Eloryn stumbled as the path rippled underfoot—not physically, but temporally. One moment they were walking along memorygrass; the next, they were in a temple built of moonlight and thunder, and then gone again.
"It's bending around you," Lys said, eyes narrowed. "Something ancient is trying to… wake you."
"I thought I was awake," Eloryn whispered.
"No. I mean really wake you."
Then she heard it.
A drumbeat—slow and thunderous, like time marching in its own funeral procession. And behind it, a chant. Sanskrit, though she had never learned the tongue. Still, the words struck her soul like memory:
"Kalaya tasmai namah."
Salutations to Time itself.
A figure appeared ahead. Towering, cloaked in black and red, bearing a garland of skulls and a staff tipped with flame. His face was obscured by shadow, but his presence radiated absolute stillness and annihilating motion—at once.
"Kaal Bhairav," Lys said, barely breathing.
Fenn blinked. "The god of destruction?"
Pennrick corrected gently, "No. The guardian of time. Destruction is merely his scalpel."
Eloryn stepped forward, unsure why her legs obeyed when every instinct screamed to run.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
The being spoke not with voice, but through time itself.
You are bound to me across births, Eloryn. You are the Echo-Soul. The one who remembers not just lives—but the axis they turned on.
Images flashed in her mind: herself in different forms—priestess, warrior, child, starborn. In each, a moment of choice. In each, a whisper of the same drumbeat.
"You're saying I've served you before?"
You do not serve. You are. A shard of my will, cast into mortal flesh to preserve the balance. You are not just Oracle… you are Vikalpa—the possibility.
Eloryn staggered.
Fenn caught her. "What does that mean?"
"It means I've been born again and again to anchor time," she said hoarsely. "And now that I'm awake… the cycles are changing."
Kaal Bhairav stepped closer.
The Gloam seeks to fracture the thread of becoming. To unmake the weave of yugas. If it succeeds, even the gods shall forget themselves. Your power is no longer just memory, child. It is chronogenesis.
Pennrick gasped. "Timeborn creation."
Maren drew his blade. "So this Gloam is trying to end more than just her. It's trying to erase… everything."
Kaal Bhairav nodded once.
You must descend to the Sankhya Depths—where forgotten yugas sleep. Only there will you find the key to bind time again.
With that, the god stepped back—and disappeared into a shower of black feathers that burned to ash mid-air.
The Dreamwilds stilled.
Eloryn turned, breath shaking.
"So. I'm a fragment of a god. We're hunting a sentient future. And now we have to dive into a realm where time sleeps."
Fenn clapped once. "Love it. Let's go annoy destiny."
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