The second hand emerging from the fracture changed everything.
Until now, part of me had still believed the entity reaching through the opening was incomplete, limited by the boundary separating its world from ours. That illusion vanished the moment another arm forced itself through the crack in reality.
The fracture widened violently.
A sound echoed across the battlefield like glass breaking beneath an ocean.
The sky above split further apart.
More eyes opened in the darkness beyond.
Watching.
Always watching.
The pressure crashed downward so hard the ground beneath us finally collapsed entirely, massive sections of shattered stone sinking into darkness as though the world itself could no longer support what was happening here.
Rin barely managed to keep standing.
Lira looked close to unconscious.
Even Faye's breathing had become uneven now.
But the worst part was me.
Because the moment that second hand appeared…
Something inside my chest responded.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Again.
The voice beyond the fracture whispered softly through my mind.
You remember now.
Pain exploded behind my eyes instantly.
Memories slammed into me so violently that reality itself blurred.
A battlefield drowning in black rain.
A sword larger than my body buried beneath endless corpses.
My own hands trembling while dark fractures spread across my skin exactly like they were now.
And standing before me—
Him.
The version of myself from the memories.
Except this time…
He wasn't alone.
Someone else stood beside him.
A man.
Tall.
Covered in black markings that moved like living shadows beneath his skin.
His eyes—
My breathing stopped.
They were my eyes.
Not similar.
Identical.
The vision shattered violently.
I stumbled backward hard enough to nearly fall.
The battlefield returned around me in fragments.
The fracture.
The sky.
The eyes above us.
The entity still emerging slowly from the opening in reality.
But now something else had changed.
The thing reaching through the fracture…
Was smiling.
Not widely.
Not monstrously.
Almost sadly.
Rin's voice shook.
"What the hell is that thing…"
The man beside me tightened his grip on the shattered blade handle.
"…It remembers him."
Cold spread slowly through my chest.
"Him?"
He looked at me carefully.
"The one before you."
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
Even the pressure above us seemed to still itself for a moment.
The one before me.
The words echoed through my mind harder than anything else.
I stared at the fracture.
At the entity reaching through it.
At the impossible familiarity radiating from something that should have felt alien.
And deep down…
I already knew the truth before he spoke again.
"You're not the first person chosen by the door."
The voice beyond the fracture answered immediately.
He almost returned.
Pain tore violently through my chest.
Not physical pain.
Grief.
A grief so old and deep it could not possibly belong to me.
I dropped to one hand against the broken ground, breathing hard as more memories forced themselves into my mind.
The man from the vision.
Fighting beneath shattered skies.
Screaming while black fractures consumed his body.
Reaching toward that enormous door while something behind it called his name over and over again.
And then—
Silence.
Loneliness.
Failure.
The emotional weight behind it nearly crushed me.
The entity emerging from the fracture took another step forward.
Reality distorted around its body instantly.
The battlefield cracked wider.
The sky screamed.
But its eyes never left mine.
Not hostile.
Not hungry.
Mournful.
And somehow…
That was worse.
Faye suddenly moved.
Fast.
She stepped directly between me and the fracture, her blade raised despite the overwhelming pressure crushing the battlefield around us.
"You need to stop listening to it," she said sharply.
The entity looked at her.
For the first time—
The pressure changed.
Not heavier.
Dangerous.
Every instinct in my body screamed instantly.
Move.
Now.
I grabbed Faye's arm violently and pulled her backward a split second before the fracture exploded outward.
Darkness erupted across the battlefield like a tidal wave.
The place where she had been standing disappeared completely.
Not destroyed.
Gone.
A section of reality itself had vanished.
Rin's face turned pale instantly.
"What… was that…"
No one answered.
Because none of us understood what we had just witnessed.
Even the man beside me looked shaken now.
"That should not be possible…"
The entity slowly lowered its hand again.
Its expression remained calm.
Almost regretful.
The voice beyond the sky whispered once more.
Do not interfere.
This time everyone heard it.
Rin froze.
Lira's eyes widened in horror.
Faye's face lost color completely.
The voice was no longer speaking only to me.
It was crossing over.
The realization shattered what little stability remained on the battlefield.
The fractures in the sky widened again.
And behind them—
Shapes moved.
Massive.
Ancient.
Watching from the darkness beyond reality itself.
The man beside me grabbed my shoulder hard enough to force my attention back toward him.
"You need to decide now."
I stared at him, still breathing unevenly.
"Decide what?"
His eyes sharpened.
"Whether you remain yourself…"
The pressure around us deepened violently.
The entity took another step closer.
"…or become what happened to the one before you."
The words hit harder than the pressure itself.
Because deep down…
I already knew what he meant.
The previous one had not simply failed.
He had been consumed.
The memories flooding into me were not random.
They were remnants.
Leftovers.
Fragments of someone who lost themselves completely beyond that door.
And now…
The same thing was beginning to happen to me.
The black fractures spread farther across my arms.
My vision flickered.
The voice beyond the sky softened again.
You are incomplete without us.
Something inside me almost answered.
That terrified me more than anything else.
Faye grabbed my arm suddenly.
"Kael, look at me."
I forced my eyes toward her.
Her expression remained tense, but steady.
"You are not him."
The words cut through the chaos inside my head for a brief second.
Not him.
Not the one who failed before me.
The entity beyond the fracture tilted its head slightly.
Then—
For the first time—
Its smile disappeared.
The pressure across the battlefield turned cold instantly.
And somewhere beyond the fractured sky…
Something enormous began waking up.