The first step onto the bridge wasn't taken in courage. It was taken in silence.
We crossed into the unknown with nothing in our hands—no blades, no constructs. Only the weight of memory. The river below cut its silver path through the canyon like a scar across the world, and the wind barely moved. The bridge stretched ahead—ancient, fractured, scared. It bore out footsteps like it had borne countless before, but this time, it was waiting for an ending.
Konrads's coat rustled faintly as he walked behind me. I didn't turn. Erich blinked once to my right—his breath short, his eyes forward. He'd been wounded more than once in this war, and we both knew it wouldn't be the last time.
None of us spoke. We didn't have to.
The stones beneath our boots were older than us, older than anything we'd survived. Worn smooth by centuries of wind, war, and memory. The bridge groaned faintly beneath out steps—no creak of collapse, just the exhale of something that knew it was being watched.
We weren't three warriors. We were three remnants.
Helene stood at the far end.
Still.
Like a statue carved from purpose alone. Her dress, dark and pristine, swayed slightly in a wind none of us could feel. The air around her shimmered faintly—not with heat, but with memory. Like the space she occupied was anchored to another time entirely.
She didn't draw power. She didn't ignite threadlight. She didn't summon an army.
She waited.
But not as a passive figure.
As something that already knew how this would end.
I felt my own pulse sync with the flow of time—thread humming low in my chest, steady but slow. My fingers twitched slightly, not in fear, but readiness. The tension wasn't panic. It was something more ancient. The dread before a storm that had already been promised.
The bridge ahead shimmered faintly in the haze of early evening. The sun saw low behind us, casting long shadows that didn't quite reach Helene's feet. The line between light and dark was drawn across the stones like an omen.
There was no signal to start. No flare. No call.
Just movement.
One blink.
Erich darted forward—not to attack, but to test the edge.
No response.
Konrad's eyes never left her.
He took one step. Then another.
His boots hit the stones like quiet war drums. Rhythmic. Measured. The peace of a man who'd watched too many fall and refused to rush into anything else.
I advanced slowly, each step syncing to my heartbeat. The bridge didn't stretch long—but it felt eternal. Every foot gained felt like stepping through a layer of history that Helene had turned into armor.
Still, she didn't move.
Not a muscle.
Not a blink.
Her gaze didn't track us like a predator.
It stayed fixed. As if watching not us—but the memory of us.
I realized then—we weren't talking into a fight.
We were walking into a judgement.
A ripple passed through my thread.
The air shifted.
The wind grew still. The shadows near her feet didn't behave right. They moved like they belonged to someone else. Longer than they should've been. Sharper than any cast by stone and sun.
And then the sky flickered.
Not above us.
Around us.
A thin shimmer passed through the air like light off broken glass. It wasn't colorless. It wasn't visible. But we all felt it.
The air thickened—not with heat, but gravity. Like every breath was being pulled through layers of memory we hadn't chosen to keep.
I blinked instinctively—but nothing changed.
Then came the hum.
Low. Resonant. Like something far beneath the bridge had started to wake. It rumbled through our bones, passed through our threads like a frequency not meant for human senses.
Erich took another step. "What is she doing?"
I focused on her thread—not glowing. Not dormant. Just still.
And then the hum cut out.
Like a breath held too long, finally being released.
The wind slammed backward.
A single pulse passed through the length of the bridge, rippling across the stones like something ancient stretching after a long sleep.
And the fight began.
***
The sky didn't fall.
But everything else did.
A silence deeper than breath opened across the length of the bridge. Then the shimmer—barely visible, like the heat mirage on stone. It radiated behind Helene, pulling light inward.
And from it, they came.
Figures.
Nor formed by thread. Not summoned with gestures. No spells. No incantation. Just memory made into mass.
They walked.
Some were tall and angular, bodies flickering with harsh geometry like they had been shaped by broken clocks. Others hunched low, dragging long arms behind them—bodies smeared at the edges like paint running in the rain. There were no faces. No colors. No names. Just a tide of shadows.
They moved with perfect quiet.
No footsteps. No sound. As if they existed beneath reality, moving through the world without asking permission.
The first wave hit before any of us could speak.
Konrad raised his arm—his thread flared with a bronze halo around his shoulder. He froze the moment in front of him: a shadow inches from the impact, its clawed limb pulled back in a strike that would never finish.
Erich blinked forward, swept low with a spin and kicked another off the bridge. It didn't fall. It dissolved in mid-air—like it had never been.
I blinked backward. One landed where I'd stood, crouched and sniffing the air as if scenting regret. My thread burst outward in a wave—time staggered, the edges of the figures' limbs distorting with each breath.
But they didn't care. They weren't bound by sequence.
They just moved.
Konrad blocked another with his forearm, absorbing the hit with a surge of his thread. He staggered but stood his ground. More surrounded him, coming from impossible angles—one from above, one from behind, one climbing the side of the bridge like a spider on glass.
Erich vanished mid-sprint, reappearing at the rear flank—thread pulsing blue and silver, his body already reacting before his mind caught up. He elbowed one in the throat, drove his foot through the ribcage of another. The shadows shattered like glass, then rematerialized in new shapes—one now crawling with backwards limbs.
"They're not dying!" Erich shouted. "They keep coming back!"
"I know!" I blinked beside him, shoved one figure back, watched its body split into two smaller ones—each headless, each shrieking without sound.
Time jittered. The sun dimed and brightened in one second. Konrad yelled something, but the words tore sideways across the wind and were lost before they reached us.
The figures moved faster.
Not by speed, but density. The air grew thick. Vision blurred. A hundred shapes moving at once. Their shadows bent opposite the light. Their limbs rewrote their joints mid-step. One slithered under the stones of the bridge and erupted through the cracks, knocking me back.
I hit the ground hard.
The bridge underneath me cracked slightly, a fissure running to the edge. I caught myself, looked up.
Helene still hadn't moved.
She stood on the far end, hands clasped, eyes lowered. Not watching us.
Listening to us.
Remembering us.
Another wave.
Konrad shouted and threw his hand forward. His thread locked the air around the three incoming shadows, halting them in frozen stances mid-strike.
"Regroup!" I called.
Erich blinked beside me. Blood on his chin. "Three fresh gashes along his ribs.
"They're hunting in rhythm," he said. "A pattern. One forward. One behind."
I nodded, watched the way they formed. It was true. A cadence of strikes—past, future, mirrored.
"They're mimicking a sequence," I muttered.
The realization hit hard.
We weren't just fighting shapes.
We were fighting structures. Repetition. Loops of grief given form.
Konrad collapsed another with a palm strike. It's limbs bent inward, folded, and scattered like leaves.
But more poured forward.
Endless.
And above it all, Helene.
Still stationary.
Watching the past consume the present.
***
The bridge didn't shatter beneath us—but we did.
It began in silence. The moment the shadows surged again, all rhythm dissolved. Not through power, but design. We blinked, moved, braced—only to find ourselves separated.
Helene hadn't lifted a hand.
And yet, she'd positioned us.
Konrad dropped back. He had locked three figures mid-lunge, their bodies suspended in a moment he refused to surrender. Time clung to his shoulders like weight. Blood streaked across his brow. His breaths were slow, deliberate, measured—necessary. Like a solider who knew what came next.
He took a step. The bridge beneath him groaned.
Another shadow rushed—not toward him, but toward me.
Konrad reacted instantly.
He threw himself sideways, dragging the thread of that moment with him. His arm snapped outward, intercepting the blow meant for me. The impact never reached my ribs—it struck Konrad square in the chest.
A jolt ran through him, visible even from where I stood. His thread flared a harsh bronze, absorbing the force. His knees buckled slightly, but he gritted his teeth and stayed upright.
He had used his thread.
Not as a shield.
A sacrifice.
Another figure lunged for Erich.
Konrad shifted again—too far, too fast. His thread bled light as he caught a second blow meant for Erich's blindside. He stumbled back two steps, coughing, a dark smear staining the stone beneath him.
But he didn't fall.
He endured.
At the far end of the bridge, Erich was a blur of motion. He blinked in rapid succession, reappearing between two figures—his foot planted on one's head as he spun, using the moment to kick the second aside. His body flickered blue with every motion, time bending around him like fabric pulled too tight.
He was fighting like someone who couldn't afford to lose.
His strikes came fast—open-palmed hits, knees to soft joints, thread-fueled motions where blades should have been but weren't. But the shadows learned. They anticipated his rhythm. One cut high. Another low. He staggered, blinked behind them, knocking both down with a fast blow. But they reformed again—two more stepping into the fallen's place.
And Helene—
Still didn't move.
I stood in the center.
Exactly at mid-point.
Stone split beneath my boots. A faultline—hairline but growing—spiraled outward in a perfect arc. The sound of the river below barely reached me now. The rest of the world was losing definition. This bridge—this battlefield—was becoming everything.
I turned left.
Konrad's form blurred in the haze of shadow. He was anchored. Holding the line. Every time something came for me or Erich, he threw himself into its path, thread flaring, absorbing the pain that wasn't his to bear.
I turned right.
Erich, bleeding now. A gash across his temple. He blinked again—barely. His momentum slowing. Shadows were gather tighter, faster.
And me—
I was no longer fighting.
I was being watched.
The shadows didn't attack me.
Not yet.
They circled. Their limbs writhed like smoke given shape. I could hear them breathing—except I couldn't. It was like their movements dragged sound from the air itself.
I raised my hand, threadlight pulsing green. It didn't flare. It shimmered. Ready. Focused.
One stepped forward.
No face.
Just shape.
It lunged.
I blinked backward, sidestepped a second, caught the first by the arm and twisted. It's body cracked—then unraveled into smoke.
But the bridge beneath that strike didn't forget.
Another fissure spread.
Time shifted again.
My perception blurred. I reached for my thread, trying to rewind—instinctively, only to feel it resist. Like something had turned the dial already. Time was already moving where it wanted to go.
Not where I guided it.
My grip tightened.
I wasn't losing control.
I was being set.
Each of us had a place.
I felt them again. Not physically. Not through sound. But through resonance. Our threads had crossed too many times for me not to feel the tremor of their pain. I aligned my breath. Closed my eyes.
And saw it.
Erich bleeding silver.
Konrad trembling with held weight.
My thread shining faint gold.
Then I opened my eyes.
And saw Helene staring back.
***
Helene moved without moving.
The shift in the air was so slight, it could have been missed—a ripple at the edge of time, a breath taken out of sequence. But the bridge felt it. The summons felt it.
We felt it.
Her eyes—those deep violet pools—lifted the locked onto Erich.
He was too close.
The first memory broke free.
It wasn't an attack. It wasn't even violence. It was a moment—a forgotten cry of someone Erich couldn't save. The bridge around him blurred into a thousand reflections of past failures, each stepping from the air itself. Ghosts of all he'd outrun but never outlived.
They lunged.
Not physically.
They lunged through guilt.
Erich staggered, blinking back, but the memories followed. One latched onto his shoulder—not with hands, but with regret. Another whispered into his ear, a voice not meant for the living. His thread wavered, blue and silver light flickering uncertainly.
Another illusion formed—Clara's face—broken, hollow, reaching for him with hands that weren't hers.
Then Sayo—bloody and burning, screaming a name he didn't remember.
Then Shuji—silent and still.
The bridge tilted sideways in my perception. Reality itself rippled. Erich sank lower.
Helene tilted her head slightly.
More memories surged from the breach behind her—raw, jagged things half-formed. Some screamed. Others wept. A tidal wave of sorrow weaponized.
I moved.
I didn't think. I didn't plan.
The thread inside me responded.
It bloomed.
Gold light burst outward from my core—not a flare, not a scream. A steady, radiant pulse, warm and heavy as the first breath of spring. My hand reached out, not pulling from memory, but weaving.
It wasn't like flexing a muscle.
It was like exhaling something I hadn't realized I'd been holding all my life.
Threads spun outward from my chest, wrapping down my arm, coiling into my hand. They thickened, solidified—each strand looping over the next until weight began to form.
The sensation wasn't painless.
It was a deep pull from the marrow, like giving shape to something torn from the soul.
I lowered my hand instinctively, the weight of it almost unbearable at first, but I gritted my teeth and lifted it fully.
A long blade.
Golden. Elegant.
Designed for severing not flesh—but doubt.
The surface shimmered, like woven filament caught in the first light of dawn. It vibrated subtly, singing a frequency only the threads could hear.
I blinked.
Forward.
Straight into the flood of memories.
They screamed as I passed. Shadows of regret, anger, betrayal—withered and split against the golden arc of my blade.
I swung once, a wide crescent.
The illusions tore apart—like fabric set alight. They screamed, but not with sound. With presence. Their unraveling left tendrils of cold regret curling in the air, dissipating with each stroke.
I skidded to a halt, knees slamming into the cracked stone, reaching Erich.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
He was barely holding onto the last threads of himself.
I knelt and reached again—not into memory, but into creation.
The threads spun faster this time.
Two streams—thin, rapid, agile.
I shaped them without through.
Daggers.
Lightweight.
Curved slightly, their edges honed not for defense—but offense. Instruments of pure momentum, built for a fighter who never stood still.
The gold shimmered as they cooled into existence—ribbons of sunlight solidified into instruments of purpose.
I pressed them into Erich's hands.
His fingers closed around them naturally—like he'd been waiting for them his whole life.
His breath hitched—then steadied.
He blinked up at me, his eyes bloodied but burning now.
And he grinned.
A real grin.
No words.
None needed.
The moment he snapped back into motion.
The shadows hesitated.
Helene's gaze flickered.
And for the first time in this endless nightmare—
She looked surprised.
***
For a moment—a breath no longer than a heartbeat—Helene froze.
It wasn't fear.
It was something older.
Recognition.
The gold shimmered between us—threadlight vibrating like a living current—and in that pause, Erich moved.
No call, no warning.
He blurred forward.
The twin golden daggers glinted as he closed the gap, his body a streak of motion barely contained by the physics of the bridge.
Every footfall was precise.
Every pivot calculated.
His left blade cut upward, a feint. His right arced low, aimed for her ribs.
Helene twisted at the last second—too smooth, too precise. She didn't dodge by stepping aside. She shifted the space between them, misaligning their proximity. Space itself warped between them, like an image misaligned in a cracked mirror.
Erich's daggers sliced through air, the golden trails lingering a heartbeat longer than they should have before fading.
He blinked back, ankles skidding across the stone, breath misting in short bursts, sweat streaking his bloodied face.
She moved to counter—but that was when the second beat fell into place.
Konrad.
Still crouched at the fractured entrance of the bridge.
A silent, immovable pillar among a world collapsing into chaos.
I reached into the weave.
Threadlight coiled around my fingers, heavy and urgent.
This wasn't another blade.
This was precision.
A rifle.
Gold-threaded, the surface etched in filaments like veins of captured sunlight. The barrel was long, dense, shaped for power rather than speed, meant for one perfect shot.
I spun and hurled it toward him.
Konrad caught it mid-motion, shoulders shifting as he absorbed its weight into his frame without a tremor.
He didn't rush.
He moved like a solider at the edge of his final order.
Konrad knelt low, pressing the rifle's stock against his shoulder with a grace born of repetition. His movements were clean, ritualistic.
The gold shimmered faintly along the barrel, threads woven through its core pulsing with each heartbeat.
Konrad exhaled once—short, sharp—then closed one eye and sighted down the weapon.
Across the expanse of cracked stone and crumbling time, Helene's figure sharpened in his view.
Erich lunged again.
A high feint this time—then a low thrust.
Helene shifted, her violet silhouette blending into the broken air around her, her focus split.
And that was enough.
Konrad didn't blink.
He squeezed the trigger.
The crack split the air.
The golden bullet tore through the collapsing light between them, cutting through reality itself.
In the span between breaths, the bullet reflected the colors of a dying sun, threadlight brilliance into its wake.
It struck Helene.
A clean shot through the heart.
The impact was not a sound.
It was an implosion of presence.
No blood spilled.
Instead, her violet thread cracked outward in jagged lines, like ice breaking underfoot. The fissures ran through her, across her chest, up her throat, down her arms.
Helene staggered.
The wound at her chest pulsed once—violet light spilling through the cracks in her form, threading into the air like wounded memory. The illusions around us faltered, their movements slowing to a near-standstill.
Shadows that had once moved like rivers now stood frozen, limbs half-raised, faces half-formed. Their forms unraveled slightly at the edges, like cloth left too long in the rain. The bridge itself seemed to tremble under the weight of Helene's faltering hold—hairline fractures webbing out of breath beneath her heels.
The sky above wavered, as if the very fabric of reality stretched too thin. Clouds twisted in unnatural spirals, pulling downward as if gravity itself was trying to reclaim them. A faint tendrils of violet threadlight seeped upward from Helene's wound, reaching for the sky like pleading fingers.
For the first time, Helene stepped back.
A single footfall.
Not graceful.
Not controlled.
A raw, human retreat.
Her hand pressed harder against her chest. Threadlight spilled between her fingers—no longer pure violet, but darkened, bruised, poisoned by the golden strike embedded within her.
She raised her head slowly.
Her gaze locked on us—on Konrad, Erich, me.
But it wasn't the same gaze that had orchestrated all this. It wasn't cold—calculated, anymore.
It was something closer to desperation.
Erich shifted his stance, both golden daggers gleaming in the fractured light. His breath was ragged, but his footing was steady, the blue and silver of his thread coiling tightly around him like armor ready to snap.
I lowered my blade slightly, thread pulsing faintly at my wrists.
The bridge creaked beneath us—a sound so quiet it felt deafening. Each stone beneath our boots seemed to whimper under the pressure of what was about to come.
And Konrad—
Konrad didn't look at her.
He looked at his rifle.
Still kneeling.
Still calm.
His fingers moved with absolute precision. He slid the bolt back, letting the empty casing fall onto the cracked stone of the bridge with a sharp, echoing clink. It spun once, twice, skidding along a crack before coming to rest by his boot.
Golden light gleamed inside the chamber as a new round slid into place. The weave of the rifle's thread pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, steady, deliberate, unyielding.
The moment stretched.
The bridge held its breath again.
The river beneath us stilled, its once-rushing surface now a mirror of the broken sky. Faint ripples lapped soundlessly against the bridge supports, each one catching the fractured light and scattering into shards across the water.
Above us, the clouds ceased their churn, suspended in a canvas of pale grey bruised slashes of lingering violet.
I felt the world compress inward—a narrowing of possibility, a coiling of fate into a single, inevitable moment.
Erich's daggers hummed faintly.
My blade vibrated against my palm.
And Konrad exhaled once.
The breath misted gold in the cooling air, trailing upward like a prayer.
He chambered the next round with a final, echoing click.
And the golden rifle locked into ready.
The bridge—the battle—the very air—
Held.
Waiting.
For the next strike.