. But you will be."
The beast's hand reached out not to kill, but to show him something.
And in that moment, it whispered:
"Your brother still breathes."
Kaelen's eyes went wide.
"...What?"
The Wyrdbeast shoved him.
Kaelen flew backward slamming into the obsidian ground so hard it cracked.
Darkness washed over him.
Pain bloomed.
And the last thing he saw…
Was his own face, watching him fall.