I stood in the darkness, the air thick with the weight of the choice Elias had left me with. My heart pounded in my chest, the silence pressing down on me like an unbearable weight. My mind raced, but every thought felt fragmented, incomplete. I didn't know what to do. How could I choose between saving myself and saving everyone else?
"Choose, Liora." The words echoed in the void, reverberating through me like a thunderclap.
But what if the wrong choice meant the end of everything? What if choosing myself would doom the world? Could I even live with that?
I closed my eyes, my mind drifting back to the people I cared about—Elias, the world I once knew, the fragile hope that had kept me going through all this madness. And then, the image of the rift, its chaos, its hunger. The rift had already taken so much. But was it too late to stop it? Could one person truly undo the devastation?
My breath hitched as I realized something—the rift wasn’t just a threat to the world. It was a reflection of my own choices, my own mistakes. It was a part of me. I had created this mess, and now it was consuming everything in its wake. Maybe fixing it didn’t mean choosing between saving myself or saving others. Maybe it meant facing what I had become.
"You have to decide, Liora," Elias repeated, his voice now tinged with a frantic urgency.
But was it really Elias? Or was it just the rift, trying to manipulate me further?
The ground beneath me trembled again, the cracks in the void deepening. The world was unraveling, and time was slipping through my fingers like sand.
Suddenly, a thought struck me like lightning: What if the only way to stop the rift was to sacrifice everything?
I didn’t know if it was the right answer, but it felt like the only one left. I had seen the darkness it could unleash. I had seen the endless suffering, the lives lost. The rift wasn't just about collapsing timelines or realities. It was about something deeper. Something personal.
The rift was part of me, and only by confronting it head-on could I end this nightmare. The thought gripped me with terrifying clarity: I had to destroy the rift from the inside out.
I stepped forward, the weight of my decision settling in my chest like a stone. The darkness around me felt colder now, heavier. There was no going back.
To destroy it, I needed to become one with the rift. I had to willingly merge with its destructive force and sever its hold on the world. It wasn’t a simple act of willpower. The rift was a manifestation of chaos, and to undo it, I had to experience that chaos firsthand—become its final victim.
But the sacrifice was more than just my body. It was my soul, my very essence, that would be torn apart. Once I entered the rift, there would be no return. No turning back. If I failed... everything, everyone, would be lost.
"I... I choose to end it," I whispered to the void, my voice steady despite the fear that gripped me.
The world around me seemed to freeze. The rift pulsed once more, its energy thrumming with an intense force that made my skin crawl. The very fabric of reality seemed to unravel before me, as if the rift had grown hungry for the chaos I was about to bring.
Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled forward. The void stretched, twisting around me like the tendrils of a great beast. A cold, alien sensation gripped me as I stepped toward the heart of the rift, where the darkness was thickest. And then, without warning, the ground beneath my feet collapsed, and I fell.
I tumbled through the endless expanse of blackness, the world disintegrating around me. But I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t afford to be. I knew what had to be done. I focused on the core of the rift—the heart of the chaos that had been consuming everything.
The energy surged around me, a storm of jagged darkness that sought to tear me apart. But I resisted, gathering every last ounce of strength within me. I raised my arms, reaching out toward the heart of the rift.
And then, I did something I never thought I could do: I let go. I released every part of myself—my fear, my doubts, my pain—and I merged with the rift. It was like plunging into a storm, a tornado of memories, emotions, and possibilities, all swirling together in a maelstrom of destruction.
The rift pulled at me, trying to break me, to consume me, but I held on. I became the rift. I felt its hunger, its anger, its endless desire to tear everything apart. And in that moment, I understood it. The rift wasn’t just a force of chaos. It was born from fear, from the choices I had made, from the darkness within me that I had never confronted.
With a final scream, I forced my will into the core of the rift. I shattered it from the inside, breaking its hold on reality. The explosion of light was blinding. The darkness shattered into a million pieces, scattering like shards of glass in all directions.
For a brief moment, I felt nothing—only the cold emptiness of the void. And then, the silence was broken. A burst of light flooded through the darkness, washing away the shadows that had lingered for so long.
When I opened my eyes again, everything was different. The rift was gone, its remnants dissolving into the air. The world was whole again, the sky above me clear and open, stretching endlessly in every direction. The ground beneath my feet was solid, real. The chaos was over.
But then I felt it—a faint tremor, like the ripple of something still stirring beneath the surface. No... it can't be. I turned, scanning the horizon, but saw nothing. The world seemed peaceful, serene even. Yet, that tremor lingered in the pit of my stomach, a warning that hadn’t yet been realized.
I was alone—but I wasn’t lost. I had made the choice. And in doing so, I had freed the world from the rift's grip.
But something was off. My connection to the universe felt different, distant, like a thread that had been severed and hastily mended, not quite whole. As I took a step forward, I felt a cold whisper in the back of my mind, a voice I couldn’t place, but one that sent a chill down my spine.
"Liora..." it called softly, echoing in the stillness. A voice that sounded far too familiar.
I froze. No... it can't be.
And then, the ground began to tremble again.
Something—someone—was coming.
The tremor beneath my feet grew stronger, and I instinctively took a step back. The once calm sky began to darken, as if the very air was holding its breath. I could feel it, a presence—something familiar yet distant, lingering just beyond my reach. It was as if the very fabric of the universe had shifted once again.
"Liora..." the voice echoed once more, clearer this time, like a whisper carried by the wind. A chill ran down my spine. I knew that voice. I had heard it before.
"Elias?" I breathed, the name slipping from my lips without thought, but as the words left me, doubt crept in. This didn’t feel like him. It felt... darker. More sinister.
The ground cracked beneath me, sending jagged fissures through the earth. The rift’s remnants, those lingering fragments of darkness, were reappearing—this time in the form of shadows that stretched unnaturally across the landscape. They moved with a mind of their own, slithering and crawling toward me, as if drawn to my very presence.
"No," I whispered, backing away, my heart racing. "This isn’t over."
And then, from the shadows, a figure emerged. At first, I couldn’t make out its shape, but as it stepped forward, my breath caught in my throat. The figure wore a cloak of darkness, its edges flickering like flames in the wind. Its face was hidden, but the aura surrounding it felt... wrong. There was something so familiar about it, yet it was entirely foreign.
"You thought you destroyed it, didn’t you?" The voice wasn’t Elias’s, but it was close—too close. It carried the same cadence, the same rhythm. Yet beneath it, there was a deeper malevolence. A darkness that had never been there before.
"No," I said again, shaking my head. "I ended the rift. It’s gone."
The figure stepped closer, and with each step, the air grew colder, the shadows more oppressive. It was almost as if the world itself was being pulled into its orbit, as if the very light around me was dimming. "You may have stopped the rift," it murmured, its voice now a blend of Elias’s and something much darker, "but you did not destroy it. You became it."
The words hit me like a blow to the chest, and I stumbled backward, my mind racing to understand. "What do you mean? I merged with it, I—"
"Do you remember?" the figure interrupted, its voice now dripping with venom. "You thought the rift was something separate, something external. But it was always part of you. And now, you’ve allowed it to sink into your very soul. You are the rift, Liora. You always have been."
The truth of those words hit me like a tidal wave, crashing over my mind, unraveling everything I had believed. The rift, the chaos, the destruction—it had never been just a force beyond me. It had always been connected to who I was, to the choices I had made, the darkness I had carried within me all this time.
"No," I gasped, falling to my knees. "I... I didn’t mean to—"
"You never do," the figure hissed, its form flickering like a flame in the wind. "You were so eager to end it, to make a choice, but you forgot that the rift isn’t something you can simply destroy. It isn’t a separate entity. It is you."
A cold, creeping sensation filled my chest, as though something was growing inside me, something I couldn’t control. The shadows pressed in around me, suffocating, choking the air from my lungs. I tried to stand, but the weight of the realization, of the truth, was too much. The rift had never been just an external force—it had always been a part of me, a part of my soul.
The figure tilted its head, its voice softening into something more insidious. "You thought you could sacrifice yourself to stop it. But in doing so, you’ve made yourself its anchor. The rift isn’t gone, Liora. It’s only just begun."
I screamed as the shadows around me began to tighten, curling in on themselves, becoming a dark vortex that sucked the very light from the world. I could feel it now—the rift was still there, feeding off my fear, my doubt. It wasn’t over. It was just starting.
The figure stepped closer, its presence overwhelming. "And now... you have no choice but to embrace what you’ve become. You will be the destroyer of worlds. You will be the rift."
I tried to fight it. I tried to break free from its grasp, but the shadows clung to me, suffocating me. In that moment, I realized that the rift had never been something I could fix. It had always been a part of me, a reflection of my own darkness. And now, it was too late.
Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice calling my name, sharp and urgent.
"Liora!" Elias's voice. It cut through the darkness, a lifeline in the midst of chaos. I turned, desperate for any sign of hope.
But what I saw was nothing like the Elias I had known. His face was twisted in anguish, his body surrounded by flickering shadows, the remnants of the rift. His eyes were dark, hollow. He reached for me, but his hand trembled, as if he, too, were being pulled into the void.
"You have to choose, Liora," he said, his voice breaking. "If you don’t—if you let it consume you—everything will be lost."
I could feel the rift’s power surging through me, threatening to swallow me whole. The choice was still there, but it was no longer as simple as it once seemed. The rift wasn’t just an external force to be ended. It was me.
And just as I was about to make the impossible choice, the world shattered once more.
A crack split the sky open, and from the rift, something new emerged—something far worse than I could have imagined.