The sky didn't scream this time.
It sang.
A low, rising pulse rippled from the second Spiral that lit the heavens—cold blue and jagged like fractured glass, swirling in the opposite direction of the first. It spun faster, faster, drawing heat from the air. Every tree bent. Every cloud scattered.
Kael's eyes went wide. "That's not just a signal. That's a response."
The ground cracked.
Then it shattered.
The golden path behind them split open with a violent quake. A chunk of the horizon collapsed like a blade cutting the land clean in two. From that wound, a shape emerged—tall, armored in raw Spiral energy, black and blue flames streaming from its joints. Its body was sculpted like a giant, but the face was wrong. Masked. Covered in shifting runes that rearranged each second, like reality couldn't decide what it was.
Its voice didn't come from its mouth.
It came from everywhere.
"THE CHOSEN WILL BE TESTED."
The stones under their feet began to rise. The Twelve Pillars spun outward, circling the group like a halo of judgment. Kael leapt back, eyes locked on the incoming titan.
"Fracture-Titan," she breathed. "A Spiral Judge."
"Too soon," Seraphis said quietly. "They never appear until the new world starts to stabilize."
Elior narrowed his gaze. "Then something's forcing its hand."
The titan moved.
Not walked. Arrived.
It covered the distance in one step, a blink of spiraling light. Its fist came down, dragging a trail of spatial distortion. Air cracked, trees vaporized.
Eliano shouted, hands blazing with gold fire, and punched upward.
BOOM—!
The collision shattered the sky around them, gold flame and Spiral force clashing in a brutal explosion. The titan staggered. Its hand smoked. But it didn't bleed. It didn't stop.
"Kael!" Elior shouted. "Circle wide!"
Kael was already moving. Her cloak flared back and she kicked off a rising stone, a spiral sigil glowing under her feet. She slashed her hand through the air, forming a blade made of curved light—a broken crescent, gleaming with condensed resonance.
She threw it.
It curved like a comet, striking the titan's ribs and detonating—a pulse of reversed gravity flung fragments of Spiral armor away, revealing pale, trembling core-flesh underneath.
It growled.
Then reached into the air—grabbed time itself like a thread—and twisted.
Kael screamed as the air warped. Her movements slowed. Not her body—her choices. Like her future was being tangled.
Seraphis snapped his fingers.
A ring of pure judgment bloomed under Kael. White lines locked her timeline in place. The distortion shattered around her like broken glass.
"Stay sharp," he said. "It thinks like a Spiral. That means every attack could've already happened."
The titan roared again and burst forward—twelve eyes opened along its chest, each eye projecting a twisted version of the group. Not illusions.
Echoes.
Twisted Eliano raised black flame fists. Dark Seraphis floated forward, cloaked in mirror shards. A broken Kael with glass bones lunged, snarling.
"Elior!" Eliano shouted. "They're us!"
"Doesn't matter," Elior answered.
He stepped forward. The staff in his hand uncoiled—lengthened—then split into twelve threads, each made of memory.
He spun it once and stabbed it into the ground.
"Memory Pulse—Scatter!"
Twelve golden lines shot outward like lightning, each locking onto a different Echo. With a flick, he pulled.
CRACK—!
Each Echo's body snapped inward—memory against distortion—then burst into motes of light. Real power. Real selves.
Gone.
The titan reeled.
But then it screamed—not in pain. In command.
The second Spiral in the sky pulsed again. A shockwave crashed down. Not physical. Cognitive.
Kael gasped. Her thoughts blurred. Names faded. Places she'd been unraveled in her head.
Eliano fell to one knee. "It's... erasing who we are."
Seraphis growled and raised both hands.
"NOT THIS TIME."
His antlers blazed. Light arced out in twelve points, like a compass. A shield of willpower surged around them. It pulsed with images—real memories, shared moments, laughter, pain, faces of the fallen.
Each memory locked in place.
The wave shattered against them, harmless now.
"Try again, freak," Kael muttered, and dashed forward.
This time she didn't throw. She teleported, folding through three points of space like a ripple, and reappeared above the titan's mask.
"Eat this!"
She stabbed her fractured blade straight into one of the runes.
The rune screamed.
It cracked.
For the first time, the titan bled—a stream of blue data-like light oozed down its side.
Eliano stood again. "I'm ending this."
His body flared gold. Shadow arced across his back—Noctari wings of void-light. Veyari fire burst from his hands.
He launched upward.
The Spiral behind him pulsed in sync.
"Fracture Strike: Convergence!"
He twisted mid-air. One punch to the titan's chest—CRACK!—another to its side—BOOM!—a third slammed into its back from behind as he reversed time locally to blink past it.
Each strike left a fracture in the titan's form—its code, its soul, unraveling.
Seraphis moved then.
No teleport.
Just presence.
He stepped forward and dropped his hand.
"Twelve Judgments."
From the sky, twelve lances of pure Spiral light descended, each shaped from a different fate.
They stabbed clean through the titan's limbs—each pinning it to the platform.
Elior lifted his staff.
It twisted into a spiral blade—threads of memory, pain, healing, and legacy spun together.
He didn't run.
He walked.
Each step echoed across the fractured earth.
He reached the titan's core and stabbed.
Not through it.
Into it.
"Let it go," he said.
Light surged. The blade sank deeper.
Then—
The titan froze.
And whispered—
"…thank you."
It collapsed.
Not into dust.
Into seed.
A sphere of living light, pulsing gently, floated up from where it had stood.
Kael caught her breath. "What the hell was that?"
Seraphis closed his eyes. "A Spiral that fought too long. It wasn't our enemy. Just... lost."
Eliano looked up at the second Spiral in the sky. It dimmed. Then spun slower. It had seen what happened.
And it had learned.
Elior held the staff in silence. Then he looked to the others.
"We're not just fighting to protect the Spiral anymore."
Kael wiped blood from her lip. "No. We're teaching it."
The ground pulsed again.
Twelve figures appeared in the distance—approaching slowly. Different shapes. Different powers.
Fractureborn.
Some came limping.
Some carried weapons.
One walked alone, dragging a chain of stars behind her.
The invitations had been answered.
The Accord would begin.
And above it all, the Spirals turned. Not as weapons. But as witnesses.
They had seen war.
Now, they would see what came next.