The sky split open.
Not with thunder, nor lightning, but with something far more unnatural. A jagged tear, shimmering like shattered glass, hovered above the marketplace of Eldoria's capital, Veldrith. The air warped around it, distorting the cobblestone streets and the shouts of merchants into eerie echoes.
A time breach.
Karos had seen one before. Years ago, when he was just a boy, a rift had opened near the eastern farmlands. He remembered the way the wheat had turned to ash, how the ground had flickered between seasons—lush green one moment, frozen with snow the next. He had watched in horror as a man, dressed in armor centuries old, staggered out of the breach and crumbled to dust before his very eyes.
But this one was different.
This one pulsed.
Karos stood frozen as a figure emerged from the distortion—a woman clad in silver armor, her deep-blue cloak tattered at the edges. She carried a sword unlike any he had seen, its blade glimmering with shifting patterns, as if the metal itself couldn't decide what century it belonged to.
The marketplace fell into silence. People backed away, some whispering prayers, others clutching their loved ones. A few ran.
The woman stumbled forward, her eyes—silver, like the breach—locking onto Karos, "You," she gasped, her voice layered, as if speaking through the weight of time itself. "What year is this?"
Karos hesitated. "It's the 3rd Age, year 742."
She exhaled sharply. "Too soon… or too late." Her grip tightened on the sword. "I don't have much time."
Before Karos could respond, the breach behind her convulsed, its edges trembling violently. The marketplace wavered. The buildings flickered—becoming ruins, then reassembling, then flickering again. A stall that had once sold apples now held rusted weapons, then suddenly turned to dust.
And then they came through.
Two figures, clad in shadowy armor that seemed to flicker between forms, emerged. Their faces were obscured by the shifting void where their heads should be, their bodies draped in the same eerie glow as the breach.
The woman cursed under her breath. "Rift Reapers, DAMN!"
The creatures moved unnaturally, their steps silent, their forms dragging reality along with them. Wherever they passed, the ground cracked—not in stone, but in time itself.
One of them raised a twisted, jagged blade and pointed it at the woman. The voice that followed was wrong—echoing from places and times that should not exist.
"You do not belong here."
Neither did they.
Before Karos could even think, the woman lunged forward, her blade meeting the creature's in a clash that shouldn't have been possible—one that sent ripples through time itself.
The fight had begun.
And Karos was trapped in the middle of it.