The air above Silverveil Citadel had turned to liquid fire. Eldrin stood amidst the ruins, his left arm encased in jagged**Origin Circuitry**, the blue veins of the **grain** now clawing up his jaw like frost on a corpse. The **seventh shard** pulsed in his chesta molten star wrapped in chains of his own making. It whispered promises of annihilation, of godhood, of an end to the war that had carved scars across Tylania.
Opposite him, the rift yawned wider, its edges fraying like torn parchment. From its depths echoed Ophira's laughternolonger a whisper, but a**command**.
*"You cannot outrun what you are, brother."*
The ground trembled. The remnants of the citadels towers groaned, their shadows stretching unnaturally, twisting into the silhouettes of **Titan wraiths**. Their hollow eyes burned with the same azure light as the shards Ophira had consumed.
Liora materialized at Eldrin's side, her emerald cloak singed, her crystalline dagger slick with black ichor. She's not just in the rift," she hissed.
She's**becoming** it."
Eldrin's **grain** flared in response, its light seeping through his tattered sleeve. The power was intoxicating, a tide threatening to pull him under.*Control it. Or it controls you.*
A scream tore through the chaos.
Tira.
Her body lay crumpled near the rift's edge, the **third shard** in her chest flickering like a dying ember. Ophira's shadow had poured into her, warping her fleshetongated limbs, skin threaded with pulsing shard-veins, one eye hazel and terrified, the other a void.
*"Little brother."* The voice was Tira's, but the cadence was Ophira's. *"You should have taken the shard when you had the chance."*
Jace lunged, his throwing knives flashing. Eldrin, *now*!"
The citadel **twisted**.
Buildings melted like candle wax, reforged into jagged spires of obsidian. The sky cracked, bleeding liquid shadow that pooled into a second suna mockery of the **seventh shards** light. Eldrin's **grain**resonated with it, a dissonant harmony that made his bones ache.
Liora's dagger carved a ward into the air. She's using Tira as a conduit! The**third shard** is amplifying the rift!"
Nim's spider-mech screeched as she vaulted onto a collapsing balcony. The n we cut the damn cord!"
Jace was already moving, his knives finding the throats of two**shadow-eaters** that lunged from the mist. Eldrin"distract her*! Ill get Tira!"
*Distract her.* As if Ophira were some petty warlord and not a force of nature.
Eldrin's fire roared to lifenot the familiar chaos-flames, but the **seventh shard's** stolen power, gold and cobalt intertwined. He charged, the ground liquefying beneath his boots.
Ophira*Tira*smiled. Her shadow-arm elongated into a whip of pure entropy.
The first strike carved a trench through the plaza. The second would have severed Eldrin's spine if Liora hadnt yanked him aside, her crystalline dagger deflecting the blow.
Stop *thinking* like a man!"she snarled. Youte a **shard-bearer** now. *Act like one.*"
The words struck deeper than the whip.
Eldrin **reached**not with his hands, but with the **grain**, with the**seventh shard's** resonance. The citadel's rubble *answered*, levitating in a storm of shrapnel and molten stone.
He hurled it at Ophira, not as projectiles, but as *anchors*, eachfragment etched with a rune of containment.
Ophira's shadow **screamed**, the bonds searing her form. For a heartbeat, Tira's human eye locked onto Eldrin*pleading*.
Then Jace struck.
His knife plunged into the **third shard**, not to destroy it, but to *wedge* it loose. Tira's body convulsed, the shard's light flickering as Ophira's grip faltered,
*"No!"* Ophira's voice was raw, almost *desperate*. *"You dont understand what youte"*
The rift **exploded**.
---
Reality unraveled.
The plaza dissolved into a vortex of screaming wind and fragmented memories. Eldrin saw flashes:
- **A Titan altar.** Ophira and Liora as children, kneeling before the split shard.
- **A laboratory.** The Nightwatchers face, his shard-eye pulsing as he whispered: *"Which will you be?"*
- **Tira's voice**, fraying at the edges: *"She's not your enemy. She's your*shadow*."*
Then*silence*.
Eldrin stood in the heart of the rift, the**seventh shard's** light the only beacon in the void. Opposite him, Ophira floated, her form flickering between woman and wraith. The **third shard** hovered between them, its surface cracked, leaking streams of black ichor.
*"You could have ruled with me,"* she whispered, her voice stripped of mockery. *"We were *meant* to be whole."*
Eldrin's **grain** pulsed in time with the shard's dying light. *Weapon or man?*
Somewhere in the dark, Tira's voice echoed:
*"Choose."*
The rift **heaved**.
Ophiras hand shot out, not to strike, but to *grasp*her fingers brushing Eldrin's **grain** as the **third shard** *shattered* between them.
The explosion of light was blinding.
When it faded, Eldrin stood alone in the ruins of Silverveil.
Ophira was gone. Tira was gone.
And the **seventh shard** in his chest had turned *black*.
Somewhere in the abyss, the Nightwatcher's voice slithered:
*"The game has changed,Chaos Child. Now, you hunt a god."*
---