Kitana: Forgotten Throne by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Kitana-Forgotten-Throne-1279861233

Fractures of Tomorrow

Ash drifted upward instead of falling, caught in the reversed gravity of the Netherrealm’s outer crust. Kitana walked amidst the floating embers, her silhouette a sharp stroke of sapphire against the bruised crimson sky. She did not draw her steel fans. Not yet. The silence here was too deliberate, a trap woven from the marrow of the realm itself.

The obsidian ground crunched beneath her boots, the only sound in a landscape choked by perpetual twilight. She had tracked the temporal hemorrhage to this barren valley, a place where the fabric of reality wept silver chronal fluid. Raiden had warned her of the temporal anomalies, fractures left behind by Kronika’s demise, but he had not warned her of the visceral terror they possessed.

A shadow detached itself from the jagged crags ahead. It moved with a terrifying familiarity, a dark mirror of Kitana’s own aristocratic grace. The figure stepped into the pale light of a dying, distant star, revealing flesh the color of drowned pearls. It was a revenant, but not a nameless husk. It was clad in a grotesque distortion of her own royal armor.

"You walk with heavy steps, Princess," the creature purred. Its voice was a wet, layered echo, sounding like Kitana speaking from the bottom of a deep well.

Kitana’s hands hovered over her folded fans. The revenant wore a pauldron of indigo steel on its right shoulder. It was unmistakably hers, bearing the crest of Edenia, but the metal was warped, weeping a viscous, molten gold.

"Who steals the crest of a dead realm to wear in this rot?" Kitana demanded, her voice cutting through the heavy air like a razor.

"I steal nothing. I am the harvest of your seeds," the revenant whispered, stepping closer. Its face was obscured by a veil of woven sinew, but its lips—painted a bruised violet—curved into a seductive, predatory smile. "I wear your tomorrow. I am the Sovereign of Marrow."

The creature lunged, entirely too fast. Kitana reacted with muscle memory honed over ten thousand years. Her fans snapped open with a sound like a guillotine, catching the revenant’s wrist before its blackened claws could rake across her throat. The impact sent a shockwave of cold dread up Kitana’s arms.

"A tomorrow where you rule Outworld, Kitana," the revenant hissed, leaning into the locked blades. "Not with mercy. With the flaying knife. It is so intoxicating. The power to unmake those who look at you with pity. I felt their blood on this pauldron. It was warm. It felt like home."

"My home was gardens and light, imposter," Kitana countered, twisting her wrists and disengaging with a flurry of spinning steel. She danced backward, her fans leaving ribbons of blue light in the air. "Your future is a delusion born of sulfur."

"Is it?" The Sovereign of Marrow laughed, a sound like grinding glass. "Shao Kahn raised you. His poison is in your blood. I am simply the moment you stop fighting the venom and let it bloom. Surrender to it. There is a sensual luxury in letting go, Princess. Let me kiss you with the lips of your own tyranny."

Kitana did not answer with words. She launched herself forward in a horizontal spin, becoming a cyclone of bladed silk. The revenant attempted to parry, but Kitana’s precision was absolute. She bypassed the creature’s guard and drove the edge of her right fan directly into the weeping pauldron. The metal shattered like brittle ice. As the chronal armor broke, the revenant shrieked, instantly dissolving into a pile of gray ash and a lingering scent of withered lotuses.

Kitana stood over the ashes, her breathing even, though her heart hammered against her ribs. The pauldron had not been forged; it had been grown from a timeline that desperately wanted to exist.

She ventured deeper into the valley, the crimson sky giving way to a suffocating canopy of petrified leviathan ribs. The air grew colder, thick with a miasma that tasted of salt and sorrow. The mystery of the chronal slag deepened. The Netherrealm was not merely projecting illusions; it was weaponizing her own potential destinies against her.

From the shadows of a massive, curved bone, a second figure crawled. It did not walk with grace. It dragged itself, chains of rusted iron clinking mournfully against the stone.

Kitana lowered her fans, a flicker of genuine horror widening her dark eyes.

This revenant wore her iconic face mask and a shattered remnant of her chest plate. But the steel was riddled with jagged punctures, and the mask was bolted directly into the gray, necrotic flesh of th
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