The sky cracked.
Not with thunder, nor with light—but with silence. A deafening, suffocating stillness that spread across the eastern district of Solaire City like a plague.
It started with birds falling from the sky.
Then the screams followed.
Kael, Lira, and Sera were already mid-sprint when the first reports came in. The alert on their comms screamed red: Anomaly Detected. Spatial Breach Active. Evacuate All Civilians.
But Kael could feel it. In his bones. In the pull of gravity beneath his feet, suddenly unstable, irregular.
"That's not a normal breach," Kael said, skidding to a stop on a rooftop. "It's warping the ley lines. The entire flow of energy is collapsing."
Sera narrowed her eyes. "They're testing something. A field effect, wide range. They're using civilians as calibration."
Lira slammed a drone core into the ground, summoning her custom-built surveillance rig. The feed flickered to life.
"There," she said, pointing at the center of the breach.
Floating above the city street untouched by chaos, by wind, by reality itself was Nyxen of the Obsidian Choir. Mist poured from his cloak like an open wound in the world. As he hovered, buildings crumbled, steel oxidizing into rust, glass aging into dust.
Kael's heart twisted.
"That's not entropy. That's… reversal. He's undoing time."
They launched into action. Sera charged ahead, blades of kinetic force whipping around her, cutting a path through the collapsing zone. Lira hung back, weaving momentum through debris to keep civilians moving out.
Kael focused on Nyxen.
The moment their eyes met, the air froze.
Not literally but in feeling. Kael's breath hitched. Time crawled like molasses, every movement fighting invisible resistance. Nyxen smiled beneath his hood, his eyes swirling with inverted galaxies.
"Voidborn," Nyxen said, voice stretched and folded. "You're still unfinished."
Kael didn't answer. Instead, he clenched his fist—and the air cracked as lightning rippled around him. He shot forward like a bullet, but Nyxen raised a single finger.
Kael's momentum vanished. Not stopped. Undone.
He landed hard, coughing, as the ground beneath him aged a thousand years in a second.
Sera sliced in from behind—but Nyxen dissolved into mist, reforming behind her. His touch nearly grazed her neck before she blink-stepped back, panting.
"We're outmatched," she said through clenched teeth. "We need a counter."
"Then give me ten seconds," Lira said from the comms. "I'm syncing with the field. If I can redirect the reversal loop into a containment prism, we can trap him."
Kael nodded. "Do it."
He stood, arms wide, electricity flowing through his veins, gravity cracking the pavement beneath his feet.
"Come on then," he growled. "Let's see if you can unmake me."
Elsewhere — In the Sanctum of Balance
The Warden Council watched the battle through Cipher's live projection.
"He's holding back the Choir's entropy manipulator," she said. "Alone."
Gragnar snorted. "Fool boy's going to die doing it."
Veyla leaned forward. "No… watch his core. It's responding."
Zael narrowed his gaze. "Something is waking up inside him."
On the Battlefield
Lira screamed into the comms. "Now!"
Kael stomped his foot into the ground—gravity pulsed out in a ripple, and Lira's prism snapped into place. A translucent cube of refracted time and energy closed around Nyxen.
The mist hissed.
For the first time… the Choir member looked surprised.
"You're learning," he said, smirking. "Good. I'll be sure to remember your faces… when I break free."
Then he vanished.
The cube collapsed.
Sera collapsed too, breathing hard.
Kael knelt beside her. "You good?"
She nodded, brushing hair from her face. "Yeah. You?"
Kael looked down at his hand. It had cracked. Not the skin—the energy. Faint black lines danced along his veins like burning ink.
"Something's changing," he said quietly.
Lira looked up from her scanner. "You're adapting. That power… it's not just lightning and gravity anymore."
Sera stared at him. "You're not just a weapon. You're becoming a balance point."
Kael stood, eyes on the distant skyline.
"Let them come. I'll be ready."