The stars around them fractured again.
Not in destruction—but in decision.
Ayla and Qaritas' shared star pulsed once, resisting the attacks converging on them from every direction. Spear-constructs of antimatter, braided frequencies laced with silence, spiraling gates meant to fold time inside out—none found purchase.
Because their star was no longer just light.
It was will.
It veered. Split. Danced between impossible threads of fate and law. Each near-hit illuminated them like warnings unspoken.
One thread grazed them—singed Ayla's shoulder in a trail of burning memory. Another fractured near Qaritas, fractal spirals of regret cutting the void near his chest.
But still—they pressed on.
Together.
Until…
The star screamed.
A yawning tear opened ahead—gravity folding inward, then outward again like a breath caught too long.
Qaritas stepped forward—but stopped.
Not from fear.
From permission.
Ayla reached for him—then froze. His stance was not panic.
It was readiness.
"Qaritas?" she whispered.
His black-purple eyes met hers. No pleading. No doubt. Just trust.
And acceptance.
The void curled around him like a cloak—welcoming him back, not as its master, but as its mirror.
They surged forward—
And vanished.
________________________________________
What came next was silence.
But not peace.
The stars behind them disappeared. In their place:
The Graveyard.
They stood in the remains of a galaxy—not dead, not forgotten.
Devoured.
Galaxies hung like funeral shrouds over the ribs of fallen titans.
Planet husks drifted like pitted teeth pulled from some divine jaw.
Some still spun—slowly, silently—frozen in the moment they died.
And through it all, the Skotosars feasted, still gnawing not just on bone but on the last echo of worship.
As if time itself was just a course they hadn't finished.
Bones as wide as planets drifted in slow orbit. Cracked halos of shattered moons circled the corpse of a star, its light now a bruised smear across the void.
And then—
A shadow moved.
No.
Many.
But one shape caught Ayla's breath. Her voice cracked like glass on the first word:
"…Hrolyn."
Ayla sank to one knee. Not in reverence. In mourning. "He was supposed to stop Eon…" she whispered. "If he's gone—then we're all that's left."
Qaritas didn't kneel. But he stared at Hrolyn's corpse like a boy might look at a toppled monument that once shielded his home.
Not reverence. Not anger.
Just a quiet, sharp sort of loss.
"So that's what gods look like when they lose," he muttered.
But his fists were already curling.
And the void behind his eyes didn't mourn. It remembered.
He lay across the wreckage like a broken myth—immense, divine, defeated.
Hrolyn—the Ascendants' creator. The one who had always stood against Eon.
Now a carcass.
"Then the age of being saved is over," Qaritas said. "We become the answer now."
His ribs were collapsed cathedrals of light. His skull—half shattered—still hummed with ancient intent.
His ribcage wasn't shattered—it was hollowed.
As if something had burrowed through divinity itself, leaving only the architecture behind.
His bones didn't break in war.
They were scraped clean.
A god hadn't just died here.
He'd been consumed.
And even in death…
He watched.
Except—
His bones weren't alone.
They were being devoured.
Skotosars.
But not like before.
Ayla's mouth was dry. Her pulse wasn't fear—it was memory.
"I know them," she whispered.
"The Guiltborn, the Cathedral-Broken. The Harrowmasks. The Choir Silent. The Memory-Bled... and that one—"
She pointed toward the blinking maw.
"The Herald of What Was."
Qaritas's voice was a thread of steel. "Guess will have to kill them."
________________________________________
Others slither in silence—coils slick with memory. These were the Guiltborn—first of the Skotosars, serpents stitched from sorrow. Born in the shadow of failing gods. They did not bite to kill. They whispered to unmake.
Their movements are smooth but wrong—like water flowing uphill.
Their eyes: none of their own. But hundreds peer through the faces that adorn their bodies, blinking with sorrow.
When they hiss, you remember the worst thing you've done.
When they strike, you relive it.
"You left them."
"You let him burn."
"You loved her too late."
Then their were 100 Grotesque towers of muscle, stitched from galaxies and bone. The Cathedral-Broken lumbered through the grave-light, stitched from failed prayers and galaxies split by guilt. Their voices were sermons of what came too late.
Embedded across their chests and backs are faces frozen mid-scream—some weeping, some laughing, most silently begging.
Their eyes glow with ruined starlight. Their mouths, when opened, don't roar. They accuse.
They walk slowly, but reality bends away from their steps. Time slows. Regret thickens.
"You thought there'd be no cost."
"This is what forgiveness looks like, too late."
While others walk on backward limbs—too many, too thin. Their heads are shaped like fractured crowns of obsidian glass, reflecting you—not as you are, but as you once were.
Every limb ends in hands. Every hand holds a mask.
The Harrowmasks crawled on limbs that bent the wrong way, crowned in obsidian glass.
Every mask they carried was a face you couldn't save. Every whisper made you wonder if saving them would have saved you.
They see through time—not with eyes, but through you.
"We remember who you were, and what you could have been."
Others walk like priests. Tall. Slow. Dignified. But their bodies are lies.
The Choir Silent walked like prophets, cloaked in velvet stitched with the still-burning stars of betrayed oaths. Their silence was heavier than screams. Their garments begged for meaning.
The faces on their garments weep.
Some chant. Others simply watch, eyes following movement like trapped souls begging for memory.
When they raise a hand, entire futures shudder.
When they bow, stars go out.
"We led once."
"You followed."
"You burned."
Several of them float, twitching midair—bodies cracked open like vases made of thought.
From the wounds spill not blood, but visions.
Each one has a ring of faces around their exposed skull—eyes all rolled upward, seeing something else.
Mouths open and close in perfect sync, but no sound comes. Only pressure. Only knowing.
They do not attack with claws.
The Memory-Bled drifted like broken thoughts. From the wounds in their skulls spilled not blood, but visions you didn't want and truths you couldn't keep.
Your home. The reason you fight.
"If you remembered why you came, you'd already be screaming."
One of them turns.
All mouths part at once across a face made of dying timelines.
Not a mouth. A prophecy. A trap. A memory.
The stars do not blink—but this one does. And when it does, you forget how light works.
This one does not move. It does not need to.
When it speaks, your bones remember truths you never lived.
One of the Memory-Bled turned.
All its mouths opened in eerie sync—no sound, just breath that didn't belong.
Behind it, stars began to blink out. One by one.
Not exploded. Forgotten.
As if reality itself decided it no longer needed to remember them.
The creature's face—if it had one—split open.
Not teeth. Not voice.
A sentence:
"Ecayrous…"
A pause long enough to break gravity.
"…sends his regards."
________________________________________
Ayla stumbled.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
Qaritas caught her elbow. Her voice was thin, but steady.
"Do you trust me?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, without hesitation.
She nodded. "Good. Because I've already told the others."
Qaritas blinked. "Telepathy? I thought you—"
"I can. I just prefer not to use it on friends."
He smirked. "Fair."
Ayla raised her hand.
The star, far above, pulsed.
Split.
Again.
Two halves.
Two paths.
No turning back.
She turned to Qaritas, her body lit with fire and focus.
"Now," she said. "Are you ready to fight for more than memory?"
Qaritas gave a sharp nod.
"I've never stopped."
Ayla smiled.
"Then let's show the Skotosars what regret looks like—when it fights back."