Chapter 81
The winds outside the temple screamed like dying stars.
Dust peeled from the black dunes as the sky above Nightfell fractured—thin cracks of void energy spider-webbing from a growing rift overhead. Reality strained like glass bent too far.
Inside the ruined temple, Kiro knelt before the chained Naught, his skin soaked with blood and sweat. His heart beat to a new rhythm—one the stars no longer recognized.
"Again," the Naught growled.
Kiro gritted his teeth, driving his palm into the cracked stone floor. Viora threads burst from his core, dancing wildly—but they splintered, chaotic, uncontrollable.
The backlash slammed him into a wall.
He coughed blood, vision spinning. "It's too fast."
"There is no time," the Naught snapped, its voice layered with ages. "You do not have years. You have hours."
Kiro looked up.
Outside, above Nightfell's dreaming sky, a storm of mouths and bones twisted between dimensions. The Warlord Voidling was nearly through—its claws scraping against the membrane between Dream and Flesh.
It would not wait.