The air in the Celestial Bastion's restricted sanctum reeked of rust and ozone. Tatsu stood barefoot at the center of a circular chamber, cold glyph-carved stone biting into his soles. The walls pulsed faintly, alive with celestial script that slithered like serpents when he blinked. Above, the domed ceiling shimmered with a false night sky, a tapestry of dead stars, their light preserved in jagged crystal shards embedded in the rock.
Instructor Veyra's voice echoed from the shadows, warped by the time-dilation aura clinging to her like a second skin. "The pilgrimage is not a journey. It is an unraveling. You will bleed, and in that bleeding, you will bind."
Solfractum lay before him on an obsidian pedestal, its sun-kernel core throbbing like a diseased heart. Entropy-threaded gold veins spiderwebbed across its surface, hissing faintly as stray motes of stardust spiraled into its pull. Tatsu's star-mark flared in response, cobalt light threading the raised lines on his back.
"What happens if I refuse?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
Veyra materialized beside the relic, the crystalline shard along her spine refracting fractured rainbows across the walls. "You are Phase Four. Refusal is entropy. Refusal isdeath."
A low hum filled the chamber. The floor split open as seven stone pillars rose in a ring around Tatsu, each crowned with a pulsing relic, anchors to cosmic entities unknown to him. A clawed gauntlet dripping liquid shadow. A crown of frozen screams. A whip braided from dying light.
"The Seven Seated Anchors," whispered Lira, her spectral form flickering into view. "Bastion's chosen. Their rituals forged this place. Do not look directly at their bonds, it will unmake you."
Tatsu turned, but the pillars blurred. The relics seared afterimages into his vision. Blood trickled from his nostrils.
Veyra chanted in a language that cracked the air. Celestial glyphs peeled from the walls, swarming Tatsu like stinging wasps. They burrowed into his star-mark and the pain blossomed.
He screamed.
Solfractum erupted. Tendrils of violet entropy lashed out, piercing his chest, thighs, and wrists. Blood welled but instead of falling, it climbed, snaking up the tendrils toward the relic. The chamber darkened; the false stars dimmed as Solfractum fed.
"The first binding is always the cruelest," crooned a new voice.
Tatsu's vision swam. Blood coating Solfractum rippled, forming a face, pale, androgynous, with star-forged pupils that devoured light. The cosmic entity.
"You may call me Nyxis," it said, lips unmoving. "I am the hunger between collapsing stars. And you, little anchor, are my feast."
Tatsu's blood quickened. Nyxis' voice slithered into his thoughts, peeling back memories of Kio's laughter. His mother's scarred hands. The mimic of the throne, always whispering
"Let me in," Nyxis purred. "Let me taste your fear."
A new wave of agony ripped through him. The entropy tendrils thickened, digging deeper. His blood pooled in the air, forming a swirling galaxy around Solfractum.
Unseen, the Seven Seated Anchors watched from the sanctum's upper galleries. Their faces were obscured by the relics grafted to their bodies, a helm of screaming vapor, a mask of fractured timelines, a collar of teeth from dead gods.
"Will he survive Nyxis?" asked the Third Anchor, her voice harmonizing with the discordant chimes of the chainwhip fused to her spine.
The First Anchor, cloaked in a mantle of black ice, tilted his head. "Irrelevant. If he dies, the Bastion harvests his echo. If he lives, he becomes a weapon. The outcome pleases either way."
Below, Tatsu collapsed to his knees, vomiting stardust and blood.
The Fifth Anchor laughed, his voice echoing from the hollows of his relic-grafted ribcage. "Look how Nyxis toys with him. Like a child peeling wings from a moth."
The Second Anchor, her eyes replaced with twin black holes, hissed, "Quiet. The ritual nears its crescendo."
Tatsu's bones crackled, fracturing under Solfractum's pull. Nyxis' face loomed inches from his own, now mirroring his features, but twisted, hungrier.
"You cling to fragile things," it mocked. "Love. Hope. They are kindling for the inevitable end. Give them to me, and I will make yousharp."
Kio's pendant, still around his neck, turned ice-cold. Her voice, faint, defiant, cut through the haze: "Don't. You're more than a weapon."
Nyxis snarled. The entropy tendrils yanked Tatsu upright, suspending him midair. Blood rained upward, splattering the ceiling.
"You will bind, or you will break," Veyra intoned, circling the ritual floor, time warped around her. "This is the Bastion's mercy."
Tatsu's vision narrowed. The pain was a living thing, gnawing at him. But beneath it, anger simmered at the Bastion's cold calculus, at the throne's mimic, at the cruel symmetry of a universe that demanded suffering as currency.
He grabbed Solfractum.
Flesh sizzled. The relic fused to his palm, entropy threads burrowing into muscle and bone. Nyxis' laughter shook the chamber.
"Yes.Rageis a language I speak fluently."
The world dissolved.
Tatsu stood in a void, Solfractum pulsing in his grip. Before him stretched seven doors, each radiating a different cosmic resonance. The Sixth Anchor's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere:
"All who survive the bloodbinding glimpse the Anchors' Path. Choose none. You are not yet worthy."
Nyxis appeared, towering, liquid shadow and starlight. "Ignore the worm. Let me show you your true—"
Tatsu slammed his fist into the entity's chest. Or tried to. His arm passed through, and the void ripped.
Reality snapped back. He was on the chamber floor. Solfractum seared into his palm. Veins glowing violet. Blood crusted his lips.
Alive. Changed.
Veyra nodded, dispassionate. "Phase Five: Splinter. Nyxis is bound. Adequate."
As healers dragged Tatsu away, the Seven Anchors descended to the ritual floor. The Fourth Anchor, her skin etched with living equations, knelt to touch the cooling blood.
"He resisted Nyxis' full influence," she murmured. "Unwise. The entity will punish him for it."
The First Anchor gazed at the sanctum's crumbling false sky. "Prepare the halls. The sovereigns and knights arrive in three cycles. Ensure the factions are ready."
The Fifth Anchor grinned, tapping the relic fused to his throat, a harpstring made from a supernova's final cry. "The Ice Bloods will lobby for the first pick of the trainees. The Dawnbreakers still owe me a duel for last year's slight. Should I let them bleed this time?"
"Do as you please," said the First Anchor. "But remember, the Bastion's eyes are on us. The Gathering must flawlessly showcase our strength."
Their voices faded as they departed, leaving Nyxis' laughter echoing in the bloodstained air.