The air in Silverveil Citadel tasted of burnt metal and dying magic. Eldrin staggered through the ruins, his left arm encased in jagged **Origin Circuitry**,the blue veins of the **grain** now clawing at his throat like frost on a corpse.
The **seventh shard's**power thrummed beneath his skin a molten star trapped in a cage of flesh. But it was a borrowed strength, unstable, *wrong*.
Across the shattered plaza, Ophira's laughter slithered through the smoke. She stood atop the remnants of the royal palace, her silhouette wreathed in the **sixth shard's** corrupted light. The **fifth shard** pulsed in her chest, its rhythm syncopated with the**third shard** embedded in Tira's convulsing body. The girl's dual voicesone human, one feralscreamed in unison as Ophira's shadow poured into her like ink into water.
*You hesitated, brother.* Ophira's voice was a chorus of whispers, layered with the screams of the citadel's puppeted citizens. *The Crucible offered godhood, and you chose *mercy*.*
Eldrin's **grain** flared in retaliation, cobalt fire licking up his arm. The power was intoxicating, a tidal pull toward annihilation.*Control it. Or it controls you.*
Liora materialized beside him, her emerald cloak singed at the edges. Blood trickled from her nosea side effect of the **Essence Seeker's** destruction. The citadel's rift is spreading," she hissed. Ophira's not just merging with the shards. She's *rewriting* them."
A tremor shook the ground. The cobblestones *breathed*, splitting open to vomit tendrils of black mist. Within the fog, shapes moved**shadow-eaters**, their hollow eyes fixed on Eldrin.
Nim's spider-mech skittered backward, its plasma cutters sputtering. We need to fall back!"
No." Jace flipped a throwing knife, his resurrected body gaunt but unyielding. She's got Tira. We dont leave her."
Eldrin's vision fractured flashes of the**Crucible's**visions: *A child in a lab. A weapon drenched in blood. Ophira's hand reaching for him, not in malice, but in longing.**Join me."
The memory dissolved as Ophira raised her hand. The **third shard** in Tira's chest *detonated*, a shockwave of azure light and shadow ripping through the plaza. The blast hurled Eldrin backward, his **grain** screaming as it absorbed the backlash. When the dust cleared, Tira was gone.
In her place stood a nightmare.
Tira's body had *fused* with Ophira's shadow, her limbs elongated, her skin threaded with pulsing shard-veins. One eye remained hazelwide with terror- but the other was pure void, a gateway to the abyss.
*Little brother." The voice was Tira's, but the cadence was Ophira's. *You should have taken the shard when you had the chance.*
---
The citadel *twisted*.
Buildings melted like candle wax, reforming into jagged spires of obsidian. The sky cracked, bleeding liquid shadow that pooled into a second suna mockery of the **seventh shards** light. Eldrin's **grain** resonated with it, a dissonant harmony that made his bones ache.
Liora's dagger flashed, carving a ward into the air. She's using Tira as a conduit!
The **third shard** is amplifying the rift!"
Nim's mech-legs screeched as she vaulted onto a collapsing balcony. Then we cut the damn cord!"
Jace was already moving, his knives finding the throats of two**shadow-eaters**that lunged from the mist. Eldrin*distract her*! Ill get Tira!"
*Distract her.* As if Ophira were some petty warlord and not a force of nature.
Eldrin's fire roared to lifenot the familiar chaos-flames, but the **seventh shard's** stolen power, gold and cobalt intertwined. He charged, the ground liquefying beneath his boots. Ophira*Tira*smiled, her shadow-arm elongating into a whip of pure entropy.
The first strike carved a trench through the plaza. The second would have severed Eldrin's spine if Liora hadnt yanked him aside, her crystalline dagger deflecting the blow.
Stop *thinking* like a man!"she snarled. Youre a **shard-bearer** now. *Act like one.*"
The words struck deeper than the whip.
Eldrin *reached*not with his hands, but with the **grain**, with the**seventh shard's**resonance. The citadel's rubble *answered*, levitating in a storm of shrapnel and molten stone. He hurled it at Ophira, not as projectiles, but as *anchors*, each fragment etched with a rune of containment.
Ophira's shadow *screamed*, the bonds searing her form. For a heartbeat, Tiras human eye locked onto Eldrin*pleading*.
Then Jace struck.
His knife plunged into the **third shard**, not to destroy it, but to *wedge" it loose. Tira's body convulsed, the shard's light flickering as Ophira's grip faltered.
*No!* Ophira's voice was raw, almost *desperate*.*You dont understand what youre"
The rift *exploded*.
---
Reality unraveled.
The plaza dissolved into a vortex of screaming wind and fragmented memories. Eldrin saw flashes:
- **A Titan altar.** Ophira and Liora as children, kneeling before the split shard.
-**A laboratory.** The Nightwatcher's face, his shard-eye pulsing as he whispered: *Which will you be?"
- **Tira's voice**, fraying at the edges: *She's not your enemy. She's your*shadow*."
Then*silence*.
Eldrin stood in the heart of the rift, the **seventh shard's** light the only beacon in the void. Opposite him, Ophira floated, her form flickering between woman and wraith. The **third shard** hovered between them, its surface cracked, leaking streams of black ichor.
*You could have ruled with me," she whispered, her voice stripped of mockery. *We were *meant* to be whole.*
Eldrin's **grain** pulsed in time with the shard's dying light. *Weapon or man?*
Somewhere in the dark, Tira's voice echoed:
*Choose."
---
The rift *heaved*.
Ophira's hand shot out, not to strike, but to *grasp*her fingers brushing Eldrin's **grain** as the **third shard** *shattered* between them.
The explosion of light was blinding.
When it faded, Eldrin stood alone in the ruins of Silverveil.
Ophira was gone,
Tira was gone.
And the **seventh shard** in his chest had turned *black*.
Somewhere in the abyss, the Nightwatcher's voice slithered:
*The game has changed, Chaos Child. Now, you hunt a god.*