The wind stopped blowing.
Not slowed.Not calmed.
Stopped.
As if it had found an abyss so deep that even the wind feared crossing it.
Ren felt the absence hit his chest like a blow.The unmoving air pressed against his ribs, as if trying to keep him from breathing.
Lyra touched his shoulder.
"Ren…? Do you hear that?"
He didn't respond.
Because there was no sound left to respond to.No wind.No roots.No footsteps.
Nothing.
And the nothing spoke.
A low vibration rolled through the ground, sliding up Ren's legs, climbing his spine, pressing the back of his neck like cold fingers trying to lift his chin.
Borin growled:
"Something's wrong…"
Draven was shaking so hard his teeth clacked.
"WRONG?! BORIN— THE AIR STOPPED. AIR. DOESN'T. STOP!"
Ren lifted his hand slowly, asking for silence—
Though no one was making a sound.
He looked at the others, then took a third step forward.
The forest reacted.
Not with tremors.Not with roots.
With absence.
The trees seemed to darken, as if wet shadows dripped over them and sank into the bark.
Draven covered his mouth.
"A-am I going blind? The forest is… disappearing?""No," Ren murmured."The light is being pulled."
Lyra stiffened.
"Pulled… by what?"
Ren tightened his grip on the staff.
He felt the pulse inside his Path.
The crack.The ache.The summons.
"By her."
Lyra blinked.
"Her… who?"
Ren lifted his head.
His eyes focused on something no one else could see.
And he said, in a whisper that sounded like a sentence:
"The Rift."
Borin and Draven froze.
The ground trembled.
Not as a warning —but as an eye opening.
The soil beneath them lost its color, draining into the same pale gray as the cultivator's aura.
Lyra dragged Ren backward.
"Don't go near that!"
But Ren stood still.
Hypnotized.Called.
The voice burst into his mind like a silent thunder:
"Come."
Ren's eyes widened.
The voice didn't belong to the cultivator.Nor the fragment.Nor the earth.
It came from a void.
A void that wanted to be filled.
"Ren!" Lyra shouted, shaking his arm. "REN! Look at me!"
He did.
And she saw.
For the first time—Ren's eyes weren't just cracked.
They glowed.
A cold, gray light.The same glow as the Rift shard.
Lyra stepped back, without meaning to.
And Borin, who feared nothing, stepped back too.
"What's happening to him?!" Draven cried.
Ren inhaled.
And the earth inhaled with him.
The voice returned:
"Break."
He staggered.
Lyra ran to catch him, but when she touched his arm she pulled away immediately—
As if she had touched living ice.
"Ren!" she screamed. "COME BACK!"
Ren pressed his fingers to his skull.
His head felt like it was splintering from the inside.
A fissure sliced through his mind—not his body,not his spirit,but his Path.
The voice again:
"Break."
And then another voice—faint, distant, trembling—the fragment:
"…no… do not break… do not follow…"
Ren's Path was being pulled between two worlds.
Between two choices.
Between two destinies.
He screamed.
Not in pain—but in effort.
Because something was dragging him into the gray—a realm without life, without time, without flesh.
The Rift.
Lyra cupped his face with both hands, tears in her voice:
"REN! You're with me. You're HERE!""Lyra…" he whispered. "If I don't follow…""THEN MAKE YOUR OWN PATH!" she shouted."NOT THE MONSTER'S!"
Her voice tore through the unmoving air.
And the light returned.
For one second.
One precious second.
Enough for Ren to breathe.
And with the last thread of consciousness not yet taken by the gray, he whispered:
"I will not break."
The earth convulsed—not in warning,but in anger.
The Rift roared:
"THEN BREAK THE WORLD."
The ground split open.
A gray fissure, wide, edges black, glowing like an eye.
Draven fell backward.
Borin raised his axe, shaking.
Lyra pulled Ren with all her strength.
And Ren—
Ren stood still.
Eyes glowing gray.Staff trembling.
His voice colder than anything he had ever said:
"This is your temptation."He raised the staff."But I choose the Broken Path."The fissure throbbed violently."And that Path is mine."
The Rift roared, furious.
And closed.
The light returned.The trees returned.The air returned.
Ren collapsed.
Lyra caught him before he hit the ground.
Borin and Draven rushed over.
And the final silence fell.
A silence not from the Rift—but from Ren.
Because something inside him had been sealed.And something had been released.
Lyra touched his forehead.
"Ren… what did she do to you?"
Ren opened his eyes.
And answered:
"She chose me."