CHAPTER 20: The Twentieth Fracture

I didn’t move.

I just stared at his face.

Arkai.

My brother.

His eyes were still half open. His fingers still curled around mine.

Like some part of him hadn’t accepted it yet.

Like he was still waiting for me to fix it.

But I couldn’t.

The glyphs behind me were gone.

The Scalar Grid—gone.

Not silent.

Absent.

Like it had turned its face from me.

A hole opened inside my chest.

And then something broke.

Not power. Not structure.

Something human.

I screamed.

A sound that didn’t belong on a battlefield.

It didn’t belong to a warrior.

It didn’t belong to a god.

It belonged to a boy.

A boy holding his brother’s corpse.

And the world listened.

The sky bent.

The ground cracked.

The Scalar Grid recoiled—and then it screamed with me.

Glyphs erupted around me—blue light warping into white, then black, then crimson.

Orbiting scripts flared into erratic shapes—spells without form, laws without logic.

It wasn’t power.

It was grief.

Pure and destructive.

Somewhere in the stands, I heard gasps. Screams. But I didn’t look. I couldn’t.

The arena trembled as my aura exploded, raw and unstable, bleeding lightning in every direction.

My field—my scalar field—spiraled out of control, ripping apart the layers of physics beneath our feet.

And still I screamed.

Because I couldn’t fix him.

Because I was too late.

Because I was supposed to protect him.

Then—

“SUKARA!!”

A voice.

Real. Sharp. Beautiful.

Saaya.

She was already sprinting across the fractured arena, eyes burning violet, arms glowing with silver glyphs that pulsed with temporal resonance.

“No, no—this isn’t how it ends!” she cried. “This can’t be the final effect—he’s not meant to die here!”

She dropped beside Arkai, falling to her knees. The glyph in her palm activated, casting threads of silver backward through the air, like time itself was unraveling.

Cause into effect.

Death into breath.

“I can fix this—I can take it back—I can undo it—!”

I backed away just enough to let her try. I watched her with everything I had left.

My limbs were numb. My chest heaved. My mind wouldn’t stop shaking.

The Grid felt broken. Scrambled. As if even it had been wounded.

Saaya’s power flared.

Time reversed.

Dust lifted back into the air.

Wind moved backwards.

Arkai’s chest twitched.

Then—

The silver glyph in Saaya’s palm shattered.

She gasped. Her whole body locked up.

“No—no, why? I reversed the cause—I made it right—!”

But Arkai didn’t move.

His glyph never returned.

His aura remained dead.

I collapsed beside him again.

Pressed my forehead to his shoulder.

He was still warm.

But fading.

And I couldn’t feel him anymore.

I let out a cry of rage that tore from my throat like it was trying to kill me.

“RAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Saaya flinched. Her eyes filled with tears, watching me with a sadness so deep it mirrored mine.

When my voice gave out, I whispered:

“…Come back.”

My voice cracked. “Please…”

Silence.

Until I felt arms wrap around me from behind.

“I’m with you,” Saaya whispered, holding me tightly.

I started to cry.

Tears poured down my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop them.

Up in the stands, Yuuka stood frozen.

Her knuckles white as she clutched the railing.

Her lips were parted, but no sound came.

Her wide eyes weren’t just shocked.

They were mourning.

And terrified.

“…Sukara…” she breathed, her voice a whisper caught between worlds.

That’s when Saaya noticed it.

The raw pain.

The broken field.

It was changing.

She backed off me, stunned, eyes locked on the glyphs twisting into forms they shouldn’t take.

She stared at me—helpless and horrified.

Alric stood in silence.

No jeering. No defiance.

Only awe.

His gaze never left me.

And in it—I saw something I never thought I’d earn from him.

Respect.

The kind you only give when you’ve seen something bigger than strength.

The kind that comes when someone has loved deeply enough to break the world.

Principal Lyra stood above them all, unmoving, fists trembling.

Her voice, when it came, was thin—uncertain.

“…This level of grief-based resonance…” she breathed. “It’s rewriting layers of the Grid I didn’t even know existed.”

She stared at Saaya. Then back at me.

“Her power didn’t fail,” she whispered. “Fate itself—rejected the reversal.”

The world stayed broken for a while.

The glyphs around me gradually faded, flickering out like dying stars.

But I didn’t move.

I just sat there.

Kneeling.

Holding Arkai’s body in my arms.

My hands trembling.

Saaya knelt beside me again, eyes still wide with sorrow—and something else.

Guilt.

Her hand brushed my shoulder.

“I tried,” she said quietly. “I tried, Sukara. I swear I—”

“I know,” I whispered. “It wasn’t your fault.”

But the tears didn’t stop.

They came.

Mine.

Hers.

Everyone’s.

All around us, the arena lay shattered.

The Grid remained fractured.

But none of that mattered.

Because nothing in the world could rewrite this.

Time moved again.

But I didn’t.

The arena was empty now.

They tried to move me. Speak to me.

I didn’t hear them.

I couldn’t.

I sat with Arkai’s body until it turned cold in my arms.

Even after they took him, my arms stayed frozen—locked in place, as if I still held him.

As if letting go meant admitting it was real.

The sky had sealed itself.

Set was gone.

But I was still broken.

The Scalar Grid—once vibrant behind my back—was silent.

Not resisting.

Just… absent.

I didn’t eat.

I didn’t sleep.

Days passed.

Maybe longer.

I found a dark, unused sanctum beneath the academy.

Stone walls. No windows. No light.

I chose it because it was quiet.

Because light meant time had moved forward.

And I hadn’t.

Then, one night, Saaya came.

She didn’t knock.

Didn’t speak.

Just entered quietly and closed the door behind her like she didn’t want to wake something broken.

I didn’t look at her.

Couldn’t even lift my head.

She sat beside me, legs crossed, hands in her lap. Facing me.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

Only the sound of my slow, shaking breath echoed between us.

Then—

“I had a brother once too,” she whispered.

Her voice trembled—not with fear.

With memory.

“I lost him before I came to this world. I tried to change it. Tried to undo it. But fate… sometimes it doesn’t care how hard you scream.”

My voice cracked out of me—barely above a whisper.

“You had a brother?”

“I did,” she said again, gently.

Her hand reached out, rested over mine.

Warm. Deliberate. Human.

“He loved stars,” she said with a broken smile. “Said they were proof the universe could still be beautiful… even when it was cold.”

I didn’t respond.

But my fingers twitched around hers.

A flicker. A pulse. Something still alive.

She leaned forward. Brushed my hair back—damp with sweat and dried tears.

“Sukara,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You’re still here. And so is your promise.”

I finally looked at her.

Her violet eyes shimmered.

Not with magic.

With grief.

Shared grief.

She leaned in.

No words. No spells.

Just her forehead resting against mine.

A pause.

A breath that hurt to take.

“You’re not alone,” she whispered.

And that’s when I cried again.

Not because I’d lost him—

But because someone stayed.

Saaya left quietly soon after, sensing I needed space.

But something lingered after she was gone.

Not her scent.

Not her warmth.

Resonance.

In the silence, I felt it.

Not presence.

Not memory.

Him.

Somewhere deep inside the Grid…

Arkai’s glyph pattern stirred—flickering like a buried ember.

I raised my hand.

And for the first time since the fight—something formed behind me.

A flicker.

A circle.

Blue and red intertwined.

Violet sparks arced across orbiting glyphs—half-equations, half-memories—echoes of a bond deeper than blood.

Not resurrection.

Not possession.

A merging.

Not a miracle.

But a scar.

The scalar field around me pulsed—slow, then rising.

The once-electric blue circle behind me began to vibrate. Red filtered into it—rising, falling, until the two fused.

Blue lightning.

Red lightning.

Cracking around me in arcs.

Gravity thickened.

The ground shook.

And then—

Purple.

My glyphs turned violet.

The fusion of his and mine.

Three glyphs rotated like planets—old symbols rewritten.

Alive. Changed.

I stood, electricity whipping around my arms.

I wiped my face. One last tear.

And I raised my fist to the sky.

“I will avenge you, brother. I will take revenge on the gods. Set…”

My voice lowered to a growl.

“You haven’t seen the last of me.”

Unseen behind the sanctum door, Yuuka stood—listening.

She said nothing.

But her lips curled softly…

And she walked away in silence.