The Gate did not merely open.
It tore.
The sky above Oshael split from seam to seam, howling like it remembered something it was never meant to recall. A chasm bloomed in the heart of the battlefield—dark, wide, and ancient—bleeding shadow into the waking world. From its wound, they poured forth: the Moonless.
Not beasts. Not men.
Something… in between.
Clad in rags of darkness, their bodies twisted by silence, they bore no sigils, no brands, no name-marks of the moon. Their eyes glowed with a lightless hunger. They didn't roar. They whispered—in voices older than language. The ground froze at their feet. Every howl was a scream bent inside-out.
Elric stood at the edge of the broken line, blades drawn, watching them flow like a second nightfall.
"I don't know what the hell those things are," he muttered, "but they're not just soldiers."
"They're not," Elias said, staring pale-faced at the Gate. "They're the broken children of the Pact. The ones we left behind."
Jonas didn't blink. His Hollowbrand pulsed as if it recognized the newcomers—not as enemies, but as... reflections.
"They're Moonborn," he whispered. "But unclaimed."
All around them, the armies of the other kingdoms fell into chaos. Some turned to flee. Others charged in confusion. A few stood paralyzed by sheer awe. The royal banners of Khatra fell. Nireth's elite archers dropped their bows and knelt, trembling.
And the Gate only widened.
The Pactbeast was gone, but the true war had just begun.
Auron stepped forward, raising his bonefire scepter high into the air. The wind bent around him. The Moonless stopped mid-motion—freezing in place like statues awaiting command.
"They're listening to him," Elena breathed. Her voice shook with disbelief and fury. "They obey him."
Elric spat into the dirt. "Of course they do. He came back from the dead to steal a throne he never earned."
"No," Jonas said quietly, "he came back to finish what the Pact tried to erase."
Auron turned to face them fully, face calm, eyes dead. "You thought this world could keep spinning on a lie. You believed the Pact made peace. But it made only chains. And I've come to break them."
"You're siding with monsters," Elena snapped. "You call that freedom?"
He looked at her, and for a moment… something flickered behind his eyes. Regret? Memory?
"I call it remembering," he said. "Something you've forgotten how to do."
Then he gave a signal.
The Moonless moved.
They surged forward—not with rage, but with intention. Coordinated. Measured. Deadly. Like a forgotten army reborn.
Jonas and Elric leapt into action.
Elric met the first wave head-on, his blades flashing silver, slicing through the void-twisted forms like paper. Bloodless, silent kills. Each enemy dissolved into smoke and ash—but not before whispering names. His name.
Jonas summoned a wall of moonlight, separating the Gate from the core of the battlefield. Elias chanted behind him, binding runes into the earth, one after the other, as fast as he could draw.
But there were too many.
From the western ridge, three more Gates opened.
From the ruins of the southern watchtower, another. And then one more—this time in the skies themselves, a floating tear from which moonless shadows poured like venom.
The world was unraveling.
And the moons—those once silent witnesses—aligned.
One by one, they eclipsed. Three circles of silver and blood passed across the sky, cloaking the battlefield in crimson twilight. The eclipse had begun in full. Magic bent. Time twisted. Bones ached with the weight of memory.
Jonas fell to one knee, the Hollowbrand burning hot enough to scorch through his tunic. His breath came ragged. Visions flickered in the corners of his sight—fields of lilies, rivers of fire, and an ancient mountain with runes carved into its heart.
He wasn't just seeing the present.
He was remembering all of it.
And so was the world.
Across the torn sky, kingdoms watched in horror. In the spire-cities of Bruthalor, the priests screamed as ancestral tomes caught fire on their own. In the underwater sanctums of Zaira's Pearl, the seers cried tears of salt and blood. In the snow-laced peaks of the Pale North, wolves howled and then fell silent—one by one—unable to bear the memory.
The eclipse was not just a celestial event.
It was a judgment.
And Jonas was its flamebearer.
Auron strode forward, unhindered, toward Elena.
"You don't have to fight me," he said. "You can stand beside me again."
"I died the day you died," she said. "Don't speak to me like we share blood."
He lowered the scepter.
Then attacked.
Elena met his strike with steel and fury. Their weapons collided with a roar of bonefire and moonsteel. Sparks flew. The battlefield became a circle of pain and prophecy. Every blow echoed with old grief. Every parry tore open new wounds.
Jonas turned toward Elias. "I'm going into the Gate."
"You won't come back," Elias said.
"Then don't let this world die while I'm gone."
And Jonas ran.
He dove into the heart of the rift, swallowed by shadow.
Inside, the world was not dark.
It was memory.
He stood at the edge of a glass ocean, beneath a sky of stars that whispered names. Ghosts walked in silence—wolves with torn sigils, kings without crowns, children bearing blades. Every soul who had touched the moon and been denied by it.
And at the center: a throne of bone.
Upon it sat a woman.
Her skin shimmered like dusk and moonlight. Her eyes carried galaxies. Her hair flowed like ink through water. She wore no crown, yet the stars bent around her.
"You've come," she said.
Jonas didn't speak.
She rose from the throne, barefoot upon the glass. "I am the First Moon's Memory. The one they sealed. The one your bloodline was meant to forget."
He stepped forward. "Why show yourself now?"
"Because the world has chosen," she said. "Because you are the only one who remembers. And because the Gate must be either closed… or fulfilled."
He shook his head. "Fulfilled?"
"You think it was meant to hold something in," she said. "But the truth is… the Gate was never a prison. It was a door. And now it is open."
She raised a hand.
Jonas looked—and saw a vision of himself, not as he was, but as he could become. Clad in silver and shadow, crowned in ash and flame, his eyes the color of night's last breath. Not a king. Not a god.
A judge.
The Moonless knelt at his feet.
The branded bowed.
And the world burned quietly in the background.
He recoiled. "No. That's not me."
"Then make sure it never is," she whispered. "But know this, Gatekeeper—there is no path forward without fire."
She vanished.
And the vision cracked.
Jonas awoke with a gasp—back in the battlefield, standing at the center of a circle of scorched earth. The eclipse was complete. The moons hovered in perfect silence above him.
The Moonless had stopped moving.
Even Auron froze.
Jonas stood, his sigils brighter than ever, his body changed. He no longer looked like a warrior. He looked like a warning.
And then he saw it.
Auron… was smiling.
Behind him, Elena stood.
Her eyes were wide.
The scepter was raised.
Auron twisted.
And drove the bonefire blade through her chest.
Jonas screamed.
Elric surged forward, too late.
Elias fell to his knees.
Elena staggered—her mouth opened, blood pooling at her lips. She looked at her brother.
And then she looked at Jonas.
She fell.
And the world broke with her.