Chapter 3: Threads of the Fractured Sky
Light.
Blinding, searing light.
Lina gasped as her body was hurled forward, tumbling through the remains of the shattered gate. Her fingers were still clenched around the shard, its glow now pulsing like a heartbeat—hers or someone else's, she couldn't tell. She landed hard on solid ground, air knocked from her lungs, the world spinning.
Kai landed beside her with a grunt, already on his feet, sword half-drawn. His eyes scanned their new surroundings.
The sky above them was cracked. Literally.
Long glowing fractures split the heavens like shattered glass, and through them shone pieces of other worlds—flashes of fire, oceans, cities suspended in clouds, forests with silver leaves. The ground beneath was dark stone veined with light, humming softly beneath their feet.
"This isn't any place we've been," Kai said, helping Lina up. "This feels... wrong."
Lina pressed a hand to her temple. "No. It feels like something unfinished."
She turned slowly, taking it all in. They were on a floating fragment of land, one among many. Dozens of others drifted nearby, suspended in midair like forgotten thoughts. Some were collapsing, others merging, and in the distance—far beyond any reachable path—was a tower spiraling into the torn sky.
Lina's shard vibrated violently in her palm.
"It wants us to go there," she murmured, pointing at the tower.
Kai narrowed his eyes. "Or it wants us to."
Before either could move, the air rippled. From one of the nearby islands, a creature emerged—mechanical yet alive, made of twisted metal and shadows, its face a blank mirror. It hovered toward them, silent but fast.
Kai stepped in front of her. "We're not ready for this."
"No," Lina said, voice steady. "But we've never been."
She raised the shard. Instinct—not memory—told her what to do.
The shard pulsed once, and a ripple of energy shot out. The creature staggered mid-air, faltered—then split in half, vanishing into smoke.
Kai turned to her, wide-eyed. "How did you—"
"I didn't know," she said. "But… I think I used to."
He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. "Then let's find out what else you used to know."
They leapt to the next fragment, then the next, moving closer to the tower. But as they did, Lina's visions returned—flashes of lives not her own. A battlefield under twin suns. A boy calling her name in a language she didn't speak. A girl with her face, smiling, bleeding.
And always—always—that shadowed figure watching from afar.
"You've forgotten 46 times," he had said.
How many more would there be?
As they reached the base of the tower, the air shifted. Cold. Sharp.
Lina stopped, her eyes locking onto a carving on the door: a sigil matching the shard.
Kai touched her shoulder. "Are you ready?"
Lina exhaled. "No. But I have to be."
The door creaked open on its own, revealing stairs spiraling into the dark. From within came a faint whisper—a woman's voice, soft and broken.
"Lina… come back."
Lina froze. Her legs trembled.
"I know that voice."
Kai drew his sword again. "Then we're close."
They stepped inside, unaware that above them, high in the broken sky, someone else was watching—and waiting.
Above the fractured sky, hidden between the veils of broken dimensions, a figure stood on the edge of a crumbling world. Cloaked in a mantle of stormlight and shadow, their eyes burned gold—piercing through layers of time.
"They've entered the Spiral," the figure murmured, voice neither male nor female. "Too soon."
From the void beside them, another presence flickered into being. A woman, or perhaps a projection of one—her form shifting like smoke caught in moonlight. "You said she wouldn't reach this point until cycle fifty."
"She shouldn't have. Something has changed. The boy—the guardian—he's begun to remember too."
The woman's voice darkened. "Then she's not the only anomaly."
The first figure turned, gaze fixed on the tower far below. "No. And that makes her dangerous. If she remembers everything before the tower grants it… the Thread will break. All of it."
"And if she survives the climb?"
"Then the war begins early."
A silence passed between them, heavy and final. Then, with a swirl of motion, both vanished—leaving behind only the sound of wind howling through the scars of the sky.
Far below, unaware of what stirred above, Lina and Kai stepped deeper into the tower, the door closing behind them with a sound like a heart locking shut.
Kai grabbed Lina's hand. "Move!"
They ran through the corridor, shards of glass crashing behind them. But then—
A sound.
Not metal. Not stone.
Something alive.
A guttural, crawling noise echoed through the dark. From one of the shattered mirrors, a creature dragged itself free—tall, humanoid in shape, but stretched unnaturally. Its body was made of broken mirror shards held together by sinews of shadow and flickering light. Its face was Lina's—but warped, twisted in a silent scream.
Lina froze. "What is that?!"
The creature turned its head unnaturally, cracking with each movement. Its voice was a hundred voices—some hers, some not.
"She left us..."
"She forgot..."
"We remember."
Kai stepped in front, blade raised. "Go. I'll hold it off."
"No," Lina said, summoning the shard's light. "We fight this together."
The creature lunged. Kai slashed at it, blade slicing through shadow, but the glass reformed, pulling back like living liquid. Lina raised the shard, and its light blasted through the creature's chest—exposing a core inside: a burning, flickering eye.
"It's feeding on broken selves," she said. "It's built from every version of me that couldn't escape."
"Then let's free them."
Together, they struck—Kai with steel, Lina with light. The shard pierced the core, and for a moment, everything stopped.
The creature screamed—not in pain, but in relief.
Its body crumbled into dust.
Gone.
The air fell still again. But the damage was done. More cracks spread along the tower walls.
Kai looked at her, breathless. "If that's what this place holds... what's waiting at the top?"
Lina didn't answer. She just turned to the spiral stairs ahead.
Whatever it was—she'd face it.