CHAPTER 1205: BLACK DIAMONDS.

The rift didn’t just widen—it unfolded.

Like a flower forced into bloom, its edges peeled outward in sharp, jagged petals of gold light, each unfurling with a sound that scraped along Eira’s bones. The forest around the clearing bent away from it, trunks warping as if a giant invisible hand was pressing outward from within the tear.

Eira stumbled back, eyes locked on Cain.

He wasn’t collapsing anymore.

He was rising.

Slowly. Unsteadily. Pulled up not by his own strength but by the tether hooked through his core. His feet left the ground by inches, then a foot, then two. His back arched as the pressure around him thickened, solidified, wrapped around him like unseen chains.

"Cain," she called—voice low, steady, controlled. She didn’t bother trying to touch him again. "Fight it."

His head jerked toward her, but his eyes... weren’t focused on her. Not fully. Gold light swirled in the irises like ink diffusing through water.

"It sees you," he said.

His voice was layered.

Eira stepped back. "Then look away. Don’t let it take more."

"It’s not taking," he rasped. "It’s matching."

Eira froze. "Matching what?"

"Me."

A tremor shivered through the clearing. The wing behind the rift pressed harder against the barrier—feathers fracturing and reforming like shards of obsidian glued together by lightning. A second wing began to form beside it, slower, weaker, trembling as if struggling to remember its shape.

Whatever was inside that tear wasn’t fully formed—and it wanted Cain as the pattern to complete itself.

Eira clenched her jaw. "Break the tether, Cain. Now."

"You think I’m not trying?"

He grit the words out like each syllable cost him blood.

His body jerked again—this time violently—as threads of gold light lashed out from the rift like whips. They missed him by inches, slicing the air with sharp, buzzing sounds, then snapped back to the vortex as if reeled in by some internal gravity.

Eira drew her second blade. "We need distance—"

The ground cracked before she could step back.

A fissure split the clearing right between them, glowing with the same gold light as the rift. The earth heaved upward, throwing both of them off balance. Eira rolled to her feet instantly. Cain hit the ground hard—but bounced, suspended mid-air again as the tether tightened with sudden violence.

The rift pulsed.

And something spoke.

Not in words—words would have been merciful. This was raw intention forced into sound, like a thought trying to use a throat it didn’t have.

Eira’s ears rang. Blood trickled down her left cheek.

But Cain heard it differently.

He didn’t flinch.

He answered.

Not out loud—but the tether pulsed in response, and the rift vibrated like a struck bell.

Eira’s stomach dropped. "Tell me you didn’t just respond to it."

Cain’s breathing hitched, strained and ragged. His fingers curled into fists so tight blood dripped from his palms.

"It’s not communication," he forced out. "It’s echo. We’re overlapping."

"That’s even worse!" Eira snapped.

Another pulse thundered from the rift, this one hard enough to bend the treetops outward like a hurricane blast. Bark flew like shrapnel, shredding leaves. The pressure wave picked Eira up and threw her across the clearing; she slammed into a trunk and dropped to the ground in a gasping heap.

Her ribs felt cracked. Maybe broken.

She pushed herself up anyway.

Cain was still suspended, arms spread slightly, chest heaving as invisible hooks dragged him toward the widening tear. Gold threads wrapped around his torso and limbs in looping spirals, each one sinking just beneath his skin.

Eira’s breath caught.

He wasn’t being pulled toward the rift.

He was being copied into it.

The rift’s interior—dark, swirling, half-formed—brightened in areas where Cain’s outline bled through. His silhouette flickered inside the tear like a reflection on disturbed water.

"Cain!" she shouted. "You’re fading!"

He didn’t answer.

The tether was devouring his voice.

She sprinted toward him.

Another pulse hit.

Eira braced herself this time—arms up, weight low—but it still knocked her sideways. She slammed a shoulder against a boulder, flipped, landed hard, rolled back to her feet with a snarl.

Her head spun. Her vision doubled. She moved anyway.

She had crossed half the clearing when the rift finally pushed its first limb through.

A hand—massive, skeletal, obsidian-glass skin etched with gold cracks—slammed against the ground with a sound like mountains grinding. The fingers were too long, too jointed, too fluid, bending backward before snapping upright in shapes no human anatomy could manage.

The pressure in the clearing spiked.

Eira staggered.

Cain screamed.

Not in pain—in recoil. Like something inside him had been yanked forward too fast.

The hand dragged itself out further, and with it came the beginning of a shoulder, a twisted mass of bone-like plates and pulsing gold bands. The unformed Fallen was forcing its way through, using Cain’s tether as leverage.

Eira didn’t think.

She moved.

Blade raised, she lunged forward, aiming for the tether glowing across Cain’s chest. She didn’t know if her blade could cut it—but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let him get pulled into that rift without a fight.

She got within three steps.

The Fallen’s hand snapped toward her.

The air howled.

A force like a hurricane compressed into a single direction slammed into her, sending her flying backward so violently the world blurred into streaks of green and gold. She skidded across the ground, ripping through brush, rolling over stones until her momentum broke against a fallen trunk.

She lay there, wheezing, but not unconscious.

And she saw everything.

Cain dangling closer to the rift.

The gold threads embedding deeper under his skin.

The half-formed creature dragging itself through the tear, piece by agonizing piece.

And the tether—

—beginning to split.

Not break.

Split.

As if something on Cain’s side was trying to divide itself as well.

Eira’s heart lurched.

"Cain—don’t you dare—"

He didn’t answer.

Because the tether wasn’t pulling one Cain into the rift.

It was trying to pull two out.

And neither looked fully human anymore.