The halls of the Celestial Citadel once resonated with divine authority. Now, fractured by failure, they pulsed with mistrust. In the wake of Operation Eclipse's collapse, the Ninefold Council stood on the edge of implosion.
A tempest brewed above the tower. The twin moons, once aligned to veil the suns, now drifted apart—symbolic of the discord growing within the Council.
The teleportation sigil burned into the floor of a long-forgotten war chamber deep beneath the Citadel. Emarion emerged, wounded but alive, cloaked in the void's whisper. He did not seek aid. He sought retribution.
Within moments, six figures from the remaining Council members joined him, their astral projections flickering with uncertainty.
"You said Eclipse was invincible," growled Lord Kendral, his voice trembling with veiled rage.
Emarion's voice was ice. "I said it would expose the Accord's weakness. And it did."
"You lost the Mirror. The frames. Our strongholds."
"Yet the Accord bleeds. Their unity flickers like a candle in the dark."
High Seer Talyth stepped forward. "And what of our own? We are fractured. We must restore the inner Council. Or there will be no future from which to strike again."
Emarion's eyes glowed. "Then let the weak fall away. From the ashes, we forge anew."
A secret quorum gathered without Emarion's knowledge. Lord Kendral, Seer Talyth, and Inquisitor Marr convened beneath the Eye of Absolom, a crystal that recorded all treacheries.
"He is unhinged," Talyth said. "The Mirror's failure fractured more than our reputation—it shattered his control."
"He is a weapon turned inward," Marr agreed. "We must act. Quietly. Decisively."
They formed the Splinter Accord—a covert circle within the Council dedicated to reclaiming stability through subtle sabotage.
Back within the Ember Bastion, Ashen paced the strategy chamber. Brielle's report glowed in front of him, mapping sudden disruptions along the Accord's borders—ambushes without signature, sabotage without pattern.
"These aren't Council frontal assaults," Brielle said. "They're scalpel strikes. Internal knowledge, hidden hands."
Elara frowned. "Traitors?"
"More likely dissenters," Ashen replied. "Someone doesn't agree with how the Council is waging this war."
"And they're not targeting us directly," Jin noted. "They're thinning our outer defenses. Trying to isolate the core."
Ashen nodded. "This is the next thread."
Back within the Citadel, Emarion conducted a private experiment deep within the Null Vaults. Before him floated an incomplete construct—neither machine nor soul.
"Nir-Valh's echo haunts us," he said. "Let us then build its opposite."
From shards of the broken Mirror, threads of voidlight, and fragments of forbidden Core tech, he began crafting Umbra-Thal—a sentient echo-forger designed not to preserve memory, but to unmake it.
It pulsed with negative resonance—undoing nearby history, erasing even the stones beneath its feet.
"This," Emarion whispered, "will be our requiem."
Brielle stood before the full council of the Accord, flames reflecting in her eyes. "The splintering is a curse and an opportunity. If factions rise within the Council, we must exploit them—but carefully. We are not assassins. We are guardians of memory."
Jin stepped forward. "Then let us become keepers of fracture—those who study the cracks not to break them further, but to decide which edges to reshape."
Mustan Korr grinned. "Then we'd best start forging hammers."
Ashen raised Nir‑Valh's Core fragment. "If Emarion forges a weapon to unmake, then we must prepare one to restore—not just to fight, but to remember who we are."
They began planning Operation Starlight Echo—a mission to seek out ancient mnemonic nodes once part of the first civilization. If reactivated, they could tether every Remembrance Crystal in a shared network, immune to void-forged erasure.
As the Accord moved quietly to mobilize, Brielle's scouts reported sightings of a shadowed figure erasing a border village—not burning, not breaking. Unmaking.
No bodies. No rubble. Just absence.
Elara and Ashen stood over the last trace—a child's toy half‑dissolved by void.
"It's begun," Elara said.
Ashen nodded grimly. "Then we begin, too."
End of Chapter 22