Chapter 1617: Story 1617: When the Sky Broke
The horizon was no longer a line.
It moved.
The ash that had once been a graveyard drifted upward instead of falling, drawn toward the growing shape in the distance. The stars dimmed one by one, snuffed out as if by unseen fingers. And from that endless dark, the sound came—not a roar this time, but a heartbeat. Deep. Slow. Planet-sized.
Zara stood frozen, her hand still outstretched toward Damien. “What... what did you open?”
Damien’s gaze was distant, his expression hollow. The wind whipped around him, carrying whispers that bent the air. “It was never just beneath us,” he said, voice low. “It was everywhere. Waiting. Sleeping inside the dead, the earth, the sky.”
The Keeper turned his eyes upward. “The Veil is tearing...” His tone cracked with something close to awe—and dread. “He’s breached the skin of the world.”
A crimson fissure split the sky, veins of light crawling outward like cracks through glass. Through it, shadows poured—thick, liquid, writhing forms that had no shape, yet every shape at once. The air pulsed with their arrival, and reality wavered like heat above a flame.
Zara stumbled backward. “Make it stop! Damien, close it—whatever it is, close it!”
Damien’s hand rose as if to obey, but his fingers trembled, fighting something unseen. His voice broke through clenched teeth. “I... can’t. It’s not listening to me anymore.”
The Keeper’s staff struck the ground, a pulse of light radiating outward. “Then it must be contained before it devours everything!” He began to chant, symbols flaring at his feet—runes of old warding. But as the first lines of the circle formed, the ground beneath him rippled. The symbols twisted, melting into black script that crawled like insects.
The Keeper screamed, clutching his skull. “It’s rewriting the language of binding! The abyss is unmaking the laws themselves!”
Zara reached Damien again, gripping his arm. “Then fight it! You fought death, you fought gods—fight this!”
His eyes turned toward her—no longer human eyes, but wells of reflected infinity. “I’m trying...” He gasped as black smoke poured from his mouth. “But it’s learning. Every thought I use against it, it steals.”
Above them, the fissure widened. Through it, something immense began to descend—a silhouette with too many limbs and a crown of hollow flame. Each movement bent the stars around it, warping the world like glass under pressure.
Zara fell to her knees, her voice breaking. “What is that?”
The Keeper forced himself upright, blood dripping from his nose. “It’s not a creature...” His eyes glimmered with terror. “It’s the memory of creation devouring itself.”
The shadows closed around Damien’s feet, coiling like chains. He didn’t resist this time. “If this is the end,” he said softly, “then I’ll end it my way.”
He spread his arms wide, the ground beneath him splitting into glowing runes that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. “I called it through. Now I’ll pull it in.”
Zara screamed, “Damien, no!”
The last star went out.
And the sky itself began to fall.