Reality tore.
Lysander pushed through.
The world dissolved behind him.
He tumbled into nothing. Not true void, but a place devoid of sun, of sky, of solid ground.
Just swirling currents. Motes of fractured light. A million faint whispers.
He caught himself. His feet found purchase on a surface like polished obsidian, but it shimmered, yielding slightly under his weight.
This was it. The in-between.
He tasted ozone. Something metallic. Ancient dust.
He’d pierced the veil. Not to another world, but to the space *between* them.
His heart pounded. A frantic drum against his ribs.
Fear warred with triumph.
He stood in a vast, echoing chamber. It stretched further than sight allowed. Walls of sheer, dark glass reflected distant, unblinking stars.
Or perhaps, other realms.
Glyphs etched themselves into the glassy floor. Lines of power, pulsing with faint, violet light.
He followed them.
His steps made no sound. The whispers grew louder. Not words, but impressions. Longing. Regret. A frantic chase.
He traced a symbol with his finger. It felt familiar. Ancestral.
His blood hummed.
He moved deeper into the expanse. Structures loomed from the gloom. Not buildings. Not natural formations.
Monuments to forgotten journeys.
Shattered archways. Crumbling pedestals holding fractured crystals. Devices of unknown purpose, frozen in static decay.
This was a waypoint. A rest stop for those who journeyed through the raw fabric of existence.
A Riftbinder’s legacy. His legacy.
He found a table. It was carved from a substance like hardened starlight. Resting on it, a single object.
A tablet. Dark, polished stone. Its surface glowed with faint internal light.
Runes covered it. A language he shouldn’t understand. Yet, his mind grasped it.
It was a chronicle.
“The Great Tear,” he read aloud. His voice was a thin thread in the silent expanse. “When the realms screamed.”
The tablet detailed a cataclysm. A rent in existence. A force from beyond.
“The Veil-Walkers answered. Valerius blood. They knit the wound.”
His family name. A cold dread seeped into his bones.
“But the price. Always a price. Erasure. To seal the wound, one must become the seal.”
Erasure.
The phantom ache in his soul pulsed, a sudden, blinding pain. Not phantom. Real.
His family hadn't vanished. They had *paid*.
They had become a living sacrifice. A living wall against the void.
His vision blurred. The tablet pulsed with a brighter light.
Images flickered around him.
A woman with hair like spun moonlight. Her eyes, Lysander’s own, held deep sorrow. She smiled, a sad, knowing curve of her lips.
His mother.
A man, tall and resolute. His hand reached out, then dissolved like smoke. Stern eyes, yet full of love.
His father.
A young girl, chasing motes of light. Her laughter, a bell-like sound, echoed briefly, then shattered.
His sister.
They stood at the edge of a gaping blackness. A maw of chaos.
They turned. They looked at him. Not truly him, but the space where he would be.
Their faces twisted in pain. A silent scream. They dissolved, atom by atom, into the maw.
He felt the pull. The absolute void where they once were. The unbearable emptiness.
It was a memory. Not his, but an imprint on his soul. A truth woven into his very being.
He fell to his knees. The tablet clattered on the floor beside him. His hands clenched, nails digging into his palms.
They were gone. To save countless worlds.
He was the last. The last guardian.
A presence coalesced beside him. Not solid. Transparent. A figure like shimmering air.
It was a man. His features indistinct, yet powerful. His form, a ripple in the fabric of the in-between.
“Another Valerius,” the figure murmured. His voice was like dry leaves skittering across stone.
Lysander looked up. His eyes burned.
“Who are you?” he managed.
“An Echo. One who lingered too long.” The figure gestured to the vast, dark space. “This place binds us. Those who seek, those who mourn. Those who cannot let go.”
“My family…” Lysander started. His voice broke.
“They did their duty,” the Echo said, without pity, without malice. “They closed the Folding. A great cost.”
“The tablet said… erasure. But you said they ‘closed the Folding.’ What is it?”
“A prison,” the Echo replied. “A wound, stitched shut. They hold it. They are the stitches. Their minds, their very essence, stretched thin across the Tear.”
Hope sparked. A dangerous, desperate flame.
“They’re not gone?”
“Not entirely. Not yet. But they are not here. Not whole.” The Echo’s form flickered. “The Veil is thin, young one. Your arrival… it sends ripples.”
“Ripples?”
“The predators notice. Those who seek to widen the Tear.” The Echo turned its indistinct head. “You opened a door. You showed them a path.”
Lysander stood. He felt cold. A chill deeper than the in-between’s stark silence.
“What predators?”
A low thrum vibrated through the obsidian floor. The glassy walls rippled.
The whispers intensified. Not longing now. But hunger.
“They follow the scent of fresh power,” the Echo intoned. “Your kind. Your blood. It is a feast to them.”
Darkness gathered at the edges of the distant star-reflections. Not shadow, but a deeper absence of light.
It flowed. A viscous tide.
Lysander’s skin crawled. Every instinct screamed.
“The Void-Spawn,” the Echo breathed. Its voice now brittle, full of ancient dread. “Flee, Valerius. Do not become an Echo.”
The darkness congealed. It took shape. Tentacles of pure shadow reached out, clawing at the non-existent air.
Fangs of shattered reality gleamed in the dim light.
It was massive. A horror born of nothingness. Its eyes, pinpricks of crimson malice, locked onto Lysander.
His breath hitched.
He had opened the rift. He had called it.
His ancestors’ sacrifice. His family’s prison. He hadn’t understood the weight of it all.
He was trapped. With a creature that fed on existence itself.
The Void-Spawn shrieked. A sound that tore at the very fabric of his mind.
It lunged. A blur of impossible speed.
Lysander reacted on instinct. He thrust his hands out. Pure, raw energy flared from his palms.
A spatial distortion erupted. The air warped. The monster's charge twisted, sending it off course, crashing into a forgotten monument.
The impact was soundless. The monument simply crumbled into dust-motes.
He needed to open another rift. Back to his own realm. Anywhere but here.
He focused. His mind racing, trying to grasp the complex lattice of reality. A door. He needed a door.
But the Void-Spawn recovered. It roared. A sound that pulled at his sanity.
It was faster this time. It bypassed his spatial attack, dissolving into nothingness, then reforming just feet away.
Its maw opened wide. A vortex of tearing reality. A taste of the Folding itself.
He felt the suction. His body strained. He was being pulled apart.
He saw their faces again. His mother. His father. His sister.
They weren’t pleading. They weren’t afraid.
They were urging him on. Live. Fight.
Lysander roared. A desperate, primal sound.
He gathered every ounce of Riftbinding power he possessed. He would not be erased.
He would not become another Echo.
He would find them. He would bring them back.
He poured his essence into the ground. The glyphs flared, pulsing with violent, unstable light. The very space around him began to unravel.
Not a clean tear. A violent, uncontrolled explosion of raw power.
The Void-Spawn shrieked again, recoiling from the sudden, destructive surge.
But Lysander felt it. The rift forming. Not to his home. Not to a safe place.
To somewhere else entirely. Somewhere unknown. Somewhere dangerous.
He knew he had to take it.
He took a last look at the terror, then at the fading, shimmering form of the Echo. The Echo nodded, a silent farewell.
Then he launched himself into the roiling, chaotic maelstrom of his own making.
Into the blinding, unknown abyss.