The Rift Reapers were closing in.
Karos didn't know how he was still standing—let alone breathing. Every instinct screamed for him to run, to wake up from whatever nightmare had crawled through the sky and split open his world. But the pendant's warmth on his chest and the shimmering silver lines across his skin reminded him: this was real.
And he was no longer just a bystander.
The woman—who still hadn't given her name—moved like time itself bent around her, her blade dancing through the Reapers' void-warped attacks. Each strike she made against them sent out a burst of memory—visions of places Karos had never seen. A forest city lit by floating lanterns. A ruined temple bathed in moonlight. A boy with eyes like his, reading a book that whispered.
The pendant pulsed again.
Karos staggered back as one of the Rift Reapers locked onto him. Its head—or what should have been its head—was a swirling void filled with stars and shadows, and as it stepped toward him, the world flickered in and out of different eras.
He blinked, and the square was covered in vines. Blinked again, and the sky was red with fire. Blinked again, and there was nothing—just ash.
He screamed.
The Reaper raised its blade.
"Focus, Karos!" the woman shouted. "Anchor yourself—lock the present!"
The pendant blazed.
Karos gritted his teeth and slammed his free hand to the ground. The silver lines on his arm flared outward in a ripple, like someone dropping a stone in a still pond. The flickering ceased. Time steadied.
The Rift Reaper halted, suddenly sluggish. It twitched unnaturally, like it was trying to push forward but couldn't break through some invisible wall.
Karos stood. "I… did that?"
"You're stabilizing the Veil," the woman said, her voice strained as she blocked another incoming Reaper. "You're the Anchor now. That pendant doesn't just show you time—it binds it."
The pendant flared again. Karos felt a tug in his chest—an urge, or a memory, not his own. Without thinking, he raised his hand and traced a symbol in the air, one that shimmered briefly before vanishing.
A pulse of temporal force exploded outward from him.
Both Rift Reapers recoiled, their forms unraveling for a heartbeat—dozens of versions of them flickering across moments. One was a knight in black steel, another a robed figure of flame, another a husk of bone and shadow. Then, as if resisting the pull of time itself, they snapped back into their current forms, shrieking with a sound that broke glass and sanity.
The woman lunged forward, slicing clean through one. It evaporated, leaving behind only a whisper:
"He watches. He waits. The chain is breaking."
She didn't pause. She drove her blade through the second one's core as it staggered, and the Rift Reaper burst into fragments of light, fading into the aether.
Silence fell.
The breach above the square pulsed weakly now, smaller—fading.
Karos collapsed to his knees. "What the hell was that? What are they?"
The woman lowered her blade, its surface dimming. She approached slowly, her expression unreadable. "They are the Rift Reapers—agents of the Broken God. They exist between moments, feeding on what should not be."
"Who are you?"
She knelt beside him. "My name is Lysaria Veltharn. Chronoblade of the Keepers of the Shattered Veil."
Karos stared at her. The title meant nothing… but everything in her presence said it should.
Lysaria studied the pendant still glowing faintly on his chest. "You were supposed to be a witness. Nothing more. But the Veil chose you. Or maybe… something else did."
The breach above gave one last flicker—and then vanished, leaving only the wind and a sky that suddenly felt too quiet.
Lysaria stood. "Come with me, Karos. This was just the beginning. The breaches are getting worse. And if the Rift Reapers are already here..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
Karos looked up at the sky, still seeing the fracture in his mind. A horizon cracking open. A voice in the void.
"I'm not a hero," he said quietly.
Lysaria looked back at him. "Neither was I."