The forest never stood still after a fracture bloom.
Branches warped as Zeeler passed, leaves whispering stories they couldn't have seen. The mark of Stilllight pulsed beneath his skin, the cloak at his back hissing where light and shadow fought for dominance. Every step left a faint shimmer in the air, like the world wasn't sure it could keep holding his weight.
But he walked anyway.
Each breath was heavier than the last. Not from exhaustion. From attention.
They were watching now. All of them.
The gods. The bloodlines. The ones who whispered in fractures.
And the ones who hunted in them.
---
The first sign was silence—deep, bone-hollow, not the peaceful kind. The kind that warned prey.
Zeeler froze mid-step. His pupils contracted.
The second sign came a blink later.
The ground beneath him turned to glass—just for a second—before shattering.
He moved, fractured left, body slipping through a split second into the space beside a tree.
THOOM.
The blast cratered where he'd stood. No explosion—just absence. Sound sucked inward. Light bent and cracked. Something had torn a hole in the moment.
Zeeler spun, eyes scanning.
Then they came.
Not Noctari. Not Veyari. Not mortal.
Fractureborn Hunters.
Clad in armor that flickered between materials—bone, ash, star-metal—like they couldn't decide what form to hold. Their masks were plain and smooth. Their hands were wrapped in bands of static, and their eyes burned with layered timelines.
They weren't soldiers.
They were undoers.
Sent not to kill. Not to capture.
But to erase.
The leader pointed. The air around Zeeler collapsed, folding like paper. A thousand shards of reality cut inward.
Zeeler fractured downward, snapping through time a split-second ahead. The blades missed—but the ground didn't. He crashed into rock, rolled, and slid through a pool of half-light that hadn't been there a breath ago.
"Okay," he muttered, coughing blood. "So we're skipping subtle today."
The mark on his chest flared. A circle of resonance burst outward, throwing the world into sharp focus. Every ripple in time. Every approaching heartbeat.
Five Hunters. One pulling energy from silence itself. Another twisting space into spikes. A third bleeding echoes from his skin, each one a memory that bit at the air. The fourth carried no weapon—just pointed, and the world obeyed. The fifth wasn't visible.
Which meant she was already behind him.
Zeeler spun—
CLANG!
Twin blades met in the air—his conjured fracture daggers locking with a curved sickle made of shadow-thread.
The fifth Hunter grinned behind a glass veil. Her eyes shimmered like frozen time.
"Cute trick," she whispered.
Zeeler kicked off the ground, throwing her back with a shockwave. She vanished in a pulse.
Then they all came at once.
---
He fractured—splitting into two again, light and shadow, emotion and logic.
The light-form dashed through the first Hunter's trap-field, deflecting mirror-shards with a sweep of his arm. Each movement curved with rhythm, his steps syncing with a pulse only he heard. His hands carved sigils from memory—future-wards—sealing incoming attacks a breath before they launched.
The shadow-form flickered through stone, rising behind the space-warping Hunter. No sound. No mercy. He reached out—
Time Spike. One tap. One scream. The Hunter folded inward, collapsing into a bubble of his own fear—reliving his worst moment over and over in silence.
Zeeler's true self leapt between them, breathing hard, eyes wild.
He touched a Resonance Shard—blue and flickering.
Vision: A river of stars. Himself, bleeding but smiling. Reaching into light and pulling a weapon made of possibility.
He yanked his hand forward—
And the river formed.
From thin air, water shimmered into being, filled with constellations. It spiraled around his arms and burst into a weapon of liquid time, its blade ever-changing.
He slashed it toward the third Hunter.
The blade didn't cut flesh.
It cut moments.
The Hunter's eyes widened—then she shattered into memories, scattered like leaves on wind. Not dead. Not alive. Just… not here anymore.
---
But the fourth one moved.
With one gesture, he rewrote the air.
Zeeler's body convulsed. His lungs forgot how to breathe. His blood tried to flow backward.
He fell.
The fifth Hunter reappeared above him, mid-fall. Blade first.
Zeeler barely raised his arm in time. The blade pierced skin. Pain flashed.
And then—
He reached back. Not with hands.
With fracture sense.
He grabbed a moment from five seconds ago—when he had full strength. Pulled it into his current body.
And roared.
The surge blasted both Hunters off him.
He rolled, staggering to one knee. Blood poured from his side. But he held his ground.
The fifth came again. Faster.
But Zeeler was already in motion.
---
Resonant Bloom.
He extended his hand.
Shards of fractured futures burst into orbit around him—ten, twenty, fifty. Each one pulsing a different color.
A storm of what-might-be.
He snapped two together.
**Vision—**Him, catching an arrow with bare hands. Then throwing it back. He mirrored it.
Arrow incoming—he caught it, reversed it, and launched it through the second Hunter's mask. Gone.
**Vision—**Him, using sound as armor.
He screamed—not in fear, but in command.
Resonance Armor flared across his body, vibrating at a frequency no blade could pass through. He crashed through a field of falling spatial knives and burst out the other side unharmed.
**Vision—**Him flying.
He jumped—and didn't fall.
The wind caught his cloak. Or maybe reality did.
He soared, arcing above the last two Hunters.
From above, he saw it—
The real target. The anchor.
A Fracture Gate opening. Not made by mortals.
Something had given them passage. Something worse waited on the other side.
He had seconds.
---
Zeeler twisted mid-air, raised both arms.
He shattered four shards at once.
Time warped. Shadows spun.
And then—
Collapse Weave.
The sky crashed. Not literally—but sound, space, memory—everything in the clearing snapped inward, pulled by his will.
The final two Hunters were drawn in—screaming, weapons flying from their hands.
He floated above them. A storm in his eyes.
Then dove.
His fist cracked open the gate's core before it could finish blooming.
Resonant Implosion.
A lightless explosion—silent, total.
The fracture stitched itself closed like a wound reversed. The world trembled. Everything reset around him.
---
When Zeeler stood again, the forest had gone still.
His breath came hard. His skin steamed. His body ached in places beyond muscle and bone.
But he was standing.
His enemies were gone.
The Hunters, the gate, the pull of something larger—they had all been denied.
For now.
He turned, limping toward the trees.
Then paused.
Looked up.
The sky above had split further.
Not a fracture anymore.
A full rupture.
And from the far side of it, something vast shifted.
Not shaped like a man.
Not shaped like anything mortal.
A voice crawled into his mind, cold and massive.
"You are no longer prey. You are a beacon. And we are coming to see what dares shine in the dark."
Zeeler didn't flinch.
Didn't answer.
He just walked.
The trees closed behind him.
But in the air he left behind… a low hum remained.
The hum of a soul that was no longer breaking.
But blooming into something no realm was ready for.