The ground beneath them cracked and groaned, darkness bleeding from Coox's footsteps like ink from a shattered bottle. The realm shivered..not from cold, but from something older… crueler.
Mael tightened his grip around Elara as if trying to anchor her, but her eyes remained locked on Jian, or whatever wore his face now.
"He's gone," she whispered. Her voice was empty.
"No," Eva croaked, shaking her head. "No, he was right there! I saw him!"
"He was there," Damien said grimly, "but now he's not."
Coox began to move forward, slow and unhurried, arms behind his back like a god watching ants scatter.
"You want him back?" he said, voice slithering like oil. "Keep dreaming. The Jian you loved was weak. Soft. A flicker. And flickers die."
Elara's knees buckled, and Mael caught her before she hit the floor. Damien's hands curled into fists. His mind was racing...no plan, no time, no hope. They couldn't touch Coox. Not in this form. Not here. Then, a sound.. faint, unnatural.. like metal humming.
And something clicked in Damien's memory. The plate. Raven's words rang back like thunder:
"If Jian slips beyond reach, and Coox takes full hold… there's one failsafe. It's in Elara. But it will cost you everything."
Damien's eyes snapped to Elara.
"Elara," he said, urgent now. "Do you remember the night Raven touched your back? When he said it was 'protection'?"
Elara blinked slowly, confused. "He said it was a blessing… something to shield me from.."
"No," Damien said. "It wasn't a shield. It was a fuse."
Mael narrowed his eyes.
"What are you talking about?"
Damien stepped toward her, breath ragged.
"He planted something inside her. A living glyph. A cursed relic..the Pale Plate. It's not a weapon… it's a key. One that mirrors Coox's energy."
Eva's eyes widened.
"You mean she can become like him?"
"No," Damien said, gaze locking with Elara's. "She can match him."
Elara stared at him, trembling.
"What will it do to me?"
Damien hesitated. Then:
"I don't know. But it might be the only way to reach Jian. Or destroy Coox."
Behind them, Coox raised an eyebrow.
"How delightful. Please, activate your little toy. I'd love to see you break her."
"Elara," Damien said, stepping close. "Do you trust me?"
Her lips trembled.
"I don't know if I trust myself…"
"Then trust him," Damien whispered, and placed his palm against her spine.
The moment he touched her, the glyph ignited. A sound like tearing fabric echoed in the air.. not physical cloth, but something deeper. Elara's body arched, glowing veins spreading across her skin like cracks in porcelain, flickering with pale, sickly light. Her scream tore through the silence.. high, ragged, and inhuman.
Mael stepped back, horrified.
"Damien! What are you doing?!"
"She's changing!" Eva gasped.
Elara rose slowly, no longer needing Mael's arms to support her. Her eyes had gone white.. not empty, but overfull. And her aura now… it pulsed with the same hunger that wrapped Coox, but twisted, inverted ..like the same song played backward.
Coox actually stepped back.
"What… is this?" he murmured, uncertain for the first time. "That's… my frequency."
Elara looked up. But it wasn't her anymore. Not quite. Her voice was layered..one tone hers, the other like a chorus of dead gods.
"I remember your name, Coox," she said. "I wore it once."
A wave of spectral fire erupted from her fingertips, slamming into the twisted air around Coox and forcing him back. He hissed, hand raised to shield himself.
"Elara!" Mael shouted. "Can you hear us?"
She turned slightly, only her eyes moving. They glowed with a terrifying, endless light.
"I don't know who I am anymore," she said, "but I can feel him. Jian… He's still fighting."
And then..without waiting..she lunged at Coox, a mirror of his dark power, screaming with the rage of someone who had already died once. The sky shattered above them. The realm warped. And everything fell into chaos.
Elara collided with Coox like a living paradox. darkness meeting its reflection, light twisted into something older than names. But the moment their energies touched..Reality bent .
The ground around them folded like paper. Mountains in the distance flickered like illusions. The sky tore in half, not from above, but sideways, like someone turning a page in a cosmic book.
Mael tried to run, but the air no longer obeyed gravity. Damien reached for Eva, but her body glitched, phasing like a skipping frame. Even Coox stumbled, his face twitching unnaturally.
"What is.." he began.
And then the sky turned into a massive, open eye. Not a metaphor. Not a symbol. A real eye.. spiral pupil, iris stitched with moving galaxies and teeth. A voice spoke. Not to them...through them.
"THE HINGE HAS TURNED."
"YOU HAVE TOUCHED A MIRRORED CORE."
Damien staggered.
"The Plate… is that what it..?"
"No," Elara answered ..though her voice was now layered, distant, mechanical. "This isn't from the Plate. It's older. Something Raven never meant for us to find".
Coox stepped back. He was afraid.
"Impossible," he spat. "You were just a girl."
Elara smiled. Not human anymore.
"I was a door. And you opened it."
The sky blinked again, and Jian screamed. They all heard it.. not just in their ears, but in their bones. And the world changed again.
The landscape shifted. In seconds, the ground around them morphed.. lush forest turning to dead soil. The battlefield warped into a burned plain, where shadows walked without forms. The ruins of a home Jian never spoke of emerged in the background.. roof collapsed, ash falling like snow.
Eva clutched Damien's arm.
"We're seeing his memories… but not inside his mind."
Mael turned slowly.
"No. We're seeing the bleeding point. Reality's cracking. His memories are… leaking outward."
And then ..a child stepped into view. Barefoot. Familiar face. Empty eyes. It was Jian as a boy.
He didn't speak. Just looked at them all… then mouthed one word:
"Run."
The ground split open.From the cracked soil rose a second Coox...not the one they'd fought before. This one was taller. Wrong. His face wore Jian's father's features, twisted and blurred.
Elara's breath caught.
"That's… not the copy. That's the first Coox.The one the others were modeled after. The original."
The Coox they'd fought before staggered forward..confused, weak.
"Father…?"
The true Coox looked down at him with pure hatred, and in a flash of voidlight..tore him apart, particle by particle, like unraveling string.
The copy screamed. And was gone.
The real Coox looked at them now. And smiled. Damien stepped forward, fists clenched.
"What the hell do we do against that?"
Elara looked at her hand. The glyph Raven had carved into her shimmered, but now it was changing.
"Raven didn't give me a weapon," she said slowly. "He gave me a beacon. This wasn't meant to fight Coox…"
Her voice trailed off as the ground trembled.
"It was meant to awaken something buried beneath him."
The landscape began to pulse.. like a heartbeat. From the roots of the shattered ground, a third presence rose. A voice thundered.. not loud, but deep, vibrating everything from the bones to the soul:
"YOU REMEMBER COOX.BUT WHO REMEMBERS ME?"
And then the soil around them caught fire not with flame, but with song. Glowing lyrics in languages they'd never heard, made from memory and grief.
They turned, and saw Jian. Walking from the blaze. He wore no armor. No emotion. His body was draped in flickering wings..not made of feathers or smoke, but of shattered versions of himself.
Elara whispered, "He's not fighting Coox anymore… He's transcending him."
Damien, stunned, murmured, "He's becoming something… we've never seen."
Mael finished it: "Something new."
Jian opened his eyes, and they burned with three lights: Gold. White. And black.
He looked at the true Coox. And spoke in a voice that bent the air:
You were my shadow. And I've stepped into the sun."
The sky shattered like glass. And the true war began, not for Jian's life, but for the right to define the shape of reality.
Behind it was not space. It was something else. A vast, infinite library made of veins and mirrors, stretching in all directions, suspended in a void that pulsed like a heartbeat. Each "book" was a memory, but not theirs. Not human ones. This was the archive of something beyond time.
The battle had paused , not by choice, but by decree. Even Coox, monstrous and complete, stood still.
Elara's body glowed faintly.. the glyph now pulsing like a living thing.
Damien turned slowly.
"This place… it's not a battlefield anymore."
"No," Elara whispered. "It's a revelation."
Behind them, a door appeared.. formed from Jian's past regrets. And through it stepped a figure. Not a monster. Not a demon. A boy.
Raven.
But… younger. Wide-eyed. Face pale. Not the strategist they knew. This was a version of Raven they'd never met.
Jian stared. "Raven?"
The boy blinked. Then looked up at the pulsing void of mirrors. And said:
"He was my imaginary friend."
Silence. Even Coox didn't move. Raven continued. His voice cracked.. like a dam breaking.
"When I was little, I was alone. Abandoned. Starved. I made up stories to survive. I created a protector. A shadow. Someone who could take all my pain. I named him… Coox."
"He was supposed to protect me from the things I hated. My fear. My sadness. My rage."
"But he grew teeth."
Damien's mouth fell open. "You… created him?"
Mael stepped back.
"Wait. He's not an ancient being. He's a manifestation..of a child's trauma?"
Raven looked down.
"Yes. But not just mine."
The sky pulsed again, and the mirrors began showing reflections. All of them ..Damien, Elara, Mael, even Eva.. their childhood memories flickered across the mirrors. Moments of pain. Abandonment. Injustice. And in every single one, there was a shadow. Lingering. Feeding. Growing.
Elara whispered, horrified:
"We all created him… over time."
Coox wasn't one being. He was an accumulation...of grief. Of repressed fury. Of collective sorrow made sentient. A creature born from every forgotten wound.
Jian looked at his hands.. the wings behind him flickering.
"No wonder he chose me," Jian said softly. "I carried the most. I buried it all."
Coox, now standing still, began to crack.
Not from an attac, but from being understood.
His voice, when it came, was no longer a roar.
It was the cry of a child.
" I didn't want to become this. I just wanted to be held. I just wanted to be real."
And suddenly...Coox began to split. One half remained monstrous ..a towering, twisted titan of memory and pain.
But the other?
The other collapsed into a childlike form Pale. Fragile. Eyes terrified. The child looked at Raven… and reached for him.
Elara stepped forward.
"You can end this. You have to accept him."
Raven hesitated, trembling.
"I'm scared," he said.
"You should be," Mael said. "But this time… you don't have to be scared alone."
Eva walked to his side. Damien too. Then Jian. And finally.. Raven stepped forward and embraced the child.
The monstrous half of Coox let out a roar of existential pain... then shattered into memory dust.
Silence.
The mirrors closed. The eye in the sky shut. The battlefield returned… broken, burned, but alive.
Jian fell to his knees. Wings gone. He looked up at Raven, who now cradled the child-Coox in his arms.
"Was this… the end?" Eva asked quietly.
"No," Jian said. "It was a Damien looked at the sky.
"If Coox was born from us… what else might be waiting?"
The ground trembled again. And far beyond the ruined world, something opened its eyes something older than even Coox. Something that had watched them all. Something that had been awaited.
The battlefield was still. Ash hung in the air like snowfall made of memory. Jian sat with his head bowed, breathing slow, but heavy. The wings were gone. The glow in his eyes dimmed.
Raven held the child-Coox, who had fallen asleep in his arms.. now no more than a pale boy with shadowy tear stains on his cheeks. No one spoke. Until Mael broke the silence.
"We faced a broken idea that forgot what it once was."
Elara knelt beside Jian. "How do you feel?"
He didn't answer. He stared at his hands.. trembling slightly.
"I still feel him," Jian whispered. "Not in control. Just… echoing. Like part of me will always remember what it felt like to be that thing."
Raven looked up.
"That's because you held the weight no one else would. You became the vessel because you were strong enough to survive it."
Damien paced in the background. His fists clenched, his voice tight.
"So what now? We unraveled a nightmare, rewrote a story... but why do I still feel like something's watching us?"
Then the air shifts and the Unnamed arrives...
The river flowed like time itself ..slow, steady, uncaring. Jian sat on a smooth rock, shoes off, watching the current glide over stones. His reflection shimmered, broken by ripples. Behind him, the world had been saved. Around him, the scars still whispered.
Elara approached without a sound. She sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Silence hung gently between them. Then:
"You never told me about your past," she said quietly, eyes not on the river, but on him.
Jian didn't look at her at first. He just stared into the water. Her hand gently reached out, resting over his..warm, patient.
He finally turned his gaze to her hand. His voice, when it came, was low and steady:
"Because there's nothing to be proud of."
She didn't flinch. Didn't argue. Just waited.
Jian exhaled, a breath that had waited years to be freed.
"I was born in the slums outside Caelport. My mother died when I was five. My father… drank until he forgot my name. I learned early that silence kept you alive, and anger made people listen."
"I stole. I lied. I fought. There was no magic back then. Just empty stomachs and bruises that never healed."
"The first time I felt power… it was because I hurt someone. I didn't mean to. But I liked how it felt. The fear. The control. It made me forget what I didn't have."
He paused, voice quieter now.
"That's when something darker crept in. Not Coox… not yet. Just the hunger. The need to be seen, even if it meant becoming something awful."
Elara's fingers gently squeezed his. Jian looked away, jaw tight.
"That's when Raven and Damien found me. I don't know if they saw something worth saving, or just something useful. Maybe both."
"They gave me shelter, food. Purpose. They gave me direction.I started believing maybe… I could be something more."
He laughed once, dryly.
"And then... they started asking me to do things. Little things, at first. But the way Raven talked, the way Damien watched me.. I stopped thinking for myself. I let their voices become my compass."
"And when Coox came… he didn't take over all at once. He whispered through them.Their fear, their desperation.. it became the leash. And I let it choke me."
He shook his head slowly.
"I didn't even notice I was gone… until I saw you again."
There was a long silence after that. Then Elara spoke.. not gently, but firmly:
"You were never nothing, Jian."
He met her eyes. She held his gaze.
"I don't care how much of you was broken. Or how much was bent. I saw the way you looked at me even when you couldn't speak. The way you fought him when you had no strength left."
Her other hand moved, resting over his heart.
"You were trying. Even when no one saw it."
A breath caught in Jian's throat.
Elara smiled.. a small, trembling thing.
"And I choose you. The real you. Flaws, scars… all of it."
He didn't speak. He couldn't. He just nodded, eyes stinging, shoulders finally, finally relaxing under her touch.
A soft breeze stirred the river. Damien stood nearby with Eva, skipping stones. There was laughter between them.. strained, but real.
Mael rested against a tree, eyes closed, breathing in the quiet like it was sacred. Jian stood up, and Elara rose with him. They didn't speak again. They didn't need to.
As they walked back toward the others, the sunlight broke through the trees above..not in a beam, but a warm curtain. No epic final spell. No ancient enemy left to strike.
Jian paused.
He turned slightly, eyes scanning the quiet woods behind them. A soft wind rustled the leaves… and then he heard it.
"Jian."
Voox's voice..gentle, distant, but unmistakable. Not a command. Not a plea. Just his name. Jian didn't answer aloud. He simply closed his eyes for a breath and said inside himself:
"Thank you, Voox. For everything."
Then he turned back toward the light.
Just the sound of water. And the sound of healing.And for the first time in a long time, Jian walked forward not as a weapon, not as a prisoner… but as a man...Finally free.
THE END