The giant's corpse—now wearing Zareth's madness like a second skin—lurched forward with impossible speed. Shadow tendrils snapped taut inside its limbs, jerking the hulking frame toward Elara.
She barely had time to scream.
A massive hand seized her, closing around her like a steel trap. The air punched out of her lungs as she was lifted clean off the ground.
"Elara!" Zephyr's voice tore through the ringing silence.
The puppet-giant turned, its new grin stretching grotesquely across dead flesh. Without hesitation, it ran, earth shattering beneath every thundering step.
Zephyr sprinted after it.
But a low, delighted chuckle slid over his shoulder—soft at first, then splitting into a manic chorus.
"You're running from the wrong monster, little heir."
Zareth—his true form now a blur of shifting silhouettes—glided behind Zephyr, matching his speed with infuriating ease. His laughter rose and fell like a lullaby composed by a mad god.
"Focus on me," Zareth whispered, appearing suddenly beside Zephyr's ear. "I am the future waiting to swallow you whole."
Zephyr's blade lashed out on instinct.
CLANG—SHRRRKK.
Sparks erupted. For a heartbeat Zareth's shadow-form rippled from the strike, his grin glowing like a cut in the void.
Zephyr didn't stop.Couldn't stop.
He burst through falling rubble, dodged broken earth, every muscle screaming to reach Elara before—
The ground ahead split open with a deafening crack.
A rift, jagged and swirling with colors the world had no names for, tore itself into existence. Reality peeled like fabric, threads whipping outward, pulling everything toward the yawning chasm.
The puppet-giant didn't slow.It leapt, Elara still trapped in its grip.
Zephyr threw himself after them.
The rift roared. The world shook. Chunks of stone spiraled downward into that impossible abyss.
Zephyr landed on a collapsing ledge, boots sliding as the terrain gave way beneath him. He saw the giant slipping deeper into the rift's glow—and the portal beginning to close like a snapping jaw.
Not yet.Not without her.
Zephyr roared, driving the Blade of Ruins downward. The edge screamed as it bit into the cracking ground, the weapon's ruin-energy exploding outward—forcing the rift's collapsing boundary to stall, holding it open just wide enough for a body to slip through.
His muscles trembled, the portal's pressure threatening to crush the sword—or his arms—into dust. But he held, teeth bared, staring into the swirling darkness after the retreating giant.
"Elara… I'm coming."
The rift pulsed once.Twice.
And on the far side, the puppet-giant's silhouette vanished into the unmade world beyond.
Zephyr braced himself, breath sharp as shattered glass, the collapsing portal screaming against his blade.