Eclipse Online: The Final Descent

The storm did not lessen.

If anything, it grew more focused, falling in on itself until the Fork was less a world than the inside of a wound. Every breath Kaito took burned with the taste of iron, every step fell on ground that moved between glass, stone, and ash.

The bridge stretched on, seemingly infinite, though he knew it was not. The Fork had a terminus. It would not show them infinity—it would show them the edge.

The shard that had lodged in his chest after his battle with his reflection pulsed like a living thing.

Purple light leaked from the wound, each beat of it leaking into his veins, crawling beneath his skin. It was heavy, jagged, merciless.

His arms trembled with the weight of holding it by itself, although the scythe on his back had not lost any weight.

Nyra stepped beside him, her wings still unfurled from their fight, silver bleeding into shadow at the tips. She did not retract them. They trembled a little with each step, but her stride was steady.

They walked silently for some time. Here, words had a way of becoming knives—too sharp, too easily turned.

But Nyra finally broke the silence.

"They were not wrong."

Her voice was low, controlled, but he could feel the storm underneath.

Kaito did not look back at her. His eyes were fixed on the bridge ahead. "What part?"

"That I've bled for you. That I've worn chains, even though I offered myself to them."

The air thickened, the storm trying to pull their words into its vortex. Kaito clenched his fists, urging them to remain still.

"You said it yourself," he snarled. "You decided."

"Yes." She turned her head to him, eyes glinting like liquid silver in the dark. "But choice doesn't negate hurt. And sometimes I wonder—if I hadn't followed, if I'd remained behind—"

Her sentence was interrupted. Not because of any preference for silence on her part, but because the storm itself tried to devour her voice. The emptiness below them convulsed, shadows rising up like reaching hands to grab at the bridge.

Kaito slashed his scythe downwards, the purple blade rending the reaching darkness.

Shreds of stormlight ripped apart like broken glass, falling into the emptiness until they were consumed.

Nyra exhaled sharply but didn't finish her sentence.

They walked on.

The bridge bent sharply, writhing like a serpent. What had appeared a straight path revealed itself a spiral, bending inward to a single point. And at that point—

Kaito's breath caught.

The storm did not simply rage there. It broke.

A column of light and shadow rose like a spire, built of fractures themselves. It was not whole; it was ragged, perpetually shattering and reforming, shards breaking off and being drawn back in.

Each shard glowed differently—violet, silver, gold, black—colors bleeding and mingling like veins of fire in a dying star.

At its center hung something small. A shard no larger than his hand, spinning lazily. With every spin, the storm convulsed.

Kaito knew what it was before he could name it.

The Fork's center.

The place where all choices converged, then tore apart again.

Nyra's wings finally drooped, her shoulders tense. "It's close."

He nodded. His chest burned in sympathy, the shard of denial hammering against his ribs.

But the bridge did not lead them there in a straight line.

The storm had a final ordeal in store.

The spiral path ended in a platform suspended in the void, made of the same delicate glass as before.

The void roared below, but it was not the roar of hunger—it was the roar of pressure, as of the crush of a crowd of voices grating against each other.

As their feet touched the platform, the storm took form.

Not a reflection. Not chains.

The bridge itself rose, twisting into form.

It had no face, just cracks—its body a pile of broken glass and slipping shards, reforming constantly into the shapes of a thousand selves. One moment it had wings, the next a scythe, the next nothing at all.

It spoke, and its voice was the voice of all the voices Kaito had ever contained within himself, laid one upon another into a harmony that pained his bones.

"You walk with weight you cannot bear. You have taken shards into yourself, but you have not chosen what they make of you. You are fracture, not whole. You are denial, not truth."

The storm rushed in, scouring against his skin. Kaito's vision swam, his heart stumbling. The splinter in his chest seared in agony, dropping him near to his knees.

Nyra stepped forward, shadows boiling from her hand. "Then test us."

The storm's figure shifted, its voice like steel dragged across glass.

"We will not test. We will break. And in breaking, what remains will be real."

The figure struck out.

The platform dissolved beneath them, shards spinning off into the abyss. Kaito and Nyra were ripped from each other, the storm driving a wedge of broken glass between them.

Kaito barely had time to raise his scythe before the figure attacked. Its blade was not a scythe, not a sword, not even a form—it was the storm itself, falling with the weight of a thousand denials.

The impact rattled his bones, purple sparks scattering as his scythe shrieked in protest.

The voices in him seethed, splinters of self surging to the forefront. He saw glimpses—himself refusing Nyra, himself surrendering to Dominion, himself plummeting into the Root. Versions of himself that never existed.

Each strike forced him to behold another. Each parry sent another splinter into his chest.

"You are fracture," the storm whispered, shoving him back. "You cannot choose. You cannot be whole."

Kaito roared, swinging wildly, but his scythe sliced through the fractured body of the storm to no effect. Every blow only scattered it, and every shard he scattered returned stronger, denser.

On the other side of the wall, he heard Nyra scream, chains rattling as the storm closed in around her. He plunged his sword into the wall, purple cracks racing across it, but it would not break.

The storm wanted them alone. Separated. Forced to carry their weight in silence.

Nyra fought in the dark.

Her opponent wore her wings, her face, her silence. But it was not the broken mirror image of before. This one was pure storm—a continual cycle of her denying herself.

Every shadowed blow she struck melted into chains of silver that wrapped tighter around her.

She fell to a knee, wings thrashing. The storm's voice taunted her, cold and cutting.

"You chose chains. You called them freedom. You bound yourself to his weight. And when he falls, you will fall with him."

Nyra's teeth clenched, her hands trembling. She remembered every moment—the cell, the void, the wars they had waged. Every time she had stood with him, bleeding, but unbroken.

She pressed her palms into the earth. Shadows erupted, curling around her wrists where the chains had bitten deepest.

"Yes," she spat. "I chose. I will always choose."

Her wings burst, shredding chains as shadow spilled into silver light.

Meanwhile, Kaito's knees failed him.

The shards in his chest screamed, each a voice demanding to be chosen, demanding to be real. He could not endure them all. He knew that.

The storm pressed down harder, slamming him down, his scythe all but torn from his hand.

"You will break," it whispered. "You already are breaking."

But then, he heard her.

Nyra's voice, undevoured by the storm. Unshattered by the abyss.

"I chose."

The words sliced through him, unwavering as steel.

Kaito willed himself upright, scythe aflame with violet fire. He growled, every shard in his chest burning, and roared into the storm:

"Then I choose too!"

He swung. Not at a single shard, not at a single reflection, but at all of them at once. His scythe cut through the broken shape of the storm, violet light exploding outward.

The shards within him screamed, but instead of tearing apart, they fused—each denial falling into the next, each refusal sticking to the others.

The storm staggered, its shape shattering.

Nyra's shadows struck at the same time, her wings bursting wide as silver-black light detonated from her body. Her chains tore, shredding into feathers that scattered throughout the abyss.

Their attacks struck the center of the storm together.

The broken figure shattered, disintegrating into raw stormlight that hemorrhaged back into the abyss.

The platform evened out beneath them. The barrier between them shattered.

They stood together again.

The spiral bridge stretched out once more, into the storm's center.

Kaito reeled, clutching at his chest. The shard inside him pulsed, victorious in its heaviness—and constant too. It no longer screamed in solitude. It hummed.

Nyra's feathers dropped to the earth, melting before they touched it. Her shoulders slumped, but her eyes burned with banked fire.

They looked at each other. No words were said. None were needed.

Then they moved forward, together, into the heart of the storm.