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Chapter 29: The Giants Awaken
The battlefield was no longer just divided between betrayal and loyalty. It was devoured by something more primal—chaos.
From the cracks beneath their feet and the fractures in the sky, nightmare-born creatures surged into the world. Clawed beasts dripping with void essence, serpents made of shadow-wrought memory, and twisted mockeries of once-human forms began pouring in. The Nightmare Event had evolved... and with it, so did its horrors.
But amidst the madness—Vex laughed.
His aura cracked the very ground. Crackpoint Impact, once a precise, short-range obliteration strike, now echoed outward in shockwaves. Trees collapsed from the tremors of his rage.
"You see this, Riven?" he snarled, hurling his palm toward a distant tree line. The entire stretch of forest ruptured into splinters. "Now it sings from afar!"
Riven's grin was calm, far too calm for the man who had betrayed the last person he called ally. His left eye glowed with an unnatural pattern—the Entropic Eye. A Pillar ability that allowed him to predict not movement, not actions—but intention itself.
Across the field, Torren saw his chance.
He clenched his fist, eyes flashing as he whispered: "Who Walked."
His soul shimmered, stepping beyond time and space—not into the past, but to a place where desire had once rooted itself. He walked not to a person... but to an echo. The last place where Vex and Riven had wanted chaos most.
There he stood, his blade raised—only to meet Fracture Pulse.
Riven had predicted it.
The same entropy wave that once nullified attacks was now an offensive blast. Like a shard of broken reality, it pierced through Torren's chest. Time seemed to slow as the soulwalker gasped, stumbling back, light in his eyes dimming.
"Did you really think I wouldn't see that coming?" Riven said softly. "You underestimate entropy."
Torren collapsed. Dust swallowed him.
Marlo, heart pounding, vanished into a flicker of shadow. He whispered an incantation—"Quest Vein: Silencer."
His presence muted.
His heartbeat quieted.
Not even the Nightmare could trace him now.
Vex turned to strike next—but Lysa was ready. Her hands lit with spectral light.
"Phantom Archive: Flicker Fade!"
In a ghostly shimmer, she teleported just as Vex's extended Crackpoint shattered the ground where she stood. She barely escaped, her arm bleeding, panting from the near miss.
All around, the monsters kept coming. Chaos was at its peak. Shadows fought shadows, and despair felt like it would drown them all—
Until the earth rumbled.
No.
This was different.
Every pair of eyes turned as the monsters stopped attacking. A massive shape tore through the hills.
A giant. Ten stories tall. Formless, its body made of tangled dreams and jagged bones. Its eye a moon of screaming faces.
Riven looked at it and whispered, smiling: "Let the true carnival begin."
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