In the eternity of the black desert, after an unknown amount of time that could have been days... or seconds, Kael awoke. He felt strange, as if everything had somehow changed, but at the same time, everything seemed the same. By his side was Lirya, as beautiful and enigmatic as ever, with those mercury tears surrounding her.
"The fragment is fusing with you," she murmured, her eclipsed eyes reflecting the trembling of the mercury. "It seems you have survived the initial fusion. I must admit I did not expect this, my dear copy."
Those eclipsed eyes were beautiful; a normal person would be lost observing the infinity of the universe within them, as they seemed to contain galaxies in an eternal cycle of birth and destruction.
But...
Something wasn't right. For a moment, Kael shifted his attention from the mortal beauty before him and focused on his arm. That flesh-and-blood arm now flowed and shone, made of dense mercury. It seemed as if anything that touched it would pierce its fragile surface.
"What the hell..." was the only thing Kael could manage. Beside him, Lirya remained expressionless, watching as if waiting for something, and it just happened.
When he tried to move his arm, Kael realized it wasn't responding. For some reason, he felt it no longer belonged to him, and then Lirya did it.
Beside him, a pool of mercury emerged from nowhere. From it rose a humanoid figure. At first, it had no shape, but after a few seconds, it transformed into a familiar sight. Kael realized it was one of those statues of him in the garden, those grotesque, eternal sculptures.
This time it had only one arm, larger and more muscular than any Cael had ever seen. It gave the impression of a giant's arm, as it was almost as large and thick as the figure's body.
"What is that?" Kael asked...
Lirya stood up with feline grace.
"Nothing, they..."
A scream interrupted her.
The statue had opened its eyes.
And it began to speak.
"LIAR!" the statue roared, its voice like shattering glass. "You promised us freedom, but you only gave us this metal prison."
Its body, as it screamed, seemed to be melting and reforming into distinct humanoid figures, but it never lost its massive arm.
Kael tried to get up, but his mercury arm remained unresponsive.
"What the hell is it?" he gasped.
Lirya didn't take her eyes off the creatures.
"They are what remains of those who didn't survive the shard," she replied, and for the first time, Kael heard something like remorse in her voice. "I tried to save them. But the quicksilver… it always wins."
The statue attacked them.
Kael barely dodged, rolling on the black sand floor. The quicksilver monster struck where his head had been, leaving a smoking crater, his arm still unresponsive.
"We can't fight it!" he screamed.
"Of course we can." Lirya held out her hands, her quicksilver tears solidifying into daggers. "But you will need to steal it."
Kael understood too late.
She wanted him to steal the statue's path.
The statue grabbed him by the neck.
Kael felt the chill of the quicksilver burning his skin, but also something else: a Path. This one wasn't like the others. It was rotten, distorted by time and pain.
"Do it," Lirya whispered beside him. "Steal its essence before it kills you."
Kael closed his eyes, having no other choice, and stole.
The pain was like nothing he'd ever felt before. It wasn't just physical; it was as if someone were tearing pieces of his soul away.
But it worked.
"Way of Remembering Flesh"
Knowledge came like a flood: this power allowed one to reform one's flesh... but at the price of remembering every wound ever suffered.
The statue disintegrated, screaming, moaning, melting like a candle exposed to intense fire until its remains were lost beneath the black sand, and Kael fell to his knees, watching his mercury arm return to human form... but now it glowed with silver veins.
"Well done," Lirya smiled. "Now we can..."
A sound cut her off.
Someone was clapping.
She was small. Innocent.
And that made her more terrible.
The Girl That Time Forgot sat in midair, her bare feet swinging as if on an invisible swing. Her face was constantly changing: sometimes a five-year-old, sometimes an old woman, sometimes something that had no eyes.
"How fun," she said in a child's choir voice. "Lirya breaking her own toys."
Lirya tensed.
"You have no authority here, Child."
"Of course I do." The Child jumped to the ground, and where she stepped, the sand ceased to exist, turning into pure emptiness. "The Council sent me to judge your new favorite."
Her pupilless eyes fixed on Kael.
"Do you know what happens to Eclipsed who steal too much?" she asked, leaning in as if sharing a secret. "They become like her," he pointed at Lirya. "Or like me."