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The Fracture Shows
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2025-07-13 12:03:04The tension was suffocating. The stolen ship rattled under the strain of its engines, cutting through dead skies, but inside, inside it was worse than any battlefield.
Mae sat, still cuffed, back against the cold wall, watching them argue over her like wolves circling fresh meat. Her heart thudded hard enough to bruise. Her wrists burned from the cuffs. Her skin itched, hot, electric, like the air itself didn’t know whether to suffocate her or ignite.“Breathe,” she told herself. “Just... breathe.” “This is insane,” Kaine snapped, pacing again. His cybernetic joints hissed with every sharp turn. “We should’ve left her in the rubble. She’s dead weight. Worse, she’s a heat beacon. Every bounty hunter in the sky is sniffing us out because of her.” Sethis spun lazily in his seat, grinning. “And yet, here we are.” Riven’s plasma wings flared in agitation. “Enough. You’ve said this.” “I’ll keep saying it!” Kaine roared, his red eyes flashing. His gaze snapped back to Mae. “She’s weak. Look at her. Cuffed, shaking, breakable. What the hell are we risking all this for?” Mae’s jaw clenched. She wasn’t going to sit here and be picked apart like she wasn’t in the room. “Say that again, scrap heap,” she hissed, fire sparking behind the fear. “Say it. Say it to my face instead of whining to the walls.” The room snapped silent. Sethis’s eyes widened, then gleamed with vicious amusement. “Ooh, wrong move, sweetheart.” Kaine stiffened. Turned. “You little-” Two steps. That’s all it took. His heavy boots hit the floor like thunder. His hand shot out, wrapped around her throat and slammed her back against the wall. Mae choked, her breath crushed out, feet barely scraping the floor. Her hands flew to his wrist, tugging, useless against the brute strength pinning her. “You’ve got a mouth on you for trash,” Kaine snarled. “Maybe I ought to break it-” Then it hit. A pulse. Not visible. Not sound. A ripple. Like reality itself twisted. Kaine jolted, the grip on her throat faltering, not from mercy but from something else. His cybernetic arm twitched violently, sparks shooting from the joints. His pupils dilated, confusion flashing through fury. “Wha-what the?” Her cuffs lit. A glow, not mechanical. Not technological. Something deeper. Older. They sparked, hissed, then went dead for a heartbeat. The lights in the room flickered. Lucien hissed, recoiling, chains snapping back as if burned. Riven flinched, one wing flaring protectively. Even Sethis sat bolt upright, grin fading, tension slicing his posture like wire. “The hell was that?” Only one didn’t move. Ashar. Still. Silent. Watching. Golden eyes locked, not on Kaine. Not on the others. On Mae. Kaine’s grip trembled. He snarled, tightening reflexively, then jerked his hand back as though something bit him. He stumbled a step. “What the hell.” His voice wasn’t rage now. It was confusion. Fear. “What did you just do?” Mae gasped, stumbling, hands flying to her throat. Her skin burned where his fingers had been, like the memory of his grip was branded deeper than flesh. Her heart raced so fast she thought it would explode. But worse, worse than the bruises, was the void she felt in that split second. A wrongness. A pulse from her. “No... no, no, no, what was that? What was that-” Tears prickled the edges of her eyes, not from weakness. Not from the choking. But from pure, raw terror. Even she feared herself. Lucien stepped back further, psychic chains curling tight like defensive serpents. “That wasn’t tech,” he murmured. “That wasn’t anything known. She fractured the field.” His voice was barely audible, like thought instead of sound. “No amplification, no catalyst. Raw.” “It came from her.” Sethis’s grin did not return. He blinked, scanning her with sudden seriousness. His fingers twitched over his data pad, trying to read, but the screen glitched, static, error codes, scrambled glyphs. “No way. No way.” Riven’s expression twisted, not angry. Not scared. Calculating. “Is that, what the Council was hiding?”“What did you do?” Kaine demanded, voice cracking. “What the hell was that?!”
Mae shook her head violently, backing into the wall, breath hitched and ragged. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Her voice broke. “I didn’t, I didn’t do anything-!” She wanted to sound strong. She wanted to spit in his face, to snarl, to fight. But her own body betrayed her. She was just as scared of herself as they were. The silence after was suffocating. No one moved. No one spoke. Not Kaine, the same one who was ready to hurt her. Not even Ashar. No, he didn’t speak either. He sat exactly as before, elbows on his knees, claws laced loosely together, golden eyes burning into hers like a forge. Ashar didn't have much to say, he couldn't. He just sat there. Watching her. Measuring her every breath. Silent. Waiting. Like he already knew the answers. Like he wasn’t surprised at all.
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Claimed by the Fallen Five What Was Taken
The first sound Sethis made was a breath dragged too deep into his chest. Not pain. Panic. Mae caught him before he fully collapsed, her hands gripping his shoulders as his weight sagged forward. His body shook beneath her touch, muscles locking as if they no longer knew how to hold themselves together. Where his shadows should have pooled, there was nothing. Bare ground. Empty air.“Sethis,” she said again, sharper now. “Look at me.”His eyes were wide, unfocused, pupils blown as if he were staring into something only he could see. His voice came out hoarse. “They are not answering.”Mae’s chest tightened. “They will. You just need a moment.”“No,” he said, almost violently. “You do not understand. They are gone.”The words hit harder than the blow Lucien had taken. Mae felt the fracture stir uneasily, a subtle misalignment where Sethis’s presence had always been threaded into the battlefield. It was not gone. It was wrong.Lucien staggered closer, chains still glowing faintly as he
Claimed by the Fallen Five The Shape of Refusal
The light did not explode outward. It collapsed inward.Mae braced herself as the golden rift collapsed in on itself, ash and air drawn toward a single point with terrifying precision. The ground groaned beneath her boots, cracks racing outward like veins beneath the skin. Her chains burned hot, not in defense but in recognition. This was not an attack. It was formation.Sethis swore under his breath, shadows flaring wide as he shifted closer to Mae. “That is not how a champion arrives.”Kaine did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the narrowing core of light, his jaw set, the gold fire along his arms dimming as though something were being siphoned away.The vortex tightened further. The sound deepened into a low resonance that rattled teeth and bone, not violent but deliberate. Mae felt it in her chest, a pressure that matched her pulse exactly. Whatever was forming was listening.Then the light split, and a figure stepped free.It was neither vast nor monstrous, nearly human in form
Claimed by the Fallen Five The Fracture Multiplies
The ground continued to tremble long after Kaine’s warning settled into Mae’s bones. The thin line of gold light at the horizon pulsed once, then again, like a distant heartbeat answering her own. Ash drifted through the air, clinging to her skin, her chains humming low beneath it all. Whatever had awakened was not rushing. It was gathering.Sethis stood rigid beside her, shadows drawn tight, coiled like a blade held back by restraint alone. His gaze never left the glowing horizon. “That light does not belong here,” he said. “It feels wrong.”Kaine watched it with a familiarity that unsettled her. The gold in his eyes flickered, dimmer now, as though something in the distance pulled at him. “It does not belong anywhere,” he replied. “That is the problem.”Mae forced herself to breathe. Every instinct screamed that this was spiraling beyond her control, yet the fracture inside her was calm. Not quiet. Calm. It pulsed steadily, as if this was always the direction things were meant to mo
Claimed by the Fallen Five Ashes in Gold
Kaine emerged from the ashes as if the world had been waiting for him. His eyes glowed with a steady gold that pulsed like a heartbeat, and the chains draped along his arms shone with a warmth that didn’t belong to death. Mae couldn’t breathe. Her body froze, caught between terror and relief.Sethis instinctively stepped in front of her, shadows rising in a defensive wall that flickered with uncertainty. The air around them shifted, heavy and electric, as if reality itself strained to comprehend how Kaine remained alive before them.Mae took one step forward. Her pulse echoed loudly against her ribs, her chains vibrating with frantic energy. She searched his face for something familiar, anything that proved he was the man she knew and not a shadow from the fracture.Kaine only smiled, slow and steady, as if he were greeting her in the quiet morning light instead of amidst the ruins of a battlefield that had nearly claimed them all. He lifted a hand slightly, palm open, offering calm i
Claimed by the Fallen Five The Return of Fire
The wind carried the scent of ash and iron, stirring the remnants of battle around them. Mae’s pulse thrummed against her throat, every beat echoing in the chains that still glowed faintly beneath her skin. Sethis stood only a breath away, his presence wrapping around her like a storm contained by will alone.“You’ve bound yourself to it,” he said quietly. “To the fracture. To him.” Mae’s fingers tightened at her sides. “I made a choice.”“No,” Sethis whispered, stepping closer, his shadows tightening. “You answered a call. One that will not stop until it owns you.”She turned to face him, the violet light in her eyes flickering. “You think I don’t know what I’ve done? You think I don’t feel it clawing through me?” Sethis’s expression shifted. Anger, grief, and something deeper. “You gave yourself to the thing that wanted to unmake you.”“I ended the war,” she said, voice trembling with exhaustion. “The champion fell.” He laughed once, dark and hollow. “Fell? Mae, it kneeled. There’s
Claimed by the Fallen Five Crown of Violet Fire
The Champion fell to its knees.The sound was like mountains breaking, stone groaning against the weight of surrender. Ash and flame swirled around its colossal frame as if the battlefield itself could not understand what it had just witnessed. The creature that had brought gods to ruin, that had swallowed armies whole, bent before her with its chains scraping low into the fractured earth.Mae’s breath caught. Her hands trembled in the still air, though her violet chains no longer shook. They pulsed in quiet rhythm with her racing heart. The Fallen stared in stunned silence, each of them caught between rage, awe, and disbelief.Lucien’s voice was the first to pierce the stillness, raw and unsteady. “No. This is not victory.” His chains rattled uselessly, still pinned by Mae’s will. His eyes burned into her like fire meant to scorch away illusion. “It kneels because you are surrendering yourself. You are feeding it exactly what it wanted.”Riven’s wings twitched against the bindings, f
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