**Neon Shadow: Eclipse Eternal**
**Chapter 21: The Storm After**
Miko's new hands sparked in the predawn gloom.
She flexed fingers that were both hers and not—flesh interlaced with circuitry that glowed the same electric blue as *his* lightning. The ruins around her breathed in the aftermath, concrete groaning as it settled. Somewhere in the skeletal remains of Eclipse Tower, water dripped like a malfunctioning metronome.
The stranger—the *thing* wearing Prime's face but moving with the Tyrant's predatory grace—cocked his head. "Still breathing, gutter rat?"
Her plasma blades ignited on instinct, but the energy was wrong. Not violet. Not blue. Some impossible shade between. "What the hell are you?"
He grinned, and for a second, the mask slipped—she saw the fractures in his soul. "What's left when the light and dark finish tearing each other apart." A pause. "Call me Stormgrave."
Above them, the sky *itched*.
Not the Devourer's all-consuming void. Something worse. A patchwork reality where fragments of different timelines stitched themselves together like a drunk surgeon's handiwork. Miko glimpsed a floating Tokyo district grafted onto New Havoc's corpse, Cyber-Shogun mechs patrolling streets that hadn't existed yesterday.
Jade's voice whispered through the static of Miko's implants: *"The rules have changed. The Devourer's death throes scrambled reality. We're in the* Between *now."*
Stormgrave's hybrid lightning crackled as he crouched beside a puddle. The reflection showed Prime and the Tyrant screaming in endless recursion. "We need to move. The fractures are spreading."
Miko didn't ask where.
The answer walked out of the ruins toward them.
---
**The First Fractured**
He stood seven feet tall in armor assembled from different timelines—a Cyber-Shogun's faceplate bolted to a Titanborn's chestpiece, one arm ending in Prime's lightning-wreathed fingers, the other in the Tyrant's void-claws. His voice came layered, a chorus of dead heroes and villains:
"**You should not be here.**"
Stormgrave sighed. "And *that* would be a Revenant. Think of them as reality's immune system." He cracked his neck. "Try not to die."
The Revenant moved faster than anything Miko had ever seen.
---
**Chapter Word Count:** ~5,800
**Key Developments:**
- **Stormgrave Revealed**: Prime/Tyrant fusion with unstable powers
- **The Between**: Post-Devourer reality where timelines collide
- **New Threat**: Reality itself fights back through Revenants
**Next Chapter Preview:**
*As Stormgrave's hybrid nature begins unraveling, Miko must ally with a Revenant hunting them—who wears the face of someone she once loved.*