The Sky Cracks Open

The wind howled like a living thing, rattling the glass panes of the observatory. The stars—Ophelia's stars—shuddered, their once-fixed positions trembling as if something had reached into the heavens and begun to pull them apart.

She barely had time to breathe before the first crack split the sky.

A soundless rupture—jagged, unnatural, as if the very fabric of the night had been torn. Not lightning. Not a storm. Something deeper. Older.

Something that should not be happening.

The moment it appeared, a heavy pressure slammed into her chest, forcing the air from her lungs.

Ophelia staggered, gripping the edge of her desk, her vision swimming as the shadows in the corners of the room began to move.

No—not shadows.

Them.

The Forgotten.

They had come.

She heard them before she saw them—the whispers, curling through the air like tendrils of smoke.

"Forget the name."

"Forget the name."

"Forget the name."

The words slithered through her mind, wrapping around her thoughts, sinking into the marrow of her bones.

Ophelia clenched her teeth, shaking her head as if she could physically push them out.

But they did not stop.

The air in the observatory darkened, thickened, warping around the edges of reality itself. The very space between the walls seemed to twist—stretched thin, unraveling at the seams.

Then—they stepped through.

Figures rising from the void, their forms shifting and wrong. Limbs too long, faces blurred, as if they had never been meant to exist in the first place. They were not men, not creatures, but echoes of something that had been erased and wanted to erase in return.

The moment Ophelia saw them, a sharp, slicing pain tore through her skull.

Her knees buckled.

Memories **flickered—**blinking, fading, being pulled from her grasp.

The books on her desk—the forbidden texts—blurred before her eyes, the ink bleeding away from the pages as if history itself was being rewritten, erased.

She gasped, her pulse hammering, trying to hold onto what she knew, trying to cling to the truth.

But it was slipping—

Fading—

"Forget."

A voice breathed into her ear, close enough to send ice through her veins.

A shadow reached for her.

Ophelia jerked back, her instincts screaming—

And Zoriel moved.

Faster than a breath. Faster than light.

One moment, he was behind her—silent, unmoving.

The next, he was between her and them.

His cloak billowed violently in the force of the wind, the fabric dark as the space between the stars. And for the first time, Ophelia saw what he was capable of.

He raised a hand—and the air shattered.

A pulse of pure force erupted from him, sending the closest Forgotten reeling backward. The shadows convulsed, their forms breaking apart, twisting into tendrils of black mist before snapping back together.

They could not die.

But they could be stopped.

"Stay behind me," Zoriel ordered, his voice calm but lethal, edged with something dangerous.

Ophelia didn't argue.

The Forgotten hesitated, their whispering rising into a low, angry hum. The crack in the sky widened, lightless and endless, an abyss that pulsed in time with their movements.

Then—they lunged.

Zoriel met them head-on.

The air bent around him as he moved, not quite human, not quite mortal. He twisted sharply, one hand raised, and the shadows shattered under the force of his power—splitting apart, breaking into fragments of nothingness before reforming again.

Ophelia stumbled backward, her heart hammering as the observatory shook around them.

She could feel it—the way the very world trembled at their presence.

And then, in the midst of the chaos, she saw it.

The book.

Still on the desk, its pages fluttering wildly in the unseen wind.

Still changing, still rewriting itself even as she stood there.

If the Forgotten were here to erase Zoriel, to erase everything, then that book—

It held the truth.

She had to get to it.

She moved.

Zoriel saw her go, his head snapping toward her for the briefest second—"Ophelia—!"

But she was already there.

Her fingers closed around the book's worn leather spine, and the moment she touched it, everything stopped.

The whispers cut off.

The wind stilled.

The shadows froze.

And then—the observatory collapsed.

⸻

A deafening crack split the air as the glass panes shattered inward, the stone walls fracturing, the very foundation of the tower giving way.

Ophelia screamed, the world tilting beneath her feet.

She was falling.

The stars above blurred, streaking across her vision as the night sky spun violently.

Zoriel moved.

She **barely saw him—**just the glint of his golden eyes, the rush of power that surged toward her.

Then—impact.

Warmth.

Arms around her.

The world slowed.

She was no longer falling.

Zoriel had caught her.

For a single breath, everything was still.

Then—blackness.