Light.Too much light.
Nox felt it stabbing through his closed eyelids, hot and sharp. His body hit solid ground an instant later, the impact knocking the air from his lungs.
He gasped and rolled onto his side.
The tower was gone.
He blinked rapidly, vision adjusting. He lay on a stone path under a sky filled with unfamiliar stars, each one flickering at strange intervals. The horizon glimmered with shifting colors, like dawn and dusk fighting over the same moment.
The air tasted wrong.Cold, but not from temperature.More like the world itself lacked warmth.
Nox forced himself to stand.
"Where am I?"
He spun slowly, taking in the surroundings. A long road stretched into a white fog. On either side stood buildings that looked half formed, their edges blurry, as if drawn by a trembling hand.
A door a few meters ahead flickered, phasing in and out.
This place was not whole.A timeline missing pieces.
He shivered.
The mark on his hand pulsed once, then again, as if reacting to the environment.
A whisper brushed against his thoughts.
"Verge-Bearer.You stand in what remains."
Nox swallowed.He recognized the voice. It belonged to the shadowed figure from the void.
He resisted the instinct to speak aloud. It answered anyway.
"This is a fragment. A stray second. A remnant of a moment that no longer exists."
Nox turned slowly.
A city in ruins stretched beyond the fog. Towers bent at impossible angles. Roads looped in on themselves. Time here felt broken, looping, uncertain.
Then something clicked in his memory.
Thalesis.
The city that was un-lived.Destroyed by a Verge-Bearer.
He whispered to himself."Is this... what is left of it?"
The voice hummed in vague approval.
"A scrap. A ripple. Nothing more."
Nox approached one of the half-formed buildings. When he reached out to touch its wall, his hand passed through it like mist. The image flickered violently, then stabilized again.
He stepped back quickly.
The environment was unstable, like a dream struggling to hold shape.
A sudden scream pierced the stillness.
Nox froze.
It sounded close. Human.
"Help me... please..."
The voice trembled with fear.
He hesitated only a heartbeat before running toward the sound. The stone road warped beneath his feet, stretching and shrinking unpredictably, but he pushed forward until the fog thinned enough to reveal a figure curled beneath a collapsed archway.
A girl, roughly his age, dressed in tattered scholar robes.
He dropped to his knees beside her.
"Are you hurt? Can you stand?"
She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes."You... you are solid."
Nox blinked."What?"
"Everyone else here is dust. Memories. Echoes. But you... you are real."
She grabbed his wrist, noticing the mark.
Her breath hitched.
"The Verge.You carry the Verge."
Nox pulled back slightly."You know what this is?"
She nodded slowly, trembling.
"My brother was a Verge-Bearer."
Nox felt the blood drain from his face.
"What happened to him?"
Her voice cracked.
"He saved me. Then the city fell. And I have been trapped here ever since. Caught in a moment that should not be."
She clutched his hand tightly, as if anchoring herself to him.
"Please. Help me escape. I cannot die. I cannot live. I am stuck in a second that keeps repeating. You can break it. You can open a path."
Nox's pulse sped up.
He had no idea how to do that.
Before he could answer, the world trembled violently. The fog twisted. The buildings flickered faster. The girl flinched and buried her face against his chest.
"No. Not again. The second is collapsing."
Nox felt the mark on his hand burn, filling him with a cold clarity.
The voice whispered.
"Choose.Hold the second together...Or let it fall and cut your way out."
The girl clung to him.
"Please. Do not let me fade."
Nox sucked in a breath.
He had to make a decision.
Now.