Orion's breath hitched as the shadows moved. Not with the shifting of the fractured light but with purpose—awareness. The ruins whispered as unseen figures stirred within them.
Lyra tensed beside him, her fingers tightening around her blade's hilt. "We're not alone."
The air trembled.
A flicker—just at the edges of his vision. Then another. Shapes dissolving and reforming, as if slipping between existence and nothingness.
Orion turned sharply, heart hammering against his ribs. "Stay close."
He reached for the silver fire coursing through his veins, feeling its power stir, but something resisted—muted, dampened. The Threshold was suffocating his connection to the Unwritten Realm.
Damn.
The shadows deepened.
A voice, distant and layered with echoes, rippled through the silence. "You do not belong."
Lyra shifted into a defensive stance. "Yeah? Well, neither do you."
The figures emerged—tall, elongated wraiths draped in spectral remnants of time. Their faces were hollow voids, and within them, stars burned and died in an instant.
The Forgotten.
Orion had seen their likeness in ancient texts—beings erased from history, their existence stripped from the fabric of reality. Now, they had found him.
And they were hungry.
The first wraith lunged, its form unraveling like mist before solidifying inches from Lyra. She twisted aside, her blade cutting through the air where it had been, but it reformed instantly.
Orion cursed, raising his arm. The silver veins along his skin flickered—but again, resistance.
The Threshold's influence was stronger than he'd thought.
One of the wraiths reached toward him. A chill bit into his bones—memories unraveling. Orion jerked away, but a flood of fragmented thoughts rushed through him.
Not his own.
Visions of a city before ruin. Of people walking streets now lost to time. Of a name—Rhaziel.
His mind snapped back.
The wraiths fed on history. They consumed what was forgotten and erased what remained.
Lyra's blade ignited with a pulse of deep blue energy. She swung, the arc of her attack slicing through the nearest wraith. It howled—an unnatural sound that sent ripples through the Threshold.
Orion clenched his jaw. Think.
His powers were suppressed, but the wraiths weren't invulnerable. They reacted to energy.
"Lyra! Use the blade's resonance—disrupt them!"
She didn't hesitate. Flipping the weapon in her grip, she slammed the pommel against the ground. A burst of harmonic reverberation pulsed outward. The wraiths recoiled, their forms distorting like shattered reflections.
Orion seized the opening.
Focusing on the residual energy in the air, he forced his power forward, shaping it into something new.
The silver fire erupted, not as a direct force, but as a pulse—a counter-frequency to the wraiths' existence.
They shrieked. Their forms fractured, splintering into the void.
Silence fell.
Orion exhaled, shaking off the lingering cold of their touch. Lyra wiped her blade clean, her expression unreadable.
"They knew who we were," she murmured. "They spoke to us."
Orion met her gaze. "And they'll be back."
The ruins stretched before them, vast and unknowable.
They had won this battle.
But something told Orion that the Forgotten had only just begun to remember them.