A playful curve touched Illusory Glass’s clean little face, a cat toying with a moth. She’d had the teammate sprinting back plant a charge at the Fallen One’s finish line. Once the target drew close, she’d thumb the detonator.

The Fallen One stumbled. A pillar of fire punched skyward and hurled her like a rag in a gale. Illusory Glass seized the gap, pages in her book fluttering like startled birds. They froze midair like a framed painting. The Fallen One froze with them, hanging above the scorched street.

Illusory Glass signaled Dawnlight to strike. Dozens of Holy Lances arced out like a silver storm. A few sank into the Fallen One’s body. Others should’ve killed, but stored Abyssal Aura rose like tar to blunt them.

Against a peer—no, even someone stronger, a Cantata Two—Illusory Glass’s time-binding didn’t last. At full burn, a second was her limit, a candle against the wind.

The Fallen One’s muscles twitched back to life. She crawled up in bloody ruin, wrenched out several lances, and staggered. Not fatal wounds, but enough to slow limb and breath, like sand poured into clockwork.

Before she could react, time-doubled Illusory Glass charged, a dagger-tight grip in her palm like a crescent moon. She moved too fast to track; only a sharp crack rang out. Illusory Glass punched through the Fallen One’s chest. A jet of inky Blood sprayed, and the body toppled stiff as a felled pine.

But the fall snagged. Vegetation dragged her weight; vines shot from the shadow at her waist, like spears sprung from loam. The barbed, iron-hard coils, etched with eerie Array Patterns, sheared through Illusory Glass’s Mana Blade and the Holy Lances Dawnlight hurled from afar.

Vines wrapped Illusory Glass limb to limb, cold snakes choking heat. She tried to draw her dagger. It wouldn’t budge, as if the wood itself swallowed steel.

They cinched tighter, serpent-coils around her ribs. Her motion hit mud. The Fallen One, slick with Blood, was reeled in by the vines like a fish dragged to shore.

“You. Not bad.”

The Fallen One’s voice rasped, eyes feral-red, a grin splitting crooked and wide. She heaved, and Illusory Glass’s body whipped away like a leaf in a squall.

Vines caught Illusory Glass again. She shaped a Blade of Mana and slashed. The edge kissed the vine’s skin, and the coils shuddered violently. Near the black spell-script, the growth doubled, like weeds after rain.

Panic pricked her chest. She hacked hard, but the blade bounced off the toughened rind. She struck again and again. The vines only multiplied, a nest of black eels boiling up.

Dawnlight got snared too. Holy light restrained Abyssal Aura, but it did nothing to this hardened, cursed wood; her radiance slid off like sun on obsidian.

Her Magic Tool could only spin wind Blades. They hit the black Array Pattern on the bark with a soft slap and died, feather against iron.

Everyone understood. Two paths remained. Kill the Fallen One. Or break the Array Pattern on the vine’s skin. Only then could they shred the encirclement.

But Illusory Glass and Dawnlight knew nothing of Formations. All they could do was hold the Fallen One back, step by bleeding step.

The Fallen One’s wounds weren’t closing like before. The nearby undead had been erased by the battle’s shockwaves. She had nothing left to devour, no carrion to feed on, no strength to steal.

Which meant they could grind her down to death, a cliff worn by waves.

Illusory Glass flicked her small hand. The Fallen One’s speed sank like a stone in syrup. The gathered vines slowed too, swaying in molasses. Illusory Glass used the breathing room to hunt an escape seam.

A spark fell onto the black Array Pattern, a single star on new moon night. The blotchy, crude weave shattered at once. Flame crawled along the vines toward the Fallen One, slow as frost creeping on glass.

Night Frost stood at a distance, her fire the signature of her hand. She had found the Formation’s weakness and severed the black snare like silk, precise and clean.

Illusory Glass and Dawnlight tore free. Illusory Glass dropped the slow and granted double time to the Fallen One—and to the burning Crimson Gold Flame. In an instant the blaze went mad, racing over the vines like wind on prairie.

When the fire began to eat into the Fallen One’s flesh, Illusory Glass cut the acceleration on her time. Mercy had no place here.

But the Abyss had her back. She was a cockroach under boot, face charred, skin sloughed, yet unkillable under Crimson Gold Flame.

Her shriek tore from within the fire, a rasp of iron on glass. The screech made Night Frost and the others clap hands over ears, a storm of needles in the skull.

Night Frost drew a long breath. She pressed down the fraying Magic Armor on her body. The fire around her drew in like a tide, pooling in her hands. Her silver hair caught a line of Crimson Gold. Wind kicked her hem skyward like a returning wave.

“I grant fire to the dragon. I grant flame to my hand. Rip the shackles off life. Burn all things. Let the cut be death. Let the Inferno consume! … Καύση στη φυλακή!”

As Night Frost began, Illusory Glass pulled out a silver book and slowly closed it. The clock on the cover silvered; its hands snapped back to the first tick. The hourglass on the back reversed; sand rose and hung in the upper bulb like stars arrested midfall.

“Shattered clock-hands wheel the cycle. Let all time retreat to the origin. Yearn toward the single future. Praise the silver river. Welcome the end of time! τέλος χρόνου!”

The hands on the cover spun like a storm vane. Grain by grain, the hourglass dropped. Her words braided with Night Frost’s Magic Spell, and both incantations ended together.

A phantom clock rose on the ground, numbers faint as moonlight. All time became a long river in Illusory Glass’s eyes.

“Decree One: Time, halt.”

Everything within her sight froze, winter on a pond, including that stubborn Abyssal Aura. It was the second time she’d used this gift in this cycle.

Dawnlight’s holy light surged in the stillness and swept away all Abyssal Aura near the Fallen One. Holy Lances and orbs of light drove into that wrecked body like hail into rotten bark.

Crimson Gold Spears born of earthfire lifted with the Holy Lances and stabbed through the Fallen One. Crimson Gold Flame roared and wrapped her whole, a cocoon of sunfire. It still wasn’t done—

Flame fell from the sky, gathered, and formed the final Spear. It drove through the Fallen One’s heart. Earthfire geysered up. Then all nine Spears detonated in thunder.

Time resumed.

At the instant her heart exploded, an unseen force shredded the Fallen One to powder. The pieces vanished in earthfire, moths in a furnace.

Under Illusory Glass’s control, the drifting scraps turned to ash. Then to nothing, as if wind had never known them.

Illusory Glass and Dawnlight let out a breath, but didn’t lower their guard. This was still the Abyss. Who knew what trick it would spit up next?

“Feels… over.”

Night Frost collapsed to a sit, drawing in drifting Magic Stone shards. She steadied her Magic Armor, breath by breath. Then, just as relief began to soften their shoulders, the Abyss shuddered.

From distant void to the city’s heart, the continent of Abyssal Aura fractured inch by inch. An unseen tug pulled the pieces. One by one they slid and fell, stones into a bottomless sea.

“This layer of the Abyss is collapsing.”

Deep in the void, an eruption of Abyssal Aura bloomed, thick as oil smoke. It matched the Fallen One’s scent exactly. But the Fallen One was gone. No doubt—this was the Abyss itself.

None of the three dared rest. A late step would smear them into paste.

They sprinted with everything left. Illusory Glass lent time to Night Frost and Dawnlight, hours poured into seconds. It still wasn’t enough. Even with Dawnlight lifting Night Frost and Illusory Glass into the air, they were gnats outrunning a landslide.

Sweat beaded Night Frost’s brow. Her Magic Armor was soaked; her chest heaved. Mana and stamina bled away like sand down glass.

The fissure sat in the middle of the street, a wound in stone. The city’s collapse raced to the central ring in a heartbeat. Their heels left, and darkness seeped over the paving behind. Thick Abyssal Aura reached like giant hands, grasping at them mid-stride.

Luck favored an open path. They reached the shell-blasted fissure’s lip, but the Abyss was at their backs, breath cold on the neck.

The Abyssal Aura twisted into those plant-shapes again. Night Frost refused a head-on clash. She shoved Dawnlight and Illusory Glass into the fissure first, a mother bird tossing chicks from a burning nest.

The crumbling continent reached Night Frost’s feet. Countless black plants wound around her calves, eager to drag her into the bottomless dark.

She hooked her fingers on the fissure’s jagged rim. Pale hands split on the stone. Red Blood ran down the shards and fell into the endless black like a string of rubies.

No—this wasn’t pure darkness. Following the Blood line, her gaze sank. Something waited at the deepest point, a shape behind the veil.

Mana sharpened Night Frost’s eyes. Hawk’s Sight opened in her Crimson Gold gaze. She saw, and the next heartbeat her mind took a blow. She was a raft in a typhoon, waves the height of towers slamming planks apart.

The raft nearly shattered. Only her iron will, and the distance between her and that thing, saved her from breaking, a mind turned to white noise.

Her fingers slipped on the fissure’s edge. The tiresome black vines multiplied, a thousand hands at her ankles. They meant to keep her here.

Maybe fate hadn’t stamped her ticket yet. A veiled Blade sliced in and parted the vines around her shins like tofu, clean and quiet. Night Frost tore free on that single cut.

But her Mana was spent. Her limbs were water. No strength would come.

Until two hands thrust out from the fissure—

“Give us your hand!”

Night Frost scraped together the last heat in her body. The dragon’s heart in her chest beat a drum, rallying flame. Her Blood felt like it burned. She reached, and hands from outside clamped her wrists tight.

Inches at a time, they dragged Night Frost up. Without the vines, the world got lighter.

As she was about to clear the edge, the scent of dragon Blood must’ve tempted the dark. Or maybe it was the sweetness of Night Frost herself. Black vines surged out of the fissure, determined to keep her.

A layered voice rang out before them. Black-and-white wings caught the wind and, with a single seal from a black-and-white figure, honed to razors. They punched into the vines’ skin like ice picks.

Those wings flared wide, twin Blades. They chopped the reaching vines clean.

“Do us a favor and crawl back where you came from!”