Eryssa's blade struck the lead Outlier—and for the first time, it screamed.
Not a sound of pain, but something worse: a collapse of silence so profound it crushed the light. The creature recoiled, its form unraveling in strands of colorless vapor that twisted against the sky.
Orin stared, the Skybrand trembling in his hands. "What is that weapon?"
Eryssa didn't answer immediately. She danced through the battlefield with impossible grace, her every movement tearing at the fabric of the creatures' being. Each slash of her blade did not simply wound—it unwrote. It stripped the Outliers of their form, identity, existence.
When the initial wave faltered, she finally turned to Orin. "This is the Blade of Memory. Forged from the fragments of what once was—a tether to the truth of creation. The Outliers are absence, but memory is defiance. It remembers what should be. It rewrites their unmaking."
Mira's eyes widened. "You're turning their void against them."
Eryssa nodded once. "Exactly. You must understand: they are not just enemies. They are consequences. This universe forgot them, and now they return to remind it what it cast away."
Kaelen rose to his feet, wiping blood from his brow. "Then how do we seal the rift?"
Eryssa's expression darkened. "We don't. Not yet. Closing it now would trap the Outliers in our realm. We have to draw them back through—all of them—and then collapse the rift at its source."
"That would mean… going through," Mira said quietly.
"To the Void itself," Eryssa confirmed. "There's a nexus beyond the rift—a center where the Outliers are gathering. If we strike the heart, we sever their connection. But we will be in their world. No light. No time. No certainty of return."
Orin looked down at the Skybrand. It still glowed faintly, but its flame seemed dimmer, as if it too feared what lay beyond.
"Then we go together," he said.
Eryssa studied him. "You carry the Skybrand. You were chosen by the Flame of Origin. The Void will try to twist you more than anyone else."
Orin met her gaze. "Then I'll twist it back."
---
The four of them stood at the edge of the rift, now a vast chasm in the sky. It pulsed like a wound in reality, beckoning with terrible promise.
"I won't lie," Eryssa said softly. "Once we step through, you will feel it. The forgetting. You will start to lose pieces of yourself. Your past, your name, your reasons."
Kaelen took a breath. "Then let's hold on to each other."
Orin placed his hand over his heart. "I'll remember. I have to."
Mira gripped her blade tightly. "No forgetting. No surrender."
And with that, one by one, they stepped into the Void.
The stars disappeared.
The world ceased to exist.
All that remained was darkness—and the distant, echoing hunger of things that should never have been.