Eclipse Online: The Final Descent

The storm was no longer just thunder.

It had changed.

Now it was voices.

Each flash of lightning carried a cry. Each tear in the black sky groaned with words. Even the deep cracks of the chasm below rose up like a chorus of whispers and screams. And they weren't the voices of strangers.

They were his.

Every sound, every echo, belonged to him—countless versions of himself, scattered through time and memory. A thousand Kaïtos, each one broken in a different way, bleeding into the storm until the very air felt heavy with them, like smoke that clung to his skin and refused to leave.

Kaito walked forward, his scythe dragging at his side, leaving faint pale sparks that trailed across the broken stones. Each step felt heavier than the last. His chest throbbed with pain, weighed down by the shards he had already taken in, each one pressing against him like a fist striking his ribs from the inside.

His breaths came shallow and strained, as though his lungs could no longer hold enough air. His heart felt swollen, too heavy for his body to carry.

And yet, the path stretched on before him. Endless, jagged, and unyielding. No matter how much it hurt, there was no choice but to keep moving.

Nyra walked close at his side, her wings pulled in tight against her shoulders to shield herself from the storm. She moved carefully, each step measured, but the flashes of light from above caught on her feathers.

In one moment they looked dark, almost swallowed by shadow, and in the next they gleamed bright and silver, as if she were made of two halves at once.

She didn't look at him often, keeping her eyes on the path ahead. But whenever she did, her gaze stayed on him a little too long. It wasn't just a glance—it was a study, as though she were quietly weighing him, trying to see how much more he could bear before his strength finally gave out.

Before him, the curve swelled over the emptiness, a toothed bridge of broken rock suspended in nothing. But now the storm did not try to hide what lay before.

On one edge of the horizon, fire burned. Dominion's light rose there, flaring in deep red and bright gold, spreading wide like a crown made of many suns.

The blaze did not waver—it throbbed steadily, each pulse heavy with power, like a heartbeat that belonged to something greater than the land itself. It was a call, clear and commanding, a voice of strength and control that reached across the broken sky.

Every time that flame pulsed, Kaito felt it strike inside his chest. Each beat was a sharp stab against his heart, as if the fire itself was trying to remind him of its claim, of the weight he could never escape.

Meanwhile, shadows writhed. The hunger of the Root churned like a black tide, tendrils reaching out, clawing, grasping. Their pull was deep, insidious, and forever patient.

Across from them, the Fork—splintered, fragile, shrieking with its own fury.

Nyra's wings strained uncomfortably. "They're close."

Kaito's throat tightened. "Closer than ever.".

The bridge beneath them shuddered, then snapped. Half of it convulsed toward the Dominion's fire, half toward the Root's shadows. Nothing but a fragile thread of stone stretched straight before them, suspended between.

The storm screamed, whipping at his cloak, at her wings, trying to rip them sideways or else.

"They would have you choose," Nyra said to him.

Kaito gritted his teeth. "I've made enough choices."

He stepped out onto the narrow slab of stone. The scythe wobbled against his back, its blade radiating violet light as if it fought just as hard under the pull.

The storm snarled with fury.

Out of the Dominion's fire emerged the forms. Gold silhouettes, tall, gleaming, dressed in light. They walked over the fire as if it were earth, each of them wielding blades whose metal was carved out of suns. Their eyes flared with power, their footsteps shaking the bridge.

From under the Root's darkness, others came. Black silhouettes, twisting, fluid, boneless. They crawled through the air like smoke condensed, their mouths open in silent appetite. Their tips clawed for the bridge, trying to drag it down into emptiness.

The road trembled. Kaito staggered, his vision blurring between gold and black.

Nyra spat, her shadows shuddering before the wind. "They'll tear it apart before we can touch it."

Kaito charged the scythe, his voice strained but resolute. "Then we cut both in half.

The first impact came from the right. A Dominion warrior leaped out of the flames, sword aflame, determined to cleave the bridge in two.

Kaito swayed. The scythe touched the golden blade, firework sparks exploding violet against gold. Shock rattled his bones, yet he continued on, the sword shrieking with the voices inside him.

The warrior stumbled, cracks spreading through its form like shattering glass, before it exploded in shards of light.

But the victory was temporary.

From the left, Root's shadow bulged, a writhing mass of tendrils lashing out across the bridge. Nyra's wings spread, shadows colliding, blending. She sliced through them, her silver eyes burning, her voice cutting. "Get out of the way, Kaito!"

He skidded, sprinting along the thin strip of rock, balance teeteringly shifting with every shiver. The Dominion forces advanced from one side, Root's minions from the other, the bridge groaning under both loads.

War filled the air—darkness and fire clashing along a strip of rock suspended in tempest.

Kaito whirled back and forth, with every swing of the scythe cleaving through warriors of the light, only for them to be replaced by others bursting forth out of the flames.

Nyra sliced through shadows with precision death, but every one she cut down burst up again from out of the depths.

"It's not a fight we can fight," she roared above the storm. "It's a test."

Kaito's chest burned in agreement. He felt it—this was not about battling the Dominion or the Root. This was about bearing them. About bearing their burden as he had borne the unchosen.

The thought made him sick. His body ached already, his mind unwinding at the shards he bore. Could he bear more?

The bridge groaned beneath his feet. A piece broke off, plummeting into the chasm with a muffled scream.

The storm whispered, its million voices heaped upon each other: Choose. Choose. Choose.

Kaito's vision shook. Fire to one side, burning, triumphant, master of everything. Shadow to the other, starving, feral, eternally.

And then he recalled.

Nyra's tight hold on his arm. Her words to anchor him. You don't bear this alone.

He raised the scythe high. The blade split, fracturing into a thousand edges of violet light, each one singing with the voices inside him.

"I won't choose," he roared. "I'll take them both."

He drove the scythe into the bridge.

The shock ripped through the Fork.

Dominion's blaze roared, its fighters dissolving into waves of liquid fire that flowed into the scythe. Root's darkness shrieked, its tendrils breaking into waves of black smoke that curled in at him.

The bridge ripped itself in half.

For a moment, Kaito was suspended in nothing—only Nyra's wings holding them from falling into the nothingness. The splinters of light and darkness poured into him, tearing his chest apart, burning his veins, filling his lungs with ash and flame.

He screamed, but the storm swallowed the noise.

Dominion's weight settled upon his back, its command, its sovereignty, its order. The Root's hunger clawed at his ribs, its void, its desire, its endless reach. The two forces warred within him, reaching for mastery, seeking to rend him asunder.

Kaito's legs collapsed. His vision hazed at the edges.

But Nyra's voice cut through. Furious. Indomitable. "Stand, Kaito! Don't let them take you!"

He forced his eyes open. His grip tightened on the scythe.

The Dominion roared: Rule.

The Root breathed: Consume.

Kaito's cry tore from his throat, a scream of rage. "No. I bear. I deny."

The scythe blazed.

Purple light shattered outward, not flame, not shadow, but something broken, something unbroken. The Dominion's gold and the Root's black shattered like glass, flowing into the blade, into his heart, into his scream.

The storm convulsed. The bridge reshaped itself under his feet, jagged stone closing together, vibrating but sound.

Kaito shook, his body burning with pain, his chest burning with every breath. The scythe was heavier than ever, its blade pulsing with gold and black, light and dark, broken and unbreakable.

Nyra held him up, her silver eyes blazing. "You did it."

Kaito shook his head, winded. "No. I made it worse."

For the moment he carried not only the unchosen, not only denial, but Dominion's fire and the Root's shadow, as well.

It was too much to carry. And yet—he still stood.

The storm continued, a little less fiercely, as though watching. The path stretched on, into darker dark, where something thumped slowly in the night.

Another shard.

Nyra's wings folded, the deep pitch of her voice. "How much more can you hold before you shatter?"

Kaito tightened his fingers on the scythe, its shattered blade vibrating with a thousand whispers. His answer was deep, but unyielding.

"As much as it will take."

Together, they stepped forward, into the center of the storm, where the next fragment would attempt to break them both.