CHAPTER 364: RUPTURED SKY

The mists had long begun to part.

For what felt like an endless trek through a dying vein of the world, the group found themselves beneath a sky that shimmered with strange, dull luminescence—neither day nor night, but something caught in between. The world here was quiet. Too quiet.

Kaelen stepped forward first, his boots crunching over the crystalline fragments littering the earth like the bones of an ancient god. His breath clouded faintly even though the air wasn’t cold. Behind him, Kelvin’s eyes roamed cautiously, his fingers never far from where his scythe is placed behind him, while Morris silently scanned the horizon with his all elemental affinity senses which hinted for him to be someone too used to ambushes. Guinevere followed with her hands glowing faintly, ready to call flame into being, while Ethan tightened his fist around his sheathed twin daggers, the weight of silence pressing on his nerves.

Eirana reappeared from a gap between two boulder-like spires, her Voidcloak at her side, faceless and motionless like a walking shadow. Her cyan colored hair was wind-tousled, and her now dark eyes flicked between each of them.

"There’s no resistance. No barriers. No traps," she said bluntly, her voice brittle like someone who expected danger but found only stillness. "It’s as if he wants us to go."

"The Eternal," Kaelen said, his voice low. "He’s guiding us... or leading us."

"To the Isle of Halor," Guinevere muttered.

They all turned to look ahead.

The mouth of the Vein Crossing stretched wide behind them, the path now sealed off by shifting stone and black mist. In front of them, the terrain opened into a vast, windswept bridge made of silverstone and glimmering bones, extending toward a solitary island that rose from the ethereal sea like a monument to something long forgotten. The waters didn’t move. They reflected stars that didn’t exist. And above the island, a fractured moon hung upside down, casting no light.

"That’s it," Eirana whispered. "The Isle of Halor."

Kelvin narrowed his eyes. "Why is it so quiet? It feels like... we’re being watched."

"We are," Morris said curtly, hand tightening on his scepter as he could feel it in the Elements all around the place. "But not by mortals."

They walked forward, step by cautious step. The bridge beneath them didn’t creak or groan. It simply... existed, ancient and untouched, as if built for a procession that never came.

Ethan stopped suddenly and squinted up at the island.

"There’s a tower," he said. "At the center. See it?"

Kaelen saw it too now—rising from the island like a black spine, a monolithic spire with runes carved down its sides. He could almost hear the spire humming. Something called to him. Faintly. Like a whisper from a forgotten lifetime.

"Can you feel that?" Guinevere asked, arms crossed tightly around herself.

"It’s magic," Eirana confirmed. "Old magic. The kind only the Eternals would know how to silence."

Kaelen stepped forward, suddenly feeling the shift. The bridge responded to him, the ground pulsing beneath his feet with every step. The closer they got to the island, the more he could feel something awakening beneath them—old, immense, and waiting.

"Maybe this is what it wants," Kaelen said, half to himself as his eyes darted to his broken Blade of Eternity. "For us to reach the Isle. For the final pieces to move."

Kelvin frowned. "You think this is a trap?"

Kaelen nodded slowly. "No. Worse. I think it’s a trial."

They finally stepped off the last stone of the bridge and onto the shore of the Isle. The sand was black and warm. Wind stirred from nowhere, brushing against their cloaks like fingers of the dead. The sea behind them did not ripple. The bridge behind them began to fade, stone by stone.

"There’s no going back," a voice suddenly rang out which startled Kaelen and the rest, the voice like two mirrors grinding together. But no matter where they look, they can’t figure out where the voice came from even with Morris Elemental senses.

"Creepy" Ethan said with a grim look on his face as he raised his guard even higher along with the rest.

Kaelen looked ahead to the tower, the spire reaching to the heavens like a needle made to puncture the sky.

"This is where it begins," he said.

Or where it ends.

They walked forward, toward the spire that loomed over the heart of the Isle, unaware of the figures watching from the fractured moon above—eyes without form, watching with an ancient aura around them.

As Kaelen and the others were about to reach the foot of the tower j the middle of the Isle of Halor, the ground trembled—not violently, but in a way that made every bone in their bodies tighten. A pulse, then another.

Suddenly, space in front of them folded.

Fwip!

A violent ripple carved the air like silk being torn, and three beings emerged, descending from above like shadows slipping from the cracks of the shattered moon. They wore dark, chrome-like armor laced with faint glowing inscriptions. Their forms were humanoid, but too perfect—too symmetrical, as if reality itself had adjusted around them.

Kaelen’s natural instincts screamed. Without thinking, he and the others burst into defensive formation—Kelvin’s scythe quickly sprang into action as his qi and chaotic mana is being imbued into the weapon, Guinevere’s hands already aflame, Ethan lowering his stance into a magnetic guard. Morris had even begun drawing upon his elemental signature—but it was all for nothing.

The nearest being lifted a single hand.

BOOM!!

A wave of pressure suddenly exploded forth.

The entire group was flung backward as if swatted by an invisible colossus. Kaelen tumbled across the cracked floor, skidding to a halt with a grunt. Ethan coughed as he smashed against a crystal pillar. Guinevere’s flame dispersed like dust in wind. Kelvin found himself buried halfway into a wall, dazed and heaving.

And then—it all stopped.

The pressure dissipated like mist under morning light. The beings stood where they had landed, unmoving, watching.

The central figure stepped forward. When he spoke, his voice was neither male nor female, but something that existed between tones, like a memory whispered across aeons.

"We are the Triad of Halor. Gatekeepers to the Aether Crucible. None may pass but the one who seeks the help of the crucible. The rest must remain."

Kaelen rose slowly, dusting off his coat. "The one who seeks the help of the crucible... That’s me," he said.

Morris narrowed his eyes. "Like hell we’re letting you go in alone."

Ethan stood beside him. "We’ve been through too much together. We’ve bled and crawled through every cursed corner of Aetheris to get here—"

"I understand," Kaelen cut in gently as he looked at both the three beings before them and then looked at all of them, meeting each of their eyes one by one. "But you felt that, didn’t you? These beings... they aren’t like us. They aren’t even like the Nullcarvers or the Harbingers. They repelled us without breaking a sweat."

Kelvin ground his teeth. "Still—"

"No," Kaelen said, firmer now. "This isn’t about pride. Or stubbornness. If any of us tries to force our way in, we’ll be erased. I don’t think they’ll hesitate. This tower—the Crucible—was meant for the one who seeks it’s help. And obviously... that’s me."

Guinevere clenched her fists, reluctant. "But what if it’s a trap?"

"It might be," Kaelen admitted. "But if I don’t go... then all of this," he gestured to the world behind them, "will have been for nothing."

Silence fell. Eirana said nothing. Her Voidcloak merely observed the scene, fingers twitching slightly at their sides.

Finally, Morris gave a slow, defeated sigh. "Then we wait here. But if anything goes wrong in there, I’m breaking through that wall, Gatekeepers or not."

Kaelen gave him a grateful nod. "Thanks."

The Triad, seeing the understanding, stepped aside wordlessly, parting like ancient statues moved by unseen gears. The tower door at the center of the Isle groaned open.

As Kaelen stepped forward toward the path that leads to the crucible, the sky above flickered with flashes of silver lightning, and the ground beneath his feet pulsed with an ancient heartbeat.

This was no ordinary place.

This was the heart of Halor—and what lay beyond that door might change everything.

And then, after taking in a deep breath, Kaelen stepped through the shimmering arch.

It was like plunging into ice and flame at once. His body stretched and bent in ways it shouldn’t, then reformed in a space that wasn’t space at all.

He fell.

Not downward, but through existence itself.

---

When Kaelen landed, there was no ground—only thin, translucent layers of shattered sky beneath his feet. They cracked under him with each step, yet somehow held his weight. Fragments of stars drifted lazily in the distance, and the horizon looped in all directions like a giant, cracked mirror of the cosmos. Gravity twisted in different planes. One wrong step could launch him sideways or upside down.

This was the Ruptured Sky.

A broken place.

The final trial to the Aether crucible.

His voice caught in his throat as he looked up—if "up" even meant anything here. A massive ring of floating islands spun slowly above him, each one flickering in and out of reality. Bridges of lightning connected them, writhing like serpents in heat.

And at the center of it all was a sun.

No—a Crucible.

It pulsed like a giant heart, its glow washing the broken sky in hues of gold and violet. But between him and that pulsating core was chaos—gravity wells, storms of shrapnel made of frozen time, and twisted shadows lurking in the cracks of light.

Kaelen took a breath, but the air here wasn’t air. It was will. If his resolve faltered, he knew instinctively, this place would tear him apart.

Then the sky boomed.

From the far end of the broken horizon, a presence stirred.

Kaelen’s body locked.

Out of the swirling fragments, a figure emerged—a silhouette cloaked in black flame, with a dozen eyes opening and closing across its body like blooming flowers.

And then—

It looked at him.

The fractured sky screamed in a thousand voices, and Kaelen stumbled, clutching his head.

But he didn’t fall.

He clenched his teeth.

Stared back.

Took a step forward.