Far beneath the world of men, where no sunlight reached and the ground bore the scars of bygone ages, a chamber of unearthly vastness lay hidden. Its walls, if walls they could be called, shimmered with colors unknown to mortal eyes, hues that danced and shifted as though alive, whispering secrets older than the first kingdoms. The air was thick with something unseen yet deeply felt, an ancient power that hummed in the bones, pressing upon the heart like the weight of untold stories left unsung.
And there, in the midst of that luminous abyss, stood Barbel Flux.
No longer merely a woman of flesh and will, she was something beyond, something reborn. A force unshackled, her form wreathed in the luminous remnants of the thing that once dwelled upon the altar. Her stance was firm, unyielding, and though she had been a warrior before, she was now something far more terrible.
She exhaled, and the very air trembled.
Before her, Harriet and Jelle stood, their breaths uneven. The battle had raged long, far longer than either had foreseen. They had fought against warriors and beasts, against steel and magic—but this? This was unlike anything before. The laws of combat, of strength and skill, had shifted beneath their feet like a tide that no man could command.
For Barbel's power had changed. She was changed.
Once, she had merely been the wielder of air's untamed force, able to expand it at will, to command the winds to rupture and shatter, to make the very atmosphere a weapon of her design. Now, she was something greater.
She did not merely make the air explode—she bent it, shaped it, crushed it.
Harriet barely caught the shift in time. A flicker of motion, the barest tightening of her fingers upon the hilt of her montante—and then it came.
The air did not boom as before, did not burst outward in a concussive blast. No, this time it shrank, tightened—became a spear sharper than any forged blade. A line of compressed nothingness ripped through the chamber, a lance of invisible death, aimed straight for his heart.
He barely twisted aside, the vacuum searing past his ribs. A deep gash split open on his shirt, though no weapon had touched him.
She can fire them.
Jelle darted forward, wooden sword in hand, her feet light upon the shifting stone beneath them. She feinted left, knowing that against such an opponent a single misstep was doom—but Barbel did not need to move to strike.
With a mere shift of her stance, she let loose another blade of air.
Jelle's instincts saved her. She threw herself into a roll, feeling the unseen edge carve a path just above her, slicing cleanly through the rock behind her as though it were parchment.
Unblockable. Instantaneous.
Harriet's mind raced. This was no longer a battle of a mere singularität. The air itself was her weapon, the invisible fabric of the world turned against them. Every breath, every movement, was a danger waiting to be severed.
And Barbel… she did not waver.
She stood amidst the storm of color, unbothered, untouched, her rainbow-lit eye watching them as if seeing through all things.
She exhaled. The air trembled again.
Then, she raised her sword.
And there she stood—Barbel Flux, once merely a warrior of flesh, now a sovereign of unseen ruin, the air itself bound in servitude to her will. She did not advance as a foe would, nor did she charge with the reckless fervor of a battle-mad beast. She walked.
Measured steps, deliberate, inexorable, as though the very earth beneath her feet bent to her stride. And with each step, the air itself sang.
Not the dulcet tones of nature's breath, nor the tempest's howling cry, but a whisper of entropy, a dirge of unraveling. Each movement of her fingers, each minute shift of her weight, invoked calamity. The unseen hand of dominion cleaved the very world asunder.
Harriet and Jelle ran.
Not in fear, for there was no room for fear in battle, but in a desperate gambit, a ceaseless dance upon the precipice of death. For against a foe whose blade was formless, whose strikes bore neither steel nor flame but instead the immutable decree of division—no parry would avail them.
The air did not merely move at her command. It sundered.
It compressed to a needlepoint, thinner than the mortal eye could perceive, faster than human thought, and it cut—not like a blade of honed steel, but as a concept erased from reality itself.
Jelle twisted, her wooden sword a blur, not to strike, for to strike was folly, but to maneuver—to shift, to weave, to flow between the slivers of annihilation that lanced toward her from all sides. Yet even so, the assault was unending, unrelenting, as though the very act of motion invited destruction.
Where others saw nothing, Harriet saw everything—phantom hands unseen to mortal sight grasped at the shifting currents of fate itself, seeking some path, some means to reach her. Yet against her might, even his spectral grasp met resistance, as though the very air rebelled against his will.
Still, he pressed forward.
"FLUX."
Her name was spoken, not as a cry of defiance, nor as a plea, but as something else—a tether to a past not yet severed.
She did not answer.
Her path did not waver. Her sword did not falter. Only her eye, that resplendent orb of infinite hues, shifted—gazing through him, past him, beyond him.
And then—another step.
A flicker of her wrist, so imperceptible it might have been the barest quiver of breath. But in its wake came ruin—a wave of cleaving force, a guillotine unseen, a decree of severance.
The very air shrieked in protest as it was rent asunder. Harriet's limbs burned with exertion, his invisible hands clawing desperately at unseen edges of existence, shifting the course of the inevitable by mere fractions.
A whisper of wind, a flicker of movement—and he was nearly split in twain.
A gash, not deep but perilously close, painted his side in red. Jelle fared no better, her breath ragged, sweat gleaming upon her brow, her wooden sword a futile ward against a foe whose blade was not bound by form.
Barbel walked.
The ground trembled. Not from power, nor magic, nor the wrath of the heavens—but from inevitability.
For how does one fight that which cannot be grasped? How does one defy a force that does not move, does not charge, does not waver—but merely claims, step by step, what is already fated to fall?
Harriet's breath was labored. His golden eyes flickered. Yet still, he reached out.
Not with blade, nor body, nor the strength of a warrior. The unseen hands, his will made manifest, stretched forth—not to strike, but to hold.
To grasp something beyond steel and death.
And in that moment, he spoke again.
"Please… look at me."
For a fraction of a second—a moment so brief it could have been imagined—her step slowed.
Though the air itself sought to carve through sinew and bone, though the world around him trembled beneath the weight of her indomitable presence, he pressed forth. His unseen hands wove through the very breath of existence, seeking purchase not upon her flesh, nor her blade, but upon something deeper—something lost, something buried beneath the ruin of time and sorrow.
"Barbel," he called again, his voice neither pleading nor demanding, but steady, immutable. "Is this truly the shape of your will?"
She did not answer at first. Her stride, resolute, did not falter. Yet, as the iridescent eye upon her countenance turned upon him, it was not wrath that burned in its depths, nor scorn, nor the cold detachment of a warrior too far gone. It was weariness. A weight that did not rest upon her shoulders, but within them, wound deep into marrow and soul.
And then—she spoke.
Her voice was not harsh, nor cruel, nor fevered with conviction. It was measured, deliberate, as though each syllable were carved from something greater, something unyielding.
"One does not stand still, Harriet."
The world did not move. The air did not stir. The light of all colors danced upon the unfathomable walls of that vast chamber, and still, the quiet of her words held dominion over all.
"Not in war, nor grief, nor the hours stretched between the two."
A step forward. The stone beneath her feet did not yield. It accepted her passage as the river accepts the storm—without question, without pause.
"To remain where one has fallen is to cease. The ground does not care for our sorrow. The wind does not wait for our hesitation. The world does not halt for the weary."
Another step. Another wave of unseen force rippled forth, but this one did not seek to maim, nor to end. It merely passed, a whisper of power with no master but time itself.
"What, then, is left?"
She turned her gaze upon him fully, and for the first time, Harriet beheld something beyond the enormity of her strength.
It was not fire. It was not hunger. It was not even pain.
It was acceptance.
Not peace. Not surrender. But the solemn understanding of a truth that could not be unraveled nor denied.
"We do not move because we wish to. We move because there is nothing else."
Her fingers curled, and the air shuddered once more, though now it bore neither violence nor command—only weight.
"One may mourn as they step. One may carry the ruin of yesterday within the breath of today. But still, the step must be taken."
She lifted her hand, palm upward, and Harriet felt it.
Not power. Not destruction.
The distance.
The chasm between what was and what must be.
The gulf that separated her from something unseen, something unspoken, something she would not name.
Her fingers curled, as though grasping for something that was no longer there.
And when she spoke again, it was not to him.
"To remain is to undo the path they walked. To turn back is to unmake their footsteps."
A pause. A breath. A silence that was not empty, but filled with something vast, something deep, something too heavy to carry—yet carried nonetheless.
And then—softly, faintly, barely above a whisper:
"…And that, I will not allow."
Harriet did not hesitate. Even as the air itself howled its silent warning, even as the weight of an unseen force pressed upon him as though the very world sought to smother his breath, he did not yield.
"And those left in Dämmerburg? The children?" His voice carried through the tremors in the air, slicing through the unseen barriers that lay between them. It was not a plea, nor an accusation, but a question sharpened by purpose.
Barbel's step did not falter, nor did her countenance shift. The luminous patterns of her gaze, the swirling iridescence that had consumed what once had been merely her eye, did not waver. Yet when she spoke, there was a gravity in her words that could not be mistaken.
"They will be as all must be—confronted with the path ahead and left to make their choice."
Harriet's breath was steady, yet his heart hammered within his chest. His unseen hands, fingers woven of thought and will, reached out—not to strike, not to restrain, but to touch upon something fragile beneath the weight of her strength.
"And if they cannot choose?" he pressed.
"Then time shall choose in their stead."
Another step. The pressure in the air shifted once more, rippling outward like the slow, deliberate movement of a tide unstoppable in its advance.
"And if they fear the road before them?" Harriet continued, voice unwavering.
"Then they will know the taste of fear, as all who walk this world must."
A pause. A stillness, but not of peace—of something unspeakably vast, unfathomably deep.
"And if they falter?"
For the briefest of moments, she hesitated.
Her fingers curled at her side, as though grasping for something long since lost, something beyond reach, beyond reclamation. And when she spoke once more, it was softer, though no less resolute.
"Then they will fall."
Harriet exhaled. The answer was as he had expected, yet still, it struck him—not for its cruelty, but for its truth. For its certainty.
Yet he was not finished.
"And if they are alone?" he asked.
Barbel's gaze did not waver, yet within that endless swirl of colors, there was something buried deep, unseen, unheard.
"Then they will stand as we all must—alone beneath the sky, alone beneath the weight of the world."
He could feel the heat rising within him, not of anger, not of indignation, but of something deeper—something raw, something that refused to be silenced.
And still, he spoke.
"And if they have lost everything?"
This time, she did not answer immediately.
The air grew still, yet the weight of it pressed heavier than before. The iridescent light of the chamber cast shadows where there should have been none, stretching far beyond the reach of the stone beneath their feet.
Barbel's lips parted, but the words—when they came—were not spoken to him, nor to the world, nor to the battle that raged between them.
They were spoken to something distant, something unseen, something that existed in the spaces between memory and silence.
"Then they will know what it is to continue."
Harriet inhaled sharply, his golden eyes burning with a fierce, unwavering light. The storm of compressed air howled around him, unseen blades carving through the space he occupied, yet he did not step back. His spectral hands, those unseen extensions of his will, trembled with something far greater than mere strain.
And then, he spoke.
"That's enough." His voice rang out—not as a plea, not as a demand, but as an irrefutable truth. A declaration of intent, sharpened by resolve. "I've had it with this. I don't care how strong you are, how much you've convinced yourself that this is the only path left—because I'm telling you now, you're wrong."
Barbel's expression remained impassive, yet something in the shifting iridescence of her eye flickered—a ripple in an otherwise perfect current.
Harriet took another step forward, pressing against the crushing weight of her power, his hands reaching for something beyond mere battle, beyond victory or defeat. "I get it. You're strong. You had to be. You had no choice but to keep walking, no matter what you lost along the way."
The air between them thickened, the very space trembling under the force of the compressed energy in her grasp. Still, he did not waver.
"But that's exactly why I won't let you decide how this ends. You think this path you're on is inevitable—that you have to keep moving, no matter the cost. But if your only choice is to lose yourself along the way, then what's even left at the end?"
Barbel's fingers twitched. A minute movement, imperceptible to anyone but him. Yet it was enough.
Harriet pressed forward.
"You're not beyond saving, Barbel. I don't care how far you think you've gone—I'm going to drag you back from your own conclusion. Because I know you. I know the part of you that still remembers why you started walking in the first place."
His spectral hands surged forward—not to strike, not to restrain, but to reach.
"And if you won't stop yourself, then I will. Because that's what it means to stand by someone. To fight for them even when they've given up on themselves."
The storm of air intensified, the very walls of the chamber groaning beneath the unseen force. Yet Harriet stood tall.
"So go ahead. Show me everything you've got. No matter how strong you think you are, you're not going to stop me from saving you."
And then, he moved.
Harriet stepped forward, his golden gaze burning like the very sun at its zenith, unwavering in the face of the unstoppable force before him. And then, with a voice that would not be denied, he declared:
"I, Harriet Reacher, shall make a miracle."
The words rang through the cavernous abyss, resounding against the unseen currents of power that threatened to tear the very ground asunder. They were not mere boasts, nor the reckless bravado of a fool charging toward the impossible. No—they were an oath. A declaration so absolute that the world itself seemed to shudder at its weight.
At his side, Jelle let out a breathless chuckle, her lips curling into a wry grin. "Too much confidence, aren't you?" she mused, yet her voice carried no mockery, only amusement. She laughed, the sound light as a whispering breeze before a storm. Then, without hesitation, she thrust the tip of her wooden blade deep into the earth.
Beneath them, unseen by all but her, the roots stirred.
For while the battle raged, while their struggle against the unrelenting force of Barbel Flux seemed like a battle against fate itself—Jelle had been weaving her will into the very bones of the earth. Like a patient sculptor, she had carved her domain beneath the surface, each thread of wood an extension of her intent, coiling through the unseen depths of the labyrinthine tunnels that sprawled beneath the city.
Now, at last, they answered her call.
A deep, resonant tremor coursed through the ground. Not the shudder of destruction, but of something awakening. A low, whispering groan rippled through the unseen roots, stretching, twisting, threading themselves through the very veins of the underground stronghold. Barbel's iridescent eye flickered, betraying a sliver of astonishment.
"This," Jelle exhaled, her fingers tightening around the hilt of her wooden blade, "this will give us a winning chance."
The earth itself seemed to breathe beneath them, the roots now alive, writhing with the strength of a titan long forgotten. With a swift glance at Harriet, her expression hardened—not in doubt, but in pure, unshakable resolve.
"So steel yourself, Harriet."
Barbel's blade of compressed air sliced through the world itself, its edge unseen yet undeniable, a force so refined it rendered the very air a weapon of absolute precision. Each swing, each thrust—they were not mere attacks but judgments, passing through all that dared stand in their path with neither resistance nor hesitation.
Stone was nothing. The cavern walls, once immutable, were carved apart as though sculpted from mist. The roots of Jelle's conjuring—ancient, gnarled, hardened by the very will of the earth—should have stood unyielding. And yet, before Barbel's terrible might, they fell in droves, severed without effort, split apart as if they had never truly existed.
But there were too many.
For every root that was cut, dozens more rose in its place. The underground itself had become Jelle's domain, an unbroken web of intertwining tendrils, a living force surging toward Barbel with relentless purpose. No matter how sharp, no matter how fast, her blade could not carve the infinite.
And in this shifting battlefield, where the very earth bent to Jelle's will, Harriet and Jelle became untouchable.
The roots did not simply confine Barbel—they carried Harriet and Jelle, twisting and winding beneath their feet, lifting them, shifting them, granting them speed beyond reckoning. They ran like phantoms, leaping from branch to branch, evading every deadly arc of compressed air that sought to claim them.
The air shrieked, compressed into a razor-thin lance that should have turned them into dust—but the roots carried them away.
A scything arc cleaved the cavern in two, rending rock and root alike—but not them.
They surged forward, undeterred, relentless, a tempest of movement and momentum that turned the once-insurmountable foe into the hunted.
The battle raged like a storm given form, the underground cavern a shifting, chaotic battlefield where the unrelenting might of Barbel Flux clashed against the ingenuity and resilience of Harriet and Jelle. Compressed air, sharpened to a keenness beyond mortal forging, tore through the labyrinthine roots, each strike a sentence of obliteration.
Yet the roots endured. They multiplied, surging forth like serpents, weaving an ever-expanding tapestry that turned the underground itself into a living entity—a battlefield made of Jelle's will, one that did not crumble before Barbel's relentless advance, but adapted, evolved.
Jelle and Harriet moved like ghosts upon the shifting wood, their steps weightless, never lingering long enough for Barbel's deadly precision to find its mark.
Harriet, unseen hands reaching out like wraiths, lunged forward. The spectral grip lashed out, seeking Barbel's limbs, her shoulders, her arms, attempting to slow her, to bind her, but Barbel was a tempest wrapped in flesh.
With a flick of her wrist, she sent a thin, condensed blade of air slicing through the spectral grasp, dispersing them into mist. Harriet barely dodged the follow-up, an unseen crescent of air that would have taken his head clean from his shoulders.
But Harriet had no need to land decisive strikes—only to keep pushing forward.
Jelle's roots, countless and ever-shifting, surged forward with renewed fury. They came not in simple, mindless waves, but as coordinated, weaving tendrils—some forming shields, others striking out like spears, trying to grasp and bind Barbel from every angle.
Barbel's foot barely touched the ground before she propelled herself backward, a concentrated burst of compressed air detonating beneath her. She skidded across the cavern floor, slicing clean through the thickest roots with an upward swing of her blade.
Then, in the span of a breath—she changed.
No longer did she stand her ground, no longer did she merely slash away the obstacles set before her. She became a force of pure destruction.
A step forward—a column of air burst outward, a shockwave that shattered everything in its path. The cavern trembled, the very foundations of the underground labyrinth quaking under the sheer force.
Jelle moved, but she was an instant too late.
Barbel's hand shot forward, fingers curling into a loose grasp before—BOOM.
A pillar of compressed air surged from her palm, striking Jelle dead center. The world around her blurred into streaks of light and shattered debris as she was hurled backward.
Through walls.
Through corridors.
Through stone, through earth, through the very boundary of the underground.
The force of the blast did not stop at the surface. Jelle was launched into the heart of Dämmerburg, her body tearing through stone buildings like a meteor, dust and rubble exploding in her wake. Only when she crashed through the final structure, collapsing in the remnants of a shattered street, did the motion cease.
The city was silent for only a moment.
Then came the screams.
The people of Dämmerburg, caught in the shock of a battle waged beneath their feet, now bore witness to its arrival on their doorstep.
Beneath the earth, the fight was not yet over.
Harriet had no time to process Jelle's fate. He had no time for doubt. No time to hesitate.
Barbel turned her full focus onto him now, and in that moment, the underground seemed far too small to contain her presence.
Harriet rushed forward, his spectral hands surging out in droves, reaching, grasping, moving faster than the eye could track. Barbel did not move to evade—she carved through them.
Each invisible limb severed.
Each attempt to restrain her annihilated.
And then, he was close.
Close enough that his spectral fingers brushed against her shoulder.
A single moment. A heartbeat. That was all he needed.
And yet—
SLASH.
A deep, blinding pain tore across his stomach.
He gasped.
The world lurched.
His body staggered backward as warmth spilled down his front, pooling in his hands as his knees buckled beneath him. The air itself felt too thick to breathe.
Barbel stood before him, her montante blade now painted with scarlet.
Harriet collapsed to one knee, breath ragged, pain lancing through his core with every twitch of movement. His fingers trembled, pressing against the gash, as though he could hold the wound closed with sheer force of will alone.
Yet still, his spectral hand moved.
Even as the world blurred at the edges.
Even as his limbs screamed in agony.
He reached for her.
Harriet, upon the precipice of consciousness, his body betraying him with the ebbing tide of vitality, lifted his head. His golden eyes, dimmed yet unyielding, bore into Barbel's own with a clarity that defied the ruin carved into his flesh. His breath, ragged and strained, was carried forth as though the very air rebelled against his utterance, yet still, he spoke.
"The children... they will not happy in the sight of you like this."
The words, unassuming in structure yet wrought in a weight beyond reckoning, fractured the air between them. They did not merely reach Barbel; they ensnared her, wove themselves into the fabric of her being, a sudden and terrible arrest upon the maelstrom that had driven her thus far.
Her breath faltered, her fingers convulsed against the hilt of her montante, as though uncertain whether to tighten or release.
For in that moment, within the abyss of Harriet's voice, she glimpsed the unbearable reflection of herself—not the warrior wreathed in unstoppable force, not the inexorable will that cleaved through all in her path—but something far more fragile.
A specter of aching remembrance clawed at the edges of her mind, unbidden yet relentless.
The orphans—their laughter, unchained and free, their hands, small and grasping, tugging at the hem of her sleeve, their voices calling for her in the quiet hours of the night. Not as they were in life, but as they would be now—eyes widened in sorrow, in unfamiliarity, in fear.
Would they know her still, standing before them not as the protector they once clung to, but as this? A tempest that had cast off its humanity in pursuit of an unyielding march forward?
A step taken that could never be retraced.
Her breath trembled, the weight of steel in her grasp now unbearable, as though the montante itself rejected the hand that wielded it.
Harriet's body convulsed as he let out a choking gasp, crimson spilling past his lips in uneven rivulets. His breath, once defiant, now faltered—a fleeting ember upon the cusp of being snuffed out. His golden eyes, dulled with the weight of exhaustion and pain, fluttered, and then—like a withering flame—closed. His form, once tense with determination, slackened, surrendering to unconsciousness.
The moment stretched, elongated, as though time itself dared not intrude upon the stillness that followed.
Then, the world fractured.
Barbel's left eye, the one that had fused with the godly object, ignited. A kaleidoscope of brilliance surged forth, refracting every hue imaginable, yet bound by none. The colors did not merely shine—they writhed, twisted, pulsed as though alive. The tunnel, once vast and shadowed, trembled beneath the unseen force that now stirred.
And in that light—she saw.
It was neither memory nor vision, neither past nor future, but something beyond comprehension—a presence, an understanding, a revelation.
Barbel staggered, her breath caught in her throat. A weightless enormity pressed against her mind, silent yet deafening. Her fingers twitched, as if attempting to grasp something unseen, something just beyond the veil of reason.
The light intensified, spilling into every crevice, reaching into every shadow, as if seeking to expose something long hidden.
And then—
Silence.
The radiance dimmed, retreating into her eye, leaving only its unearthly glow in its wake. The tunnel lay still once more.
Barbel stood unmoving, staring at nothing, her fingers trembling at her side.
She had seen them again.