The air had thickened without warning, vibrating with a raw, electric tension as if the chamber itself had drawn breath. Then came the orbs—shimmering Psychic Feedback Orbs that tore into existence with a shriek of invisible force, spinning in jagged, chaotic paths like fragments of thought ripped from the minds of the damned. Each pulse radiated dangerous promise—psionic energy barely contained, each one a thought-bomb aching to explode.

And then it rose.

The kirre—massive, mutated, and utterly unnatural—unfurled itself from the shadows like a weapon unsheathed. Its monstrous frame dwarfed even the most savage of its kin. Its fur rippled with streaks of dark energy, every strand alive with power. Eyes glowed an icy violet, emotionless and penetrating. The beast's hackles stood rigid, each hair a sharpened quill bristling with lethal intent. This was no animal. This was not even a creature. This was a living instrument of psionic warfare—an extension of Pakk’s will, sculpted by madness and perfected by purpose.

And at the center of the chaos sat Pakk himself, cross-legged on the fractured obsidian floor. His demeanor was unnervingly serene, his eyes closed in still meditation. Yet the air around him thrummed with restrained devastation. He was the calm at the eye of the storm, a force of will wrapped in silence.

Then, as if reality had finally surrendered, the chamber fractured again.

Three more images of Pakk shimmered into existence, each one silently stepping into a corner of the room. Now there were four of him—four unmoving, meditative figures encircling the chamber like grim sentinels. Whether they were illusions, clones, or echoes of a mind that had slipped beyond mortal boundaries, none could tell. They sat in perfect unison, each radiating the same dreadful calm, each pulsing with the same terrifying potential.

And then the first wave hit.

An unseen tide of psychic force—an Emotional Current—crashed over the battlefield. It tore through minds like a storm through fragile branches. Thought twisted. Emotions not their own surged forth: rage, sorrow, dread. Perception bent and faltered. Resolve snapped like dry twigs. The air thickened with cries that were never spoken aloud—screams of the soul.

Simultaneously, the world itself began to rupture.

Reality Fractures split the chamber, tearing through the air in jagged, crystalline lines. They hung like broken glass, suspended in time, bending light and reason alike. The floor quaked beneath their feet, and flashes of impossible visions assaulted their minds—phantoms of dead loved ones, glimpses of impossible futures, whispering voices speaking in forgotten tongues.

The chamber had become something more than a battleground. It had become a crucible of madness, a living nightmare fueled by psionic force. The kirre circled like death incarnate. The orbs screamed in orbit. Four versions of Pakk sat like gods awaiting sacrifice.

The battle had begun—not just for their lives, but for their very minds. And the price of failure was not death, but unmaking.

Rage had seized the chamber in a brutal crescendo—each heartbeat a drumbeat of chaos, each thought drowned beneath the rising tide of fury.

Fazanna was the first to fall to its grasp. A red haze smothered her vision; her blood boiled with incandescent fury. Every breath was a snarl, every motion a strike barely restrained. Shifting into the shape of a kirre, she surged forward with feral grace, wielding a sword that gleamed with lethal intent. With a savage cry, she struck at Karnos, the blade biting deep in a frenzy born of madness.

Safi, too, succumbed. His eyes burned with unreasoning wrath as he turned and lashed out at Zahraan. The strike missed, but his rage burned hotter for it.

Karnos, snarling in his kirre form, was no different. The red haze filled him, and he lunged at Fazanna with a vicious bite—but her form danced just out of reach. Shiv followed suit, gripped by that same uncontrollable anger. He raised his mace, Bonecrusher, and brought it down at Karnos with crushing force, only to strike empty air.

Then, the room darkened with true dread.

Pakk’s kirre—an abomination of muscle, claw, and will—tightened its control over Karnos, dominating his mind and twisting it like clay in a sculptor’s hands. Karnos became little more than a puppet, and the beast turned on Shiv with terrible precision. Its claws raked across him, and then it drove its horn deep into his side.

But Shiv did not fall.

Roaring through blood and pain, he summoned the fury of the arena. Barbarian rage surged through him like a storm, and with both hands he gripped Bonecrusher, slamming it into Pakk’s kirre with titanic force. The blow landed like a meteor. The kirre shuddered—and then vanished in a scream of psychic vapor.

Without pause, Shiv turned to one of the seated Pakks and brought his mace down in righteous fury. The illusion shattered like glass. One by one, all four Pakk images flickered and vanished into nothingness.

With no more enemies in sight, Shiv turned skyward and struck a hovering Psychic Feedback Orb. It shattered in a shriek of psionic force, detonating in a burst of raw mental energy that sent tremors through reality itself.

Fazanna, panting with effort, ended her polymorph on Karnos. His monstrous form melted away, and the grip of domination dissolved with it. His thoughts were his own once more.

And then Pakk returned.

All four versions of him—cross-legged, eyes closed, serene amidst the carnage. They seemed unchanged, untouched. But the stillness was a lie. A pulse of psychic thought surged outward—id insinuation—washing over the two groups of heroes in a wave of paralyzing confusion. Then came the psionic blast, a mind-rending eruption that clawed at every nerve and memory.

Zahraan, his heart already caught in the storm, fixated on one of the Pakk images. His mind locked onto it—foe, fixation, destiny. Everything else melted into meaningless static. He charged, struck with a flurry of blows—and when the image dispersed into vapor, he froze. Stunned. Disoriented. As if the very purpose of his being had been torn away.

Anvar, caught in the chaos, found his thoughts spiraling inward. The battle seemed far away as regret wormed into his soul. Fleeting images clawed at his mind—faces of the fallen, words left unsaid, failures he could never amend. Each memory cut deeper than any blade. The din of war faded beneath the echo of sorrow.

Elsewhere, Anvar fled the pulsing reality fracture, staggering from its warping influence. Safi followed, escaping its grip before calling down an eerie host—eight floaters, tentacled horrors that hovered high above, twitching with menace. With a shudder of transformation, he became something older, something vast—a hatori, the colossal Atahasian land crocodile, armored and unstoppable.

Karnos, now clear of Pakk’s domination, closed his eyes and reached inward. Power stirred. With a cry of will, he invoked his greatest psionic gift: fusion. He melded mind and body with Shiv, two warriors becoming one—a fusion of strength and wrath. A single being of purpose and vengeance.

Fazanna, mind still sharp through the fading haze of battle, approached one of the remaining psychic orbs, seeking to decipher its secrets—but it yielded nothing. Its mystery was beyond comprehension, locked in layers of madness and thought beyond thought.

Above, the floaters circled—but those caught in the reality fractures faltered. Some fell to the distortions, their forms writhing and warping before bursting in violent waves of psychic detonation.

The battlefield had become a dream of violence—a theater of shattered minds and twisted reality. Rage, obsession, regret, and madness danced together in an unholy symphony. And still, Pakk remained.

Calm. Silent. Waiting.

The battlefield had dissolved into madness—a chaos not just of blade and blast, but of soul, thought, and identity itself. The grove became a crucible of fractured minds and bleeding wills, each warrior teetering on the brink of emotional ruin.

Karnos, still burning with rage, now moved as one with Shiv—their fused body a juggernaut of fury and instinct. Together they turned on Safi, still in his colossal hatori form, and struck with brutal precision. The blow landed hard, a devastating crack across armored flesh.

From the shadows, Pakk’s kirre reappeared in a pulse of dark radiance. It let out a thunderous roar, a cry soaked in psionic fury that shook the air and shattered focus. Fear surged, raw and immediate.

Safi, already shaken, turned his attention to his floaters—but despair had wormed into his soul. A crushing weight pressed on him, making every movement feel hollow. Even as one of the floaters drifted, mind-swapped with Anvar in the chaos of the reality fracture, he could barely muster the will to act. Victory already felt like a memory slipping from his grasp.

Karnos and Shiv, united in flesh, pressed on. Karnos called upon body adjustment, mending their shared vessel. Shiv stepped into a reality fracture—and that was when he saw it.

Shank.

His brother. Wounded, reaching, whispering his name. The vision clutched at his heart like a vice. Fear burst through his chest like a blade. The world narrowed, and he couldn’t breathe. Every heartbeat screamed that danger was coming from behind, from above, from inside. The others—were they even allies? Were they shadows? Were they threats?

He reached for Shank, and everything else faded.

In that same breath, the fracture twisted again—Karnos’ mind was swapped with Safi’s. The spell unraveled in a blink. The hatori form collapsed as Safi’s consciousness was ejected, and the fusion with Shiv was violently severed. They were once again two warriors, separate and reeling, their minds scrambling to reorient inside mismatched bodies.

Then came Pakk’s retaliation.

A crackling wave of psionic pain burst forth—ego whip—scorching through Shiv, Zahraan, Anvar, and Fazanna. Shiv and Zahraan both buckled, their minds overloaded. Zahraan, already drowning in despair, could do nothing. Everything felt futile. The world pressed down on him like stone, and even standing felt like a lie.

Fazanna staggered but stayed standing—eyes locked not on the battlefield, but on Pakk. One of them. Any of them. It didn’t matter. Her mind had locked on him like a hunting hawk. Foe. Fixation. Destiny. Nothing else mattered. Everything outside her vision became meaningless static. Her breath came slow and focused. Her hands trembled not with fear, but purpose. She would burn him, no matter the cost.

Anvar snarled, teeth bared. Hatred coursed through him, hot and consuming. He didn’t care who stood where anymore. He loathed Pakk, loathed the kirre, loathed this cursed place. Even his allies grated against his skin. His pulse was venom, and it demanded release. He unleashed his psionic blast against the kirre, stunning it with sheer force of will, before turning inward to patch his wounds with swift, savage first aid.

Safi—now trapped in Karnos’ body—stumbled to a psychic orb. Despair clung to him like a shroud. He tried to investigate, to break through its mystery, but the effort felt meaningless. His mind reeled from the swap, his spirit already bowed. The orb remained cold and unreadable, mocking him with silence.

Then Fazanna struck.

Her eyes blazed with unrelenting purpose. Words of power spilled from her lips, and she hurled a fireball into the heart of the grove. She cared not for friend or foe—only for Pakk. The explosion roared outward in a blossom of flame and agony, engulfing everything within.

Through the inferno, Pakk remained.

Silent. Untouched.

He unleashed a final psychic assault on Shiv and Safi. Their minds buckled under the strike. Pain flooded their thoughts. Identities cracked. The world spun.

Fear, hatred, despair, obsession—each hero stood on the edge of their soul, the battlefield no longer a place of war, but of unraveling. And still, Pakk sat.

Eyes closed.

Calm.
Waiting.

The battlefield was no longer bound by reason or order. Time faltered. Thought fragmented. And emotion—raw, merciless emotion—ruled.

Pakk’s kirre, momentarily stunned by Anvar’s psionic blast, twitched violently—and then rose with terrifying clarity. Its violet eyes flared once more as it loosed a guttural growl, ready to resume its slaughter.

Karnos, mind-swapped into Safi’s body, reeled. Despair dragged at his soul like a weight around his neck. Every movement felt hollow. The fight was slipping away—already lost. Yet amidst the fog of hopelessness, something pulsed in his thoughts. The orbs… he understood them now. They were more than volatile psionic artifacts. They amplified psionic abilities. They were keys to untapped power. But the revelation brought little comfort—he was not in his body. He was barely himself.

Across the grove, Pakk struck again. A blast of id insinuation erupted toward Safi. The blow landed—Safi stiffened, stunned mid-thought, caught entirely in its psychic snare. His mind, locked in a laser-focus on one figure—Pakk—could not resist. Pakk was all he saw. Foe. Fixation. Destiny. Nothing else mattered.

But Zahraan, battered and dazed, resisted every assault. The psionic blasts surged toward him again and again, but his spirit refused to break. He struck out instead, smashing one of the glowing orbs with a defiant roar. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as it shrieked in protest.

Pakk responded in kind. Another psychic assault lanced into Zahraan’s mind, hammering at the edges of his soul. He staggered—haunted. Regret consumed him. He saw faces he had failed, moments he should have seized, words he never said. They clawed at him with greater fury than any sword.

Shiv, lying stunned beside him, shook off the mental fog at last. Gasping, sweat pouring from his brow, he rose to one knee—only for the kirre to strike. Claws raked across his torso, tearing flesh and leaving crimson trails. Shiv cried out, the sound raw and real.

In that moment, Anvar acted.

He raised his wand of haste and unleashed its magic on Shiv. The energy surged through the prone warrior, pushing him beyond his limits. But the relief was short-lived—Pakk’s kirre, relentless, raked Shiv again, its claws tearing into the flesh of the already-wounded fighter.

Meanwhile, Zahraan stood like a beacon of resistance—and Pakk answered with yet another psychic bombardment. The onslaught kept coming, a merciless tide battering the walls of Zahraan’s resolve. His regrets screamed at him. The fallen, the lost—they reached for him in his mind, and he could barely tell if he was still standing.

Then came Fazanna.

Her breath was venom, her heart aflame with hatred. Every pulse burned with loathing. The betrayal of Karnos—real or imagined—was all she could see. Friend, ally—it didn’t matter. Her vision had turned red. With her shortsword in hand, she stormed forward and slashed into him. Once. Twice. Both blows struck true. Blood sprayed across the grove.

Anvar, too, staggered, crushed beneath the weight of despair. His hope had withered. Every effort felt like wading through ash. Even the aid he gave felt like futility dressed in magic. Around him, the world broke—and he could do nothing to stop it.

The battle was not merely physical. It was psychic warfare in its most brutal form. Each heart was a battlefield. Each mind, a ruin.

And amidst it all, Pakk remained.
Eyes closed.
Unmoving.
But behind the calm—he was winning.

The grove had become a blood-soaked crucible of mind and matter—emotion made weapon, thought made flesh. Reality frayed at the edges as the heroes battled not just their foes, but the torment roiling inside them.

Fazanna moved first, trembling with rage. A red haze flooded her vision, her blood boiling with every heartbeat. Her breath came fast and sharp, and her every step was a blow waiting to land. Screaming, she hurled herself at Karnos and slashed with her sword—not once, but twice—striking her former ally with violent precision, her fury blinding her to reason.

Safi was no less consumed. The same red haze clouded his mind. Strike. That was all that mattered. He lunged at one of the Pakk images, his fury erupting into motion—but it was an illusion. His strike passed through nothing. The fake Pakk shimmered, then vanished, leaving Safi snarling in impotent fury.

Karnos, gripped by the same blazing rage, turned on the real Pakk. Every breath was molten hatred. Every muscle quivered with wrath. He struck—and this time, the blow landed. His weapon crashed into Pakk’s form with satisfying impact, and the illusionist flinched.

Shiv, his pulse burning with hatred, rose from the ground just long enough to meet the oncoming claws of the kirre. The beast slashed at his prone body, claws rending flesh—but he twisted just in time to avoid the killing bite. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he surged upward and brought Bonecrusher crashing down on the creature’s hide. The mace struck true, and the kirre roared in pain.

At the edge of the chaos, Zahraan and Anvar could barely keep their footing. Fear clawed at them. Something unseen—predatory and inevitable—crawled just beneath their thoughts. Their limbs felt heavy, their breath short. Even the flicker of a friend nearby made their skin crawl. They could trust no one. Not even themselves.

Karnos tried to bring clarity. He summoned the psionic power of Intellect Fortress, hoping to shield his companions from further mental assault—but Pakk’s response was immediate. With a flicker of his mind, he reached across the weave and countered the ability mid-casting, snuffing it out like a candle.

Then Pakk retaliated.

A brutal psionic blast slammed into Fazanna and Karnos, hurling them backward in a shriek of psychic force. Their minds reeled. Before they could recover, Pakk followed it with a crushing ego whip, stabbing deep into their identities and freezing their thoughts in place. The two stood stunned—helpless—as another psionic blast thundered into their minds, the pain folding them inward.

Zahraan shook, but acted. Calling upon the Blessing of the Tree, he felt a rush of healing calm his nerves. It wasn’t courage—but it was enough. He surged forward, fists flying in a flurry of precision strikes—only for the Pakk he struck to blink out of existence. Another illusion. Snarling, he spun and struck the damaged orb instead. His blow shattered it. The orb exploded in a blast of wild psychic force, shaking the grove, and Zahraan sprinted away from the chaos, breath ragged.

But the kirre was not finished.

It raked its claws again into the still-prone Shiv, tearing bloody gashes across his side. Shiv coughed, staggered—but he rose. Fueled by spite and pain, he raised his mace and crushed the kirre’s skull. The beast collapsed with a wet crunch, its monstrous body finally still.

Shiv panted, blood streaming down his side, and summoned his second wind. Strength returned to his limbs. But his hatred remained unchecked. When he turned and saw Anvar still inside the twisting reality fracture, something inside him snapped.

He shoved Anvar out of the rift—and then followed, his mind still a storm. With venom twisting his thoughts, Shiv brought Bonecrusher down on his companion with a furious critical strike. The impact was devastating. Anvar crumpled, gasping in disbelief.

Inside the fracture, Anvar had already begun to lose himself. The world had dissolved into a haze of conflicting sights, warped sounds, and corrupted thought. Confusion overwhelmed him. Nothing made sense. Time spiraled. And then Shiv’s blow tore through him.

Amid this swirling collapse, Safi found clarity. No longer raging, he turned his magic to aid his companions. He chanted and cast bless, divine power washing over them all like a shield against madness. Then he conjured magic stones, imbuing the simple weapons with death-dealing force.

The storm raged on.

The kirre was dead. But the true predator remained—calm, unblinking, waiting behind four illusionary faces.

And one by one, the minds of the heroes were breaking.

The grove pulsed with psychic tension—taut as a bowstring stretched to the point of breaking. The heroes stood scattered among reality fractures, shattered illusions, and corpses—each one a storm of unraveling thought and surging emotion.

Pakk struck first, mind calm as ever, heart invisible beneath his closed eyes. A pulse of ego whip tore through the minds of Safi and Karnos, dragging them under the weight of their own consciousness. Both were stunned—frozen in place, helpless beneath the blow.

Then came the psionic blast. It erupted like thunder through the battlefield, smashing into Karnos and Fazanna. The blast staggered them—pain lancing through bone and thought alike. They stumbled, but there was no time to breathe.

Fazanna’s vision trembled with fear. It clung to her like a second skin. Something hunted just behind her—she could feel it. Every shadow moved wrong, every sound was sharpened to a blade. Her limbs grew sluggish. Her heart thundered in her chest, and when she turned toward even her allies, a part of her whispered they will turn too.

Zahraan shared that same dread. Fear gnawed at the edges of his mind, invisible and patient. It wasn’t Pakk he feared—it was everything. Everyone. The grove. His friends. Himself. Still, he acted. With a flash of psionic will, he teleported across the battlefield—appearing beside one of the spheres and a figure of Pakk. He unleashed a flurry of blows, hands moving with desperate speed. The first strikes missed. The second grazed air. The third landed—but the Pakk before him vanished like smoke. Another illusion.

Safi, paralyzed by the stun, could only watch. But within, regret chewed through him. He saw faces he’d failed—companions he hadn’t saved, choices that led them here. Each missed step echoed louder than the fighting. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe.

Karnos, also stunned, could feel regret winding around his heart like a vice. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. So many fallen. So many mistakes. Was this what he had led them into?

And Anvar—poor Anvar—stood within the fractured edge of reality, still confused. His thoughts splintered in every direction. His limbs wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t remember what he’d just done or why. Colors sang. Voices whispered. Everything that moved was a threat, a joke, a prayer, all at once.

Only Shiv burned clear.

His hatred seethed and crackled like a fire stoked too hot. His pulse roared in his ears. He saw enemies in every glance, betrayal in every movement. It didn’t matter who had brought them here. He would crush them all. He clenched his mace tighter, waiting for someone—anyone—to get too close.

Fazanna, still shaking, conjured her flame blade and lashed out at one of the shimmering orbs. The fire connected—but instead of damaging it, the orb absorbed the energy, swallowing the magic like a void. Her breath caught. Her fear spiked. She dropped the blade and drew her shortsword instead. With a snarl of survival and desperation, she struck again. Steel met crystal. A crack split the orb, light bleeding from it like a wound.

It wasn’t over—not yet.

But they were all fraying.
Bound not by strategy or courage,
But by fear, regret, and fury.
And Pakk sat unmoved.
Still.
Serene.
The architect of their unraveling.

The grove had become a pressure cooker of unraveling minds and boiling emotions. Every moment bled into the next in a swirl of color, violence, and psychic devastation. And above it all, Pakk moved unseen—an eye of calm in the storm he had conjured.

Safi was the first to lash out, eyes blazing with rage. A red haze clouded his thoughts. There was no room for doubt or hesitation—only action. Only violence. He spun and struck at Zahraan, the red mist leading his aim—but Zahraan wasn’t where Safi saw him. The blow missed, and the fury only burned hotter.

Anvar was no different. Rage sang in his veins like wildfire. His blade—his wrath—sought a target. He lunged but missed as well, his motion too wild, too desperate, the haze blinding him to reason.

Karnos and Shiv stood nearby, both overcome by fear. A predator unseen stalked their thoughts. Every breath was sharp. Every shadow shifted too quickly. Their limbs felt leaden. The heartbeat of those around them seemed too fast—too dangerous. Even friends were suspect. Even allies felt like threats in the corner of their eyes.

And yet, in the midst of this fraying chaos, two minds sharpened like blades.

Fazanna and Zahraan—both consumed with obsession. Their gazes locked on a single target: Pakk. All else faded into static. The grove, their allies, even pain itself was meaningless beside the singular purpose. They would strike him down. They had to. It was the only truth left.

But Pakk was not done. A psionic blast ripped through Safi and Zahraan. Zahraan collapsed, body limp, the fixation in his eyes finally breaking as darkness claimed him.

Another blast tore through Karnos, who buckled beneath the invisible weight of Pakk’s mind. And then, id insinuation surged forth—twisting, invasive. It stunned both Safi and Karnos, their thoughts locked mid-motion, paralyzed in place.

Shiv, teeth gritted, forced himself to act. He knelt beside Zahraan and called upon the Blessing of the Tree. Vines coiled around the fallen monk, and light poured into his wounds. Zahraan breathed—life returned.

Then Shiv stepped into the reality fracture. The world twisted, folded—and surging power ignited in his mind. It burned, brilliant and untamed. A wild surge of potential burst forth, and instinct took over. He unleashed a mind thrust toward a Pakk—but it struck nothing. Another illusion.

But Shiv wasn’t done.

Fueled by desperation and raw will, he invoked action surge. With a battle cry, he turned and smashed a nearby crystal orb. The explosion rocked the grove in a burst of psionic energy, light and noise tearing across the shattered battlefield.

From the smoke, Shiv emerged, mace in hand, and brought it crashing down on a Pakk. This time, it hit. The illusion didn’t fade. Instead—its eyes opened.

This one was real.

But before anything else could happen—before anyone could move or speak—all the Pakks vanished, as if the world itself inhaled and erased them.

Anvar, battered and breathless, downed a potion of healing and drew upon his own reserves to cast Vitality Boost, knitting his wounds with threads of stubborn life.

Fazanna moved quickly, channeling her Blessing of the Tree into Karnos. Vines coiled around his stunned form, mending the fractures in his body. She inhaled deeply, then called on her second wind, steadying herself amid the whirlwind of pain and obsession.

Zahraan, now returned to life, wasted no time. With the fluid grace of a monk, he grabbed both Shiv and Karnos. Channeling his ki, he invoked Step of the Wind, dashing like a bolt of lightning across the shattered grove.

He brought them to the last remaining crystal orb.

It pulsed.
Waiting.
One shard left.
One sliver of truth.
And somewhere beyond, Pakk watched.

The grove trembled with the weight of unraveling minds and the echoes of lives once whole. The last orb pulsed like a heartbeat, its glow a beacon of both hope and doom. All around it, the battlefield lay shattered—minds frayed, emotions raw.

Pakk, calm as ever, struck again.

A wave of ego whip lashed out like a psychic scythe, cutting through Shiv, Zahraan, and Safi. All three reeled beneath the blow, their minds collapsing under its force. They stood frozen—stunned—unable to act as their thoughts were chained, crushed under the weight of Pakk’s will.

Safi and Zahraan trembled, gripped by fear. Something unseen moved in the corners of their minds—silent, stalking, inevitable. Their bodies responded with leaden limbs, their instincts blunted by the terror that clawed at the edge of reason. Even the sight of their allies felt wrong, unsafe. Nothing was to be trusted.

Shiv sank deeper. Despair clung to him like a second skin. Every blow he had struck, every burst of effort—it all felt futile. Victory seemed a story told in a language he no longer remembered. He could barely lift his weapon, crushed by the sense that none of it would ever matter again.

Then Fazanna moved. Faces of the fallen flashed through her thoughts—regret coiling tight around her heart. She blinked against the pain of memory, drawing upon her shadowstep to vanish from sight and reappear elsewhere. With a whispered incantation, she cast polymorph—her form twisting and expanding until she stood as a mighty kirre, fur bristling with potential.

But the spell had been cast within the reality fracture—and reality struck back.

Mahlanda appeared before her.

Broken. Bleeding. Pleading.

The illusion was perfect. Realer than breath. The emotional pull was overwhelming. Fazanna’s heart screamed to save her—rational thought buried beneath the tidal wave of grief and guilt. Her form trembled, frozen in place, caught between rage and memory.

Anvar entered the same rift—and was swallowed by it.

But hatred gave him focus. He loathed Pakk. Loathed the way his mind unraveled others. Loathed the battlefield, the illusions, the grief. His pulse boiled with venom, and it propelled him. He rose into the air—levitating sixty feet above the battlefield. From on high, he summoned Vitality Boost and forced strength back into his battered form. He glared down from above, ready to rain fury on the monster below.

Karnos stood beside Shiv, both haunted—Karnos by regret, Shiv by despair. Karnos saw too much—every mistake, every command that led to this. Words unsaid echoed louder than the blasts still ringing through the grove. And Shiv… he barely registered the world anymore.

But they moved.

Karnos called upon his psionic focus—Urgent Violence—and turned Shiv’s paralysis into explosive motion. The two of them struck as one.

With weapons raised high and breath ragged in their throats, they brought all their strength to bear on the final crystal orb.

It shattered.

The explosion was immediate—an eruption of psychic force, energy, and mind-warping light. The grove shook. Reality howled.

The last orb was gone.
The ritual was undone.
But what had been unleashed… was still waiting.

As Pakk’s form staggered beneath the weight of wound upon wound, his breath ragged and bloodied, something twisted in the silence. His head tilted back, and a smile—slow, chilling, and utterly calm—spread across his face. His eyes, though dulled by pain, glimmered with cold certainty. Even as his body threatened to collapse, his spirit blazed, unbroken and unyielding.

Then came his voice—not spoken, but felt—a whisper that slithered through each mind like wind through a crypt:

“You may have broken this shell... but the storm within only grows stronger. Our minds are bound—this is not the end.”

Before anyone could move, before a spell or strike could be readied, his form began to fracture. It cracked like glass under impossible pressure, shards of his image scattering in all directions as though caught in a psychic tempest. And then—

A blinding pulse of raw psionic energy erupted from where he stood, a shockwave of invisible force that slammed through the air. Light warped. Sound bent. And in the next instant—he was gone.

Only silence remained. And the fading echo of his words.

For a single heartbeat, the grove stood still.

Then reality shuddered.

A psionic cataclysm ripped through the group—an unseen wave of unleashed thought, pain, and spectral force that lanced into their minds like lightning through stone.

Fazanna collapsed to one knee, clutching her head as tendrils of memory and emotion lashed her thoughts—Psychic Scarring. Each scream, each failure, each loss carved itself anew into her mind like a brand, leaving behind invisible wounds that would never fully fade.

Safi, Karnos, and Anvar staggered, their vision splitting, their senses twisting. The world no longer moved as it should. Time bent. Shapes blurred. Warped Perception consumed them—friend became foe, reality became dream, and every movement became a question of truth.

Shiv let out a strangled cry, his eyes wide with horror as something impossible clawed at the edges of his consciousness. A Nightmare Curse took root—phantoms not just of fear, but of failure and betrayal. He would sleep again… but never peacefully.

Zahraan stood rigid, his breath caught in his throat. His mind shattered—not into chaos, but into pieces. Psychic Fragmentation. Thoughts no longer followed one another. His memories broke apart. His own voice sounded foreign in his head.

And above them all, the grove hummed with lingering power.
Something greater had awakened.
And though Pakk was gone, the storm he spoke of—
had only begun.

As the last echoes of psychic devastation faded, the grove lay heavy with silence and the weight of minds on the brink. The group, still reeling from the cataclysmic blast of Pakk’s departure, struggled to stand, their bodies battered and thoughts fractured.

Then, through the gloom and crackling remnants of psionic energy, Ptalan emerged—his saurian form stepping with urgency and purpose across the torn earth. The pterran’s eyes burned with fierce clarity, his movements swift but measured, as though time itself pressed upon him.

“You must not delay,” he said, his voice low but firm. “Pakk has fled… to his sanctuary.”

Those words fell like a stone into the center of the group’s dread.

“I know where it is,” Ptalan continued. “I have seen it. I can take you there.”

Even as hope stirred at the revelation, the pterran paused, reading the pain etched into every face. He saw the toll the battle had taken—the tremors in their hands, the blood on their skin, the haunted silence in their eyes.

“You need strength,” he murmured.

Lifting his clawed hands, Ptalan closed his eyes and let his own psionics flow outward. A gentle wave of thought radiated from him, not overwhelming like Pakk’s tyranny, but calm, steady, grounding. It washed over the group like cool water on sun-scorched stone.

The warriors accepted it gratefully. The pain dulled, minds cleared, and their limbs grew steadier. It was not full healing, but it was enough—enough to breathe, to think, to stand.

With renewed resolve, they gathered themselves—binding wounds, drawing weapons, locking eyes with one another. They had survived the storm’s fury.

Now, they would chase its heart.

With Ptalan at the lead, the group turned from the shattered grove and set off into the wasteland.

Pakk had escaped. But not for long.