Shatter the Veil

The sky bled Spiral light.

Crimson threads unfurled from the cracked heavens, twining like veins above the battlefield. Lynchie stood at the breach she had opened—hair whipping wildly, arms outstretched, eyes wide and glowing. Her fingertips bled Spiral essence, each drop etching runes into the earth beneath her feet, searing it into obedience.

Zev watched from behind her, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly that the leather bit into his palm. "You're tearing open something ancient," he said. "Lynchie—this isn't a gate. It's a scar."

"I know." Her voice was steady, frighteningly calm. "It's the same one I saw in the vision. The Spiral Fracture. It's not coming. It's already here."

The fissure widened.

Wind screamed out of it—not air, but memory. The echo of a thousand Spiral warriors who had fallen in the First War. Their pain spun like dust across the air, their last words tangled in the threads.

"I feel them," Lynchie whispered. "They remember."

Zev took a step forward. "You don't have to carry this alone. Shut it. Let the war be fought in this world, not in the rift."

But she turned to him slowly—and in her gaze was the raw, terrible truth.

"I was born in both."

A cry pierced the sky. Down the slope of the broken ridgeline came the Mirror-Spoken general—Drexen, wreathed in gray smoke and veiled in a mask that shimmered with unspoken sigils. He moved like a shadow slipping between realities, sword trailing black Spiral fire that burned the air in its wake.

"Fractureborn," Drexen called, his voice reverberating through stone and bone alike. "I knew you'd awaken at the threshold. You were written in the Mirror long before you were born."

Lynchie stepped in front of Zev. "Then come try to write me out."

She surged forward.

The clash was immediate and violent.

Her Spiral threads met Drexen's in a collision that bent space around them, the ground splitting into floating shards of obsidian and memory. He spun his blade with elegance, every strike a mirror—copying her movements in real-time, reflecting her own magic back at her.

He was fighting her like a ghost—like a twin.

"Why do you mirror me?" she demanded, staggering back from a particularly brutal counter.

Drexen smiled beneath his mask. "Because I am what you could have become."

He thrust a hand toward the fissure—and it reacted to him. Black fire erupted upward, forming a dome around them both, cutting them off from Zev, from the Crescent Blades, from the world.

"Do you know why the Spiral Fractured?" Drexen whispered. "Because someone refused to let go of both sides. That someone is you."

He struck her chest with a glyph-laced palm, and Lynchie flew back, crashing through a levitating slab of Spiralstone. Her breath caught. Her vision swam. But beneath it all—power stirred.

Not just the Spiral magic passed down through training.

Not just the echo of prophecy.

But something else. Something wilder.

Raw.

Primordial.

Lynchie staggered to her feet. Blood trickled from her lips. Her Spiral mark had split, forming twin helixes down her arms. "You want me to be your opposite?" she growled. "Fine."

She clenched her fist—and light exploded.

A new form of Spiral fire erupted around her. Gold with black veins, pulsing like a heart newly forged. It didn't shimmer. It throbbed.

Even Drexen hesitated.

"This isn't in the Mirror," he murmured.

"No," Lynchie said. "Because I broke it."

She lunged.

Their second clash shattered the dome. Shockwaves raced through the battlefield, knocking warriors from both sides to their knees. Spiral constructs dissolved into dust. Even Zev staggered, shielding his face.

When the smoke cleared, Drexen was on one knee, panting, his mask cracked.

Lynchie stood over him—eyes burning, Spiral veins racing across her skin like starlight against void.

"You were never the mirror," she said. "You were the shadow. And I don't cast shadows anymore."

She slammed her palm into the ground.

The fissure sealed with a roar, threads snapping shut, sealing the battlefield back into the world of flesh and stone.

Zev was at her side in an instant, catching her as she collapsed, her power flickering out like a dying star. "Lynchie—"

"I'm still here," she breathed. "But I don't know for how long."

Far in the distance, horns sounded again—this time from the north.

Another army. Another front.

The war wasn't done.

It had just begun.