CHAPTER 25: The Twenty-Fifth Fracture

We entered the Hidden Fracture… but to our surprise, it was nothing like what we thought it would be.

We had expected something abstract—something like the Realm Between Realms: endless void, fragmented thought, warped space.

But this… this was not abstract.

This was ancient.

The moment our feet touched the fractured ground, the world closed behind us like a sarcophagus sealing shut.

Sand. Endless black sand—coarse, jagged, and faintly glowing with red embers—stretched into a horizon that didn’t exist. The sky above wasn’t a sky at all, but a dome of obsidian stone, cracked and veined with golden glyphs that pulsed like veins beneath skin. Lightning carved hieroglyphs into the dark overhead, vanishing just as quickly as they appeared—messages meant only for gods.

Heat pressed down on us like divine punishment. The air shimmered not with warmth, but with decay. Time here wasn’t broken or suspended—it was mummified. Embalmed. Sacred and wrong. Every breath felt stolen.

Towering monuments rose in the distance—twisted versions of temples long buried in our histories. Their shapes were familiar—columns, jackal-headed statues, pyramids—but distorted, like echoes of Egyptian ruins corrupted by something older than even their myths. They bled sand from their eyes.

We walked forward, and the sand beneath us writhed. Not lifeless, but aware. As if the very ground remembered Saaya. Remembered her scream. Her defiance.

A massive structure dominated the horizon—a pyramid upside-down, suspended in the sky by chains forged from cosmic law and divine betrayal. At its center, a singular eye opened slowly, slit-pupiled and blood-red. It blinked once… and the world trembled.

Then came the voice. Deep. Vast. Mocking.

“So… you remember now.”

The sand parted. The sky cracked open with a thunderous split.

Set descended.

His body was colossal—carved of chaos and dread, cloaked in shadows that bled like ink across reality. Divine energy dripped from his form like venom.

Saaya took a step back—but it was already too late.

With a flick of his clawed hand, Set summoned a tall, curved mirror from the fractured earth behind her. Its surface rippled like molten gold, glowing with sickly light.

Chains of memory and thought lashed out—binding Saaya in an instant.

She screamed as the mirror sealed her inside.

“No!” I roared, lunging toward her.

But I couldn’t reach her. She stood on the other side of the glass, fists pounding against the inner surface, trapped in a vision only she could see.

“You will witness this,” Set whispered darkly. “You will see the price of defiance. And you will break.”

He turned toward me.

And the battle began.

The Hidden Fracture’s oppressive air trembled as Set lunged—his body a whirlwind of destructive force.

I met him head-on. My scalar shield erupted to life like a radiant bubble of pure energy, rippling with protective power.

His fist crashed against it with a thunderous boom that sent shockwaves tearing through the fractured sands. The shield shimmered, distorting—but it held.

I retaliated instantly—twisting gravity’s invisible threads, forcing the sand around him to coil and crush.

But Set moved with preternatural speed, breaking free like a god unbound.

His laughter echoed—a dark symphony—as he extended a clawed hand and summoned two massive upside-down pyramids, forged from the realm’s corrupted essence. The colossal monoliths pulsed with dark energy, suspended by chains of cosmic law.

He hurled one at me. The sand beneath screamed in protest.

I didn’t hesitate.

With a thought, I folded time around myself—I invoked the forbidden scalar art, halting the pyramid mid-flight.

The moment was surreal. The pyramid hung in the air, jagged edges frozen—glistening like a suspended nightmare.

But time was a brittle cage, and chaos leaked through its cracks.

A creeping madness gnawed at my mind—Set’s corruption was a poison embedded in the laws themselves.

I felt my control slip. The pyramid shuddered.

Set’s voice slithered into my thoughts.

“Fragile laws for fragile minds.”

The pyramid shattered the temporal hold, hurtling toward me with renewed fury.

I threw my shield up again—absorbing the cataclysmic impact.

The ground ruptured. Sand exploded in every direction.

I surged forward, closing distance.

Our battle became a blur of violence and power. Set struck with brutal hand-to-hand blows—each one a warhammer crushing bone and spirit.

I blocked, countered with precise scalar pulses, lashing shards of raw energy into the air.

I twisted gravity to accelerate myself—moving like a shadow over burning sand.

He warped the fractured realm itself—columns of sand burst upward like divine spears.

I dodged, manipulating time in sharp bursts—landing blows that should’ve shattered mountains.

But Set endured. Corruption healed him before wounds could settle.

I dove deeper into the Scalar Grid, reaching the forbidden layers—the ultimate force I had feared to touch: rewriting divine law itself.

A brilliant violet circle bloomed on my back. A massive glyph, impossibly complex—rings of light spun slowly around its core, each orbit pulsing in synchronized harmony, like the heartbeat of the cosmos.

The circles shifted and aligned, weaving equations of cosmic defiance.

Blinding light poured from my hands. I rewrote the laws Set thrived under.

For one heartbeat, the world stilled.

The pyramids froze. The sands paused.

Even Set faltered—his eyes wide with disbelief.

But the darkness inside him was older than law.

With a roar that split the heavens, he shattered my rewritten reality like glass.

Chaos exploded inside me.

Tearing at my mind. Shredding my soul.

His next blow was merciless. It shattered my ribs, fractured my spine, and launched me across the dunes.

I struggled to rise. My vision flickered. Blood filled my mouth.

Still—I fought.

I bent gravity to crush him. Turned sand into blades. Warped velocity and time.

But he broke through it all.

Set stepped over me, grinning like a god of endings.

Behind him, Saaya screamed from inside the mirror.

She pounded the glass. Her voice lost. Her aura flaring.

But she couldn’t break free.

“Watch,” Set said to her.

And then—

He plunged his hand into my chest.

The world went black.

Inside the mirror, time cracked.

And something ancient stirred.

The glyph she had only glimpsed before—the mark of impossibility, of cause and effect reversed—flared into being.

The Reverse Glyph.

It didn’t come from outside.

It emerged from within her.

Forged in the fire of her fierce love.

The mirror shattered.

Power exploded outward like the scream of a broken timeline.

Saaya collapsed beside my lifeless body, knees hitting the sand. Her hands trembled.

She pressed her forehead against my bloodstained chest.

“Please…” she whispered. “Please… not like this…”

Tears streamed down her face, overflowing.

Set turned, unfazed.

“I don’t know how you escaped that mirror, Saaya,” he said mockingly.

“But look at Sukara. This is the difference in power. Come join me. I’m offering this a second time. Real divine power. Stop kneeling beside a corpse. You can’t bring him back. Your power only lets you reverse the cause of something. To undo—that’s all.”

He laughed.

But Saaya didn’t answer.

She lifted an arm, eyes glowing like divine fire.

She reversed the cause of chaos itself.

The fractured realm shuddered. A wave of contradiction crashed through Set’s essence.

He dropped to one knee. A cry of pain tore from his throat.

She kept trying to reverse death—but nothing worked.

Once. Twice. Five times. Nothing.

Then she whispered:

“Please come back to me.”

The glyph on her chest ignited, searing itself into her soul.

A final surge of power.

She erased and reversed the cause of Sukara’s death.

Death rewound.

My chest heaved.

My eyes snapped open.

And Set—still kneeling—looked up with the most terrified expression Saaya had ever seen.

The battle was not over.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

In the stillness between heartbeats, she reached out—her hand trembling—and touched my cheek.

She leaned in.

Our lips met—soft, broken, real.

Not a celebration.

A resurrection.