"If we proceed deeper into the cave system, they'll reach the core... and bring devastation tenfold,"
an elite ranger declared, standing in the center of the war room, gesturing toward the massive holo-screen.
On it, veins of red flickered through digital caverns — glowing like arteries ready to bleed.
Silence rippled.
Then a voice — calm, radiant, unmistakable — sliced through the static air.
"I'll join."
From the shadowed corner, she stepped forward.
Iris.
Her presence swallowed the room.
Her eyes shimmered like crystallized rose quartz, unnaturally luminous.
Her face was almost flawless, teenage.
Silver-white hair flowed behind her like whispered moonlight, moved by a wind that wasn't there.
Whispers erupted.
Then —
A demigod, tall and revered, slammed his fist against the table.
"Iris... You're the strongest among us. We can't afford to lose you."
Heads nodded around the chamber. Agreement unsaid, but clear.
Her life was more than valuable — it was hope itself.
But Iris didn't flinch.
She stood with quiet defiance, graceful yet immovable.
"My mind is made. We leave at dawn."
No one dared object.
They couldn't.
Not because of rank, but reverence.
Because when Iris spoke like that...
It felt like fate had already chosen.
At the highest point of the headquarters, beneath a moon drowning in haze,
Iris stood alone.
The world below carried on — lights flickered, engines hummed, life moved — but she stood apart, silent, unmoving.
Her gaze drifted far beyond the horizon, but her heart... further still.
Memories clawed at the edges of her mind — not blurred, but incomplete.
She could remember his voice.
His warmth.
The way his presence wrapped around her like a quiet sunrise after endless rain.
But his face...
His face was missing.
Like time had stolen it. Or she had locked it away.
A single flash came.
The ruins of a city, smothered in smoke and ash.
She was on the ground, bleeding, breath shallow.
And he —
That boy.
That stranger she took as her own like no other.
Knees collapsing, his chest impaled by a divine dagger hurled by some unseen god.
Lightning, golden and furious, surged from the wound.
Cracking the skies. Splitting the heavens.
She couldn't scream. Couldn't move.
She watched him dying... smiling.
"It's okay. I'm fine,"
his voice trembled, but his eyes stayed soft.
"You'll be eternal. Just as you once wished."
She wanted to tell him she didn't wish for this.
That she wanted him, not eternity.
But her lips wouldn't move.
Time stole even her goodbye.
She never got to hug him. Not once more.
SNAP
Reality struck like cold water.
The present returned in a gust of gentle wind, brushing her silver-white hair softly, like an old friend apologizing for being too late.
She reached for the silver locket around her neck.
It had never left her side.
She opened it.
Inside...
Not a photo. Not a name.
But a pulsing golden particle.
Alive.
Dim… but beating.
Her breath caught.
Eyes widened.
"He's alive..." she whispered.
The wind stilled.
"But where is he?"
The locket trembled.
And somewhere far from the city —
something ancient stirred.
Just then, a voice pierced the heavy silence.
"Iris!"
She turned, eyes still distant, as Tina came running across the rooftop.
Breathless but determined, her brows furrowed with concern.
"Do you really think it's a good idea to go there?"
Iris didn't answer at first — she simply looked out over the city, her silver hair catching the dying light of dusk like strands of stardust.
Then she nodded.
Once.
Firm.
Final.
Tina's face fell. She knew that look — the one Iris wore when her decision had already passed beyond questioning.
Beneath their feet, buried deep below reality's fragile crust, the cave waited.
But it was never just a cave.
It was a fracture in the fabric of creation — a wound in the multiverse left unhealed.
Born from a forgotten era, it had once been forged as a coliseum, a cruel stage for gods and tyrants to amuse themselves.
They summoned champions from infinite realities...
And monsters — primordial, shifting, grotesque.
Every battle fed the fracture, kept it alive.
But the beasts changed.
They evolved.
They began to understand the rules — then reject them.
And when they spoke... everything broke.
They saw past the game.
They glimpsed the architects of their torment.
And they wanted more.
Their power became uncontainable — too intelligent, too hungry.
They no longer obeyed, they conquered.
Whispers became warnings.
Warnings became wars.
And then, silence.
The Ancients sealed the portal.
Not out of triumph...
But terror.
Now, ages later, as that silence begins to crack once more...
Iris prepares to walk into the fracture.
Not to fight.
Not to survive.
But to finish what no one else could.
And somewhere in the depths of that endless void — something old... and watching... stirs.