The sky had stopped humming. For a moment, the world felt still.
But that silence wasn't peace.
It was the breath before the descent.
Tom stood alone at the cliff's edge, eyes narrowed at the horizon. The wind carried whispers—soft, fragmented echoes that didn't belong. He gripped his cloak tighter, trying to shake the growing cold that clung to his spine, even though the sun still burned above.
Behind him, the others were quieter than usual. Lucy hadn't spoken in two hours. Jack's jokes had dried up. Kitty kept staring at her hands, as if they weren't hers. Susan's notes had started repeating the same glyph pattern unintentionally, again and again—spiraling. And Peter... he was blinking slower now, like even his thoughts had begun to lag.
Frank was the only one who kept moving. But even he was doing so like someone trying to outrun a memory that hadn't happened yet.
"They're here," Frank finally said.
Tom didn't ask who. They all knew.
The Monster Trio… weren't coming.
They were already here.
Velmorith had made the first move, twisting names, warping minds, unwriting parts of Peter's memory. But now… something else was shifting. Something deeper.
Susan raised a crystal lens she had etched herself, scanning the glyph auras in the air. She paused.
"The sky," she whispered. "It's breathing."
They looked up.
It wasn't visible to the eye. Not at first. But the clouds… they pulsed. Inward. Outward. Inhale. Exhale. Like lungs.
Reality itself was syncing to a rhythm none of them understood.
Obruhn Saren.
They didn't need to say his name. The moment the ground beneath them sagged like soft fabric—then re-hardened—they felt it. The weight. The compression of everything they were standing on.
Their boots suddenly felt heavier. Kitty stumbled forward and caught herself, breathing heavily.
"Did gravity just… flicker?" she asked, stunned.
Tom clenched his jaw. "It's not just Velmorith anymore."
"And not just Obruhn," Frank said sharply. "Listen."
At first, there was only wind.
Then… sound bent.
Not broke. Not echoed. Bent.
A humming… then a melody… then a whisper. But none of them recognized the voice—and all of them did. It was like hearing your own scream from inside someone else's dream.
Lucy flinched. "That's Marcus's voice. That's his voice…"
Kitty stepped back. "No. It's not him. It's her."
Aestra Voxis had entered the field.
Emotion turned into sound. Sound into command. And now their memories… their losses… were becoming weapons.
Tom shouted, "Don't listen!"
But it was too late. Frank had frozen, staring at the empty space before him.
He saw Marcus. Not the ghost. Not the spirit he hoped for.
But a twisted memory. A false smile.
And then—
"Why didn't you save me?" the illusion asked.
Frank's legs gave out.
"No—no, I tried—I DID—I—" His voice cracked like the glyphs on the vault doors weeks ago.
Velmorith. Aestra. Obruhn.
Three shadows—three forces—now breathing together.
"Cover his ears!" Tom shouted. "NOW!"
Susan rushed over, pressing glyph-canceling runes over Frank's temples. The sound stuttered—then vanished. Frank gasped like someone pulled from underwater. He was crying, but didn't know why.
The others were pale.
"This is what it looks like when reality is no longer ours," Lucy whispered.
Peter finally said it: "They're not just attacking us."
"They're erasing the world one piece at a time."
Jack looked around. "Where's our next step? We were supposed to find the second vault."
"No," Kitty said, staring at the rippling horizon. "Now, our next step is to survive the next hour."
Susan slammed her notebook shut. "We can't run from this anymore."
Frank stood shakily. "Then we face them."
Tom's eyes blazed. "Not yet. Not without knowing what they want."
Just then—seven shadows formed across the dirt behind them.
But no one stood there to cast them.
Each shadow was shaped like one of them.
And each was whispering… backwards.
Lucy turned pale. "Those are us."
"They're showing us what will happen if we lose," Frank muttered.
"No," Tom corrected. "They're showing us what we'll become."
The shadows twitched.
And smiled.