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The city wept starlight as they reached the moon-tree's root gate—an archway of living crystal veined with memories. Each step forward was like treading through someone else's dream.
Kaelith had woven illusions into the very air.
Lyra stepped forward, bow drawn but trembling. "I can feel him... in the pulse of the ground, in the way the wind sings." Her voice shook. "He's already inside me."
"We hold to ourselves," Selene said, setting her hourglass in the soil. "Anchor to what's real."
Lyra nodded, but her eyes were already clouding.
She began to sing.
The melody—soft, lilting, haunting—was woven from the Song of Wards, an ancient elven chant meant to break illusions and untangle threads of falsehood. Her voice echoed through the root gate like moonlight through mist, and for a moment, the path cleared.
But then... it turned.
Instead of Kaelith's sanctum, Lyra stood in a golden field.
Beside her—Kaelith, unmasked, smiling, sunlight in his eyes.
She held his hand.
A wedding garland crowned her brow. Children's laughter rang behind them. A life unscarred. A life possible.
She dropped her bow.
"Lyra!" Aelric's voice thundered as he lunged forward, grabbing her shoulders. "It's not real."
Tears streamed down her cheeks. "But it feels real. It was a path. He's showing me what could've been."
Aelric tightened his grip, his voice quieter now. "He does that. Shows you what you've lost—what he's lost. He's not attacking your body. He's reaching for your heart."
Lyra blinked, the vision flickering. "You knew him better than anyone. Didn't you?"
Aelric nodded slowly. "We bled together. Fought beside each other before the prophecy ever broke him. He was my brother... in all ways but blood."
"And now?" she asked, still shaking.
His jaw tightened. "Now I have to end him."
Selene and Thorin reached them next, weapons drawn. Korrak stood guard, watching for another psychic wave. Vaelorith raised a warding glyph, sealing off the false future with a burst of firelight.
"Can you walk?" Selene asked Lyra.
Lyra nodded, retrieving her bow. Her hands still trembled.
"I sang truth," she whispered. "And he still made it a lie."
Aelric stepped beside her. "That's what he does. But you're stronger than the vision. We all are."
He turned to the gate.
"Kaelith plays with memory because he thinks it's where we're weakest. But it's also where we remember why we fight."
Thunder rolled in the distance—not from the sky, but from the stormlight coiling in Aelric's blade.
Tempestheart answered his resolve with a low hum of power.
"Let's finish this."
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Within the sanctum, Kaelith flinched.
He felt her pain—Lyra's pain—resonate through the threads he'd woven. The illusion had faltered. Her love had bent, but not broken.
He placed a hand to his temple. The mask flickered in his grip.
The Lunavynx watched silently, celestial form dimming now into twilight grace.
"She sang to me," Kaelith murmured. "Even now... she sings for me."
The mask pulsed. It hungered for prophecy. For finality.
Kaelith breathed deep.
"No more visions," he said. "No more maybes. Just the end."
He placed the mask back upon his face.
And the moon-tree began to die.
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