The storm didn't begin with thunder—it began with silence.
A silence that settled like ash across the ruins, thick and suffocating. Even the wind had stopped moving. Valen stood at the edge of the shattered sanctuary, the horizon split with veins of Rift corruption. The others lingered behind him, their breath shallow, their eyes shifting between one another, but none dared step forward. Only he moved.
The Mark on his forearm throbbed with heat.
Kira approached slowly, still limping from the Hollow ambush the day before. She stopped beside him, gripping her rifle, though she didn't raise it. "Something's coming," she said quietly.
Valen didn't respond.
A tremor rolled through the ground beneath their feet—dull at first, then sharper. A crack opened in the sky like a wound. Light bled through—not sunlight, not moonlight, but something else entirely. Something wrong.
From that wound descended a figure. Tall. Robed in what looked like fluid shadow, its limbs unfolding like serpents, its face a porcelain mask cracked across one eye. Beneath the mask shimmered shards of light—fractured memories. Reflections of people Valen had never met, and some he knew too well.
The figure didn't touch the ground. It hovered just above it, bending the air around its presence.
"Xarion," Valen murmured.
The name didn't come from memory. It came from somewhere deeper.
The Rift-Seer spoke, though its voice didn't come from its mouth. It echoed in every direction at once, inside Valen's head and outside his skin.
"Valen Creed," it said. "Child of the broken age. You have walked the edge of the Rift and returned with its scent upon you. You are the Harbinger."
Valen's grip on his weapon tightened, Echo energy already curling around his fingers. His breath came heavy, his heartbeat loud. "I'm no Harbinger," he said.
Xarion floated forward, his robes slithering across the ash-covered stone. "You cannot deny the shape written in your soul. You have begun to awaken. But you fight it. You always fight it. Why?"
"Because I remember who I am," Valen said.
"Then allow me to help you forget."
Xarion raised one arm.
The sky convulsed.
From above, a storm fell—not of rain or flame, but Rift. Waves of energy screamed downward, crashing into the world with unnatural force. The sanctuary shattered behind Valen. Screams erupted from the rebels as walls buckled and shadows became monsters.
Valen threw up his arm, a barrier of Echo flaring around him. The force slammed into him like a freight train. His boots dug trenches into the stone, teeth gritted, body trembling. He forced it back, but just barely.
A streak of motion—Xarion, blinking through space, claws extended.
Valen ducked, pivoted, then lashed out with his blade of condensed Echo. It met the Rift-Seer's limb with a shriek of tearing light. Xarion slid back mid-air, but not far. He smiled without smiling.
"You are still half-formed," he said. "Unripe. But I will make you bloom."
He clapped his hands, and suddenly Valen was no longer standing on stone.
The world around him twisted. The ground turned to glass. The sky bled red. And a thousand versions of himself stood across the battlefield, each one broken in a different way. One burned. One bled. One begged for mercy. One had already become the thing Xarion wanted him to be.
"I can show you the truth," Xarion whispered. "What you were. What you will be. You cannot run from it forever."
Valen screamed and swung his blade in an arc that split the illusion down the center. His Echo flared, and the mirage shattered.
He dropped to his knees.
Blood dripped from his nose.
His vision blurred.
Xarion was already above him, claws raised.
Valen didn't think—he let go.
For a heartbeat, the Echo stopped obeying him.
And then it erupted.
Dark fire tore from his chest, curling around his frame in a skeletal armor of black flame. His eyes burned with something deeper than fury. His heartbeat vanished. In its place, something colder… steadier.
He leapt.
Xarion met him midair. Their strikes collided with the sound of collapsing stars. Rift and Echo screamed against each other, each trying to consume the other.
Valen pushed harder.
The new Echo variant—he didn't have a name for it, but it hurt every time it moved. It felt like his bones were being carved open from within.
But it worked.
He struck Xarion across the chest. The Rift-Seer staggered, robes peeling away like smoke. Underneath, Valen glimpsed something horrific—a lattice of eyes and bones and threads of time tangled like spiderwebs.
Xarion hissed and spread his arms wide.
"Then burn with me!"
The Rift burst again.
This time, it tried to devour everything.
The land tore. The rebels were flung back miles. Valen was lifted into the heart of the storm.
Everything stopped.
Time paused.
And in the silence, a voice rose inside him.
Not Xarion's.
:: Let me out. ::
Valen clenched his teeth. His body was splitting—his soul trying to make space for something bigger. Something ancient.
"I said no!"
He roared and drove his will forward—not surrendering, but forging.
He pulled the Rift energy toward him, shaping it through pain, through memory, through grief. The skeletal fire on his body turned solid, like armor. His blade reshaped into a spear of memory and flame.
And he fell—like a comet.
Xarion raised his arms to block.
Too slow.
Valen drove the spear through his chest.
The Rift-Seer convulsed. His mask cracked fully. Light poured out, not pure, but sickly and warped.
"You… are ready," Xarion choked, smiling even as his body came apart.
"The Eye will open soon."
And then he was gone—shattered into dust and Rift glass.
Valen collapsed to one knee, breath ragged, his armor fading.
He didn't know how long he stayed like that.
When he finally looked up, Kira was there, hand outstretched, eyes wide with something between fear and awe.
"You survived," she said.
Valen took her hand and stood.
But when he looked into the reflection of a broken Rift shard at his feet, he saw something new in his eyes.
A second shimmer.
The line was fading.
He was still Valen Creed.
But for how much longer?