Episode 21: Fractured Reality

  I. The Silence After the Storm

  The battlefield lay in eerie silence, the air thick with the acrid scent of burned reality. The sky overhead was no longer a swirling void of abyssal hunger, but it wasn’t clear either—it rippled like a broken mirror, fragments of different skies shifting unpredictably. Pieces of other worlds flickered in and out of existence, glimpses of alternate timelines bleeding into their own.

  Kade Voss stood motionless, his breath shallow, his body heavy with exhaustion. The ground beneath him felt unstable, as if he were standing on the edge of a fragile glass surface, one wrong step away from plummeting into the unknown. Ariella was beside him, her fingers still gripping the hilt of her blade, eyes scanning the shifting landscape.

  “We stopped it,” she murmured, barely believing her own words.

  Kade didn’t answer. His grip tightened around his sword. The weapon still pulsed faintly, as if uncertain whether the battle was truly over. He could feel the echoes of the Abyss within him, clawing at the edges of his mind, whispering in a language he was beginning to understand.

  Then the sky cracked.

  A deafening snap tore through the air as a massive rift split open above them, the remnants of the Abyss fighting to remain anchored in this world. But something was different. From within the rift, figures emerged—not tendrils of darkness, not shifting monstrosities, but humanoid shapes.

  Some of them were familiar.

  Ariella’s breath hitched as she recognized one of them—Caleb, a man they had lost long ago, his form flickering in and out like an old film reel. His face was hollow, his eyes distant. Around him, others appeared—lost warriors, fallen friends, people they had sworn were gone forever.

  Kade’s heart pounded. This wasn’t resurrection. This was something worse.

  The Abyss had left its mark on reality, and now time itself was unraveling.

  II. The Return of the Lost

  Caleb stepped forward, his expression eerily calm. “Kade.” His voice sounded normal—too normal. “You did it. You stopped it.”

  Kade swallowed hard. “You’re dead.”

  A slow smile spread across Caleb’s lips. “Am I?”

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  Ariella took a step back, her fingers twitching over her weapon. “This isn’t real,” she muttered. “They’re not real.”

  But the figures kept coming. Soldiers they had fought alongside. Friends they had mourned. Strangers who should not exist. Their forms wavered, flickering between life and memory, as if the very concept of their existence was undecided.

  And then, the whispers returned. Deeper. Stronger.

  “You see now, don’t you?” The voice of the Abyss slithered through Kade’s mind, no longer roaring, but insidious, patient. “You did not defeat me. You only shattered the prison. Now… reality is yours to rewrite.”

  Kade staggered. The weight of the words pressed into him, the implications vast and terrifying. Had he truly saved the world, or had he broken it beyond repair?

  Caleb tilted his head, watching Kade’s struggle with an almost knowing amusement. “You have to choose, Kade,” he said. “Do we stay? Or do we disappear again?”

  Ariella’s pulse pounded in her ears. “Don’t listen to them,” she whispered urgently. “This is the Abyss—this is another trap.”

  But Kade wasn’t sure anymore. He could feel them. Not like phantoms. Not like illusions. Their presences were real, their energy woven into the fractures of this shattered reality.

  And then, one of them screamed.

  A soldier near the back—the first to return—began to convulse violently. His body twisted unnaturally, bones snapping, flesh warping as something else took over. His face contorted into something alien, his skin peeling back as dark veins crawled beneath it.

  The illusion shattered.

  The rift hadn’t just brought back memories. It had infected them.

  Kade barely had time to react before the first of them lunged.

  III. The Collapse Begins

  Everything exploded into motion.

  The battlefield erupted into chaos as the corrupted figures turned, their bodies unraveling, their eyes burning with the Abyss’s lingering hunger. They were no longer echoes of the past—they were puppets, twisted beyond recognition, and they were hungry.

  Ariella barely had time to react before one of them lunged at her, teeth gnashing, fingers clawing at her throat. She twisted out of the way, driving her blade through its chest, but the thing barely slowed. It shrieked, limbs jerking erratically, a mockery of human movement.

  Kade felt the shift before he saw it. The energy of the Abyss still coiled inside him, allowing him to sense the unnatural pulse of these creatures. They weren’t merely attacking.

  They were spreading.

  Every moment they remained, the rift widened. The world’s fragile balance tipped further.

  Kade’s instincts screamed. He spun his sword in a tight arc, slicing through the first attacker, then the next. The corrupted figures disintegrated into dark ash, but for every one that fell, two more took its place.

  Ariella’s voice cut through the chaos. “We need to close that rift—now!”

  But Kade hesitated.

  The whispers had returned. Louder this time.

  “You can still save them.”

  His grip faltered.

  “You have the power to change everything. Let go of the past, Kade. Rewrite it.”

  The rift shuddered. A new figure emerged.

  And this time, it was his brother.

  Episode 22: The Price of Power

  I. A Ghost From the Past

  Kade’s breath hitched. His hands went numb.

  Lucas Voss stepped forward from the rift, his face exactly as Kade remembered it—unscarred, frozen in time, the same as the day he died.

  “Kade,” he said softly. His voice was steady. Too steady.

  Ariella cursed. “This isn’t real. Kade, listen to me—this isn’t real.”

  But Kade couldn’t move.

  The whispers of the Abyss had never been stronger.

  “You can fix this. You can have him back. Just reach out.”

  Lucas smiled—warm, inviting, just as he had in the memories Kade had buried long ago. “It’s me, brother. I’ve been waiting.”

  Kade’s heart pounded.

  His grip on his sword wavered.

  Ariella saw it happening. She saw the Abyss taking hold again, using his pain against him.

  And so she did the only thing she could.

  She raised her blade—

  —and stabbed Lucas through the chest.

  The world stopped.

  For a single, endless moment, there was no sound. No motion. Just Kade’s stunned gaze as the tip of Ariella’s sword pierced through the illusion of his brother, dark ichor spilling from the wound.

  Then the rift screamed.

  Lucas’s form twisted, his face stretching into something monstrous as his body cracked apart like broken glass. The illusion shattered, and with it, so did Kade’s last shred of hesitation.

  The Abyss had played its final card.

  And Kade was done playing.

  His sword ignited with raw, untamed energy.

  And this time, he didn’t hold back.

  To Be Continued…