The morning Kael's Landing disappeared behind them, the sky refused to brighten.
Dawn came as a reluctant gray smear across the horizon—not light so much as the absence of complete darkness. No sun broke through the clouds. No warmth touched the frost-crusted stones of the northern road.
Just cold. Deepening with every mile.
Nexus walked with The Night Slayer strapped across his back, the blade's weight familiar but wrong. He could feel it through the leather wrapping, through the layers of cloth he'd bound around the grip to keep from touching it directly.
The marks on his palm had faded to faint scars, but they still pulsed sometimes. Reminding him of secrets the sword refused to share.
Maris moved beside him, her breath fogging in the frigid air. She'd wrapped herself in layers—wool and leather and a heavy cloak that made her look smaller than she was. But even bundled against the cold, she shivered.
Merfolk weren't meant for winter. Weren't built for this kind of sustained, bone-deep chill that turned moisture to ice and made every breath feel like inhaling knives.
But she hadn't complained. Hadn't suggested turning back.
She just walked, one hand resting on the pendant at her throat, the other gripping the strap of her pack. Her True Aura Sense flickered out constantly—reading the world around them, searching for threats, trying to understand the wrongness that had settled over everything like fog.
"How far?" she asked quietly.
Her voice sounded too loud in the silence. Like speaking in a tomb.
Nexus didn't answer immediately. He closed his eyes, reaching for that pull—the direction The Night Slayer kept pointing him toward.
Northwest. Always northwest.
But fainter now. More uncertain.
Like whatever it was reaching for had grown more distant. Or more hidden. Or was being deliberately obscured.
"Days," he finally said. "Maybe a week if the roads stay clear."
"And if they don't?"
"Longer."
Maris nodded, accepting this without argument.
They walked in silence for another hour before she spoke again.
"Nexus?"
"Mm?"
"Something's wrong with the world."
He glanced at her. "I know."
"No, I mean—" She struggled for words, her breath coming faster. "It's not just cold. It's not just winter coming early."
She stopped walking, forcing him to stop too. Her blue-gray eyes were wide, pupils dilated. The look of someone seeing something they didn't want to believe.
"The auras are... fading," she said quietly. "Everything we pass. Every person. Every animal. Every tree."
Nexus frowned. "Fading how?"
"Dimming. Like candles burning down to nothing." Her hand tightened on her pendant. "In Kael's Landing, it was subtle. I thought I was imagining it. But out here—"
She gestured at the landscape around them.
"It's getting worse."
Nexus looked at the world through new eyes.
The trees lining the road were bare—normal for approaching winter. But their bark looked gray. Lifeless. Like they'd been dead for years rather than just dormant.
The grass in the fields they passed was brown and brittle, crunching underfoot with a sound like breaking bones.
No birds sang. No insects buzzed. Even the wind felt wrong—moving without quite touching anything, like it was passing through the world rather than interacting with it.
"Reality's breaking," Nexus said quietly.
It wasn't a question.
Maris nodded, her expression haunted.
"It started three days ago. When we felt that wave—when Uncle Retro—"
She didn't finish. Didn't need to.
Three days ago, Retro's aura had screamed across the world. Had made reality itself flinch.
And apparently, reality hadn't recovered.
"Is it everywhere?" Nexus asked. "Or just here?"
"I don't know." Maris hugged herself tighter. "But it's spreading. I can feel it. Like... like the world is bleeding out. Slowly. So slowly most people won't notice until it's too late."
Nexus's hand found the hilt of The Night Slayer without conscious thought. The blade pulsed against his palm—warm where everything else was cold.
Alive where everything else was dying.
"Then we move faster," he said.
Maris looked at him, worry clear in her eyes.
"What if we're too late? What if whatever's happening—"
"We're not too late." Nexus forced certainty into his voice even though he didn't feel it. "We can't be. Because if we are—"
He looked at the dying landscape around them.
"—then there's no point in anything."
Maris held his gaze for a long moment. Then nodded.
They started walking again.
And the world grew colder with every step.
They reached Millford three days after leaving Kael's Landing.
Or what was left of Millford.
The village sat at a crossroads—a stopping point for travelers, a place to resupply before pushing deeper into the northern territories. Nexus had been here once before, years ago. He remembered it as lively. Crowded. Full of noise and light and the comfortable chaos of people living their lives.
Now?
Now it was silent.
The buildings still stood. Smoke rose from a few chimneys. But the quality of the silence was wrong—not peaceful, but empty. Like walking through a stage set after the actors had abandoned it.
Nexus and Maris approached slowly, hands on weapons, senses stretched to their limits.
No one greeted them at the village edge. No one called out warnings or welcomes. No dogs barked. No children played in the muddy streets.
Just silence.
And that smell—
Maris gagged, one hand over her mouth.
Nexus smelled it too. Rot. Decay. But not quite right. Not the familiar stench of spoiled meat or sewage.
This was different. Sweeter. More cloying.
Like flowers left too long in a sealed room.
"Stay close," Nexus muttered.
His shadow spread around them without conscious command—protective, reactive, ancient instincts recognizing danger even if he couldn't see it yet.
They moved deeper into the village.
The buildings were intact but wrong. Doors hung open. Windows were dark. Personal belongings lay scattered in the streets—bags dropped mid-step, tools abandoned mid-use, a child's doll face-down in a puddle.
As if everyone had simply stopped what they were doing and walked away.
Or been taken.
"Nexus—"
Maris's voice was thin. Terrified.
She pointed at a house on their left.
The door stood ajar. From inside came the faintest sound—breathing. Wet. Labored.
Someone was alive in there.
Nexus approached carefully, shadow-stepping to the doorway in a flicker of darkness. He peered inside.
The house was simple. One room. Fireplace cold. Table overturned. And huddled in the corner—
A woman.
Middle-aged. Thin. Her clothes hung loose on a frame that looked like it had been much fuller recently.
She stared at nothing, eyes unfocused, lips moving in silent patterns.
Nexus stepped inside slowly.
"Ma'am?"
No response. She didn't even blink.
He moved closer, crouching a few feet away.
"Ma'am, can you hear me? What happened here?"
Her lips kept moving. Soundless. Repetitive.
Nexus leaned in, trying to read her lips.
Gone. All gone. Taken by nothing. Swallowed by the silence. Gone gone gone gone—
"Maris," he called softly. "I need you."
Maris entered, her face pale. She knelt beside the woman, reaching out with her True Aura Sense.
Then she jerked back with a gasp.
"What?" Nexus demanded. "What did you see?"
Maris's hands trembled.
"There's... nothing. No aura. No emotional signature. No presence."
She looked at Nexus with horror in her eyes.
"She's empty. Like someone scooped out everything that made her her and left just the body behind."
Nexus stared at the woman. At her moving lips. At her vacant eyes.
"Is she alive?"
"Physically, yes. But—" Maris struggled for words. "There's no one home. It's like looking at a puppet someone forgot to pick up."
Nexus stood slowly, a terrible understanding settling over him.
"The others," he said. "Everyone else in the village—"
"Probably the same." Maris rose on shaky legs. "But I'd need to check to be sure."
They searched for another hour.
Found seventeen people total. Men, women, children. All alive in the technical sense—breathing, hearts beating, bodies functioning.
All empty.
Hollowed out. Erased from the inside.
Left as breathing shells in a village that had become a tomb.
"What did this?" Maris whispered.
They stood in the village square, surrounded by silent houses. By doors hanging open like screaming mouths.
Nexus looked northwest—toward where The Night Slayer kept pulling him.
Toward where Retro was.
Toward where reality was breaking.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "But I think it's connected. The world dying. The auras fading. This."
He gestured at the empty village.
"It's all the same thing. One symptom of whatever's breaking."
"Can we stop it?"
Nexus didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
Didn't know if finding Retro would help or make things worse. Didn't know if bringing the fragments together would heal the damage or amplify it.
Didn't know anything except that they had to keep moving.
Had to keep following that pull northwest.
Because the alternative—doing nothing, staying still, watching the world hollow itself out one person at a time—
That wasn't an option.
"Come on," he said. "We can't help them. But we can keep moving."
Maris looked at the nearest house. At the woman inside, still mouthing silent words.
"We're just leaving them?"
"What else can we do?" Nexus's voice came out harsher than he intended. "We don't know what happened. Don't know how to fix it. Don't even know if it can be fixed."
He forced himself to look away from the houses. From the empty people.
"The best thing we can do is find Uncle Retro. Find answers. Find out what's happening and how to stop it."
Maris nodded slowly, though her expression remained troubled.
They gathered what supplies they could from the abandoned village—food that hadn't spoiled, fresh water, heavier clothes against the worsening cold.
All of it left behind by people who would never need it again.
By evening, they were moving north once more.
And behind them, Millford sat in silence.
Seventeen breathing bodies.
Zero souls.
A warning written in absence.
They didn't speak much after Millford.
What was there to say?
The world was dying. People were being erased. And they were walking deeper into whatever was causing it with nothing but hope and a sword that wouldn't share its secrets.
The temperature dropped further with each passing day.
Frost became ice. Ice became snow. Snow became a constant, driving presence that obscured visibility and turned the road into a treacherous mess of hidden ice and drifts that could swallow you to the waist.
Maris suffered the most.
Her merfolk physiology wasn't built for this. She moved slower each day. Shivered harder. Her lips took on a blue tinge that no amount of layers could warm.
But she kept going.
Nexus watched her with growing concern. Watched her stumble more often. Watched her breathing grow labored. Watched the light in her eyes dim with exhaustion that no amount of rest could cure.
"We need to find shelter," he said on the seventh day.
The wind howled around them, carrying snow that felt more like shards of glass than water. Visibility was down to maybe ten feet. The road had disappeared hours ago, buried under drifts.
They were navigating by instinct and The Night Slayer's pull now.
Maris didn't argue. Couldn't, probably. She just nodded, teeth chattering too hard for speech.
Nexus scanned the white expanse around them.
Nothing. Just snow and wind and—
There.
A dark shape in the distance. Barely visible through the storm.
Building? Cave? Rock formation?
Didn't matter. It was shelter.
"Come on," he said, taking Maris's arm to support her.
She leaned on him heavily, her legs barely cooperating.
They trudged through the snow, each step an exercise in determination. The wind fought them. The cold gnawed at exposed skin. The world itself seemed determined to stop them from reaching that dark shape.
But they made it.
The structure resolved as they got closer—an old waystation. Stone walls. Heavy door. Built for travelers caught in exactly this kind of storm.
Abandoned now, by the looks of it. No smoke from the chimney. No light in the windows.
But intact. Standing. Shelter.
Nexus pushed the door open.
Inside was dark and cold, but at least the wind couldn't reach them.
He lowered Maris carefully to the floor, then moved to check the building.
One large room. Fireplace with wood stacked beside it. A few old cots with moth-eaten blankets. Supplies long since scavenged or rotted away.
But safe. Defensible.
Good enough.
Nexus set about building a fire while Maris huddled against the wall, wrapped in every layer she had.
The wood was old but dry. It caught quickly, flames spreading with almost desperate eagerness. As if the fire itself was grateful for purpose.
Warmth slowly filled the space.
Maris crawled closer to the flames, holding her hands out to the heat. Her shivering gradually subsided. Color returned to her lips.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Nexus nodded, settling beside her.
Outside, the storm howled. Inside, for the first time in days, they felt almost human.
"How much further?" Maris asked after a while.
Nexus closed his eyes, reaching for that pull.
Still northwest. Still distant.
But different now. More urgent. Like whatever it was pulling toward sensed them approaching.
Like it was calling more desperately.
"Days," he said. "Maybe a week if the weather stays like this."
Maris looked at him, her expression unreadable in the firelight.
"We might not make it. The cold. The emptiness spreading. Whatever's happening—"
"We'll make it," Nexus interrupted.
"You don't know that."
"No," he admitted. "But I have to believe it. Because if I don't—"
He trailed off, staring into the flames.
Maris leaned against his shoulder, too tired to maintain distance.
"Tell me something," she said quietly. "Tell me something good. Something from before all this. Before the world started breaking."
Nexus thought for a long moment.
Then he spoke—quiet words about summers in Atlas's archive. About learning to read ancient texts by candlelight. About his father's rare smiles when Nexus solved a particularly difficult puzzle.
About Retro teaching him to use his shadow without fear. About feeling safe despite the darkness around him because his uncle made light seem less important than learning to navigate the dark.
Simple memories. Small moments.
But they were good. And in a world that was actively erasing goodness, that mattered.
Maris listened, her breathing evening out, her body relaxing against his.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
Nexus stayed awake, tending the fire, watching the storm through cracks in the shutters.
The Night Slayer pulsed against his back. Steady. Insistent.
Northwest. Keep moving. Find him. Find him before it's too late.
But too late for what?
Too late to save Retro?
Too late to stop whatever was breaking the world?
Too late to prevent something even worse?
Nexus didn't know.
All he knew was that the cold kept deepening.
The silence kept spreading.
And somewhere ahead, in the howling dark, answers waited.
Whether he'd survive long enough to find them—
That remained to be seen.
Nexus didn't remember falling asleep.
One moment he was watching the fire, mind churning through possibilities and fears.
The next—
He stood in snow that stretched to every horizon.
Not the storm-wracked landscape outside the waystation. This was different. Cleaner. More absolute.
An endless white plain under a colorless sky.
And he wasn't alone.
A figure stood in the distance. Small. Child-sized. Hooded.
Lune.
Nexus recognized him instantly even though they'd never met. Had only heard stories. Had only seen sketches in his father's notes.
The spirit-touched child who appeared at moments of grief and transition.
Who witnessed endings without judgment.
Lune turned, fog-glass eyes catching light that had no source.
"You're getting closer," the child said. His voice was soft. Distant. Like wind through reeds.
"Closer to what?" Nexus demanded.
"To the center. The break. The place where everything tears."
Lune took a step forward, and the snow beneath his bare feet didn't compact. Didn't react. Like he weighed nothing. Like he was barely there at all.
"She sealed him, you know. Tried to stop the breaking by removing the broken piece."
"Gaia," Nexus said.
It wasn't a question.
Lune nodded.
"But souls don't work that way. You can't cut away pain and expect the rest to function. You can't remove grief and think love will remain whole."
The child looked up at the empty sky.
"All she did was delay. The fragments still reach for each other. Still try to reunite. And when they do—"
"Reality breaks," Nexus finished.
"Reality completes the break," Lune corrected gently. "What you're seeing—the emptiness, the fading, the hollowing—that's not a new wound. It's an old one finally bleeding through."
Nexus felt cold that had nothing to do with snow.
"How do we stop it?"
"You don't." Lune's voice carried infinite sadness. "You can only witness. Bear testimony. Remember what was before it's gone."
"That's not good enough!"
Nexus's shout echoed across the white expanse. His shadow exploded outward, darkening the snow, reaching for Lune with desperate fury.
But the child didn't flinch. Didn't move. Just watched with those fog-glass eyes as darkness crashed against him and found nothing to grip.
"Rage won't help," Lune said quietly. "It never does. Only understanding. Only acceptance of what can't be changed."
"I won't accept this." Nexus forced his shadow back under control. "Won't accept the world just... ending. There has to be something—"
"There is," Lune interrupted.
He pointed northwest.
"Five pieces scattered. Five wounds bleeding. Five fragments screaming to be whole."
His hand lowered.
"Bring them together. Force reunion. Make the soul complete even if it breaks everything else."
"That'll destroy reality," Nexus protested.
"Perhaps." Lune tilted his head. "Or perhaps reality needs to break completely before it can rebuild correctly. Perhaps this world—this iteration, this attempt—was always meant to fail."
"You're saying we should let it happen? Let everything die?"
"I'm saying you should do what feels right." The child's voice softened further. "Not what's safe. Not what's smart. What feels right in the deepest part of you."
Nexus stared at him.
"And what feels right to me?"
"You already know." Lune turned away, starting to fade into the white distance. "You've known since you picked up that sword. Since you felt it pulling you north. Since you chose to follow despite every warning."
His voice grew distant.
"You're going to bring him home. Going to reunite the fragments. Going to force completion even if it costs everything."
"Wait—" Nexus called. "What happens when the fragments come together? What—"
But Lune was gone.
And Nexus was waking to Maris shaking his shoulder gently.
"Nexus. Wake up. The storm stopped."
He blinked, disoriented. For a moment he was still in that white expanse, still hearing Lune's voice.
Then reality reasserted itself.
The waystation. The dying fire. Maris's worried face above him.
"You were talking in your sleep," she said quietly. "About fragments. About breaking. About—"
"I'm fine." He sat up, rubbing his face. "Just a dream."
But they both knew it wasn't.
Dreams didn't leave you feeling this certain. This directed. This aware of terrible choices that had to be made.
Outside, the storm had indeed stopped.
The world was silent. Covered in fresh snow that sparkled in weak sunlight.
Beautiful, if you ignored the wrongness underneath. If you ignored the way the light seemed dimmer than it should be. If you ignored the absolute absence of any living sound.
Nexus and Maris packed their meager supplies.
Checked their weapons.
Prepared to move back into the dying world.
Before leaving, Nexus paused at the door. Looked back at the waystation that had sheltered them.
It felt important somehow. Like this might be the last moment of relative safety. The last pause before everything accelerated beyond control.
"Ready?" Maris asked.
Nexus adjusted The Night Slayer on his back.
The blade pulsed stronger now. More urgent.
Northwest. Northwest. He's close now. So close. Come find him. Come bring us home. Come make us whole even if it breaks the world.
"Ready," Nexus lied.
They stepped into the snow.
And the howling silence swallowed them whole.