Talia Al Ghul: Lethal Beauty by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Talia-Al-Ghul-Lethal-Beauty-1258575225

Talia Al Ghul: Lethal Beauty ANIMATION

The Hourglass

The moon was a fractured pearl above the forest—shattered light drifting through a canopy of black limbs. Beneath those limbs rode Talia al Ghul, her cloak trailing like a tide of shadow, her steed silent as if its hooves knew better than to wake the things sleeping between the roots.

She had followed the map burned into her father’s archive, the one that should not have existed. A parchment drawn centuries before the League of Assassins had a name. A map not of land—but of hours. The Forest of the Thirteenth Hour, a place whispered to grow where time itself had bent, broken, and leaked into soil.

Talia dismounted at a clearing where the trees knelt in crooked reverence around a monolithic arch of stone. It shimmered faintly with inscriptions that rearranged themselves whenever she blinked.

“The air tastes like it remembers something,” she murmured, pressing her hand to the cold surface.

A voice answered from nowhere. “It remembers you, Talia.”

She drew her blade instantly, its curved edge reflecting neither moonlight nor shadow—only possibilities.

“Show yourself.”

From between two trees stepped a figure draped in robes that glowed faintly along the seams—stitched from thin light. Its face was a blur, as though the forest had forgotten what it looked like.

“You are late,” said the figure. “The Thirteenth Hour wanes.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the Keeper of the Blades that Cut Time.”

Talia tilted her head, every muscle poised. “I was told only myths bore that title.”

“Then myths are sharper than you were warned.”

The figure raised a hand. The forest shuddered. Out of the mist stepped others—tall, thin, their bodies wrapped in armor that rippled like mercury. Each carried a blade that hummed, fracturing the air into shards.

Talia steadied her breath. “So these are your creatures?”

“They are not mine,” said the Keeper. “They are what happens when time defends itself.”

The nearest creature moved faster than wind—its blade cleaving a falling leaf into a thousand transparent fragments, each fragment showing a different moment of the same leaf. The leaf falling. The leaf burning. The leaf rotting.

When it turned that same blade toward her, Talia felt her heartbeat stagger—as though her pulse had lost its rhythm inside her own chest.

“So it’s true,” she whispered. “They can cut through time.”

The Keeper watched silently, a flicker of amusement—or pity—playing across the blur of his features.

Talia lunged first. Her blade met the creature’s in a burst of distorted seconds. The impact didn’t clang; it echoed after it struck. She pivoted, twisting beneath the creature’s arc, letting instinct and ancient training guide her movements.

But for every stroke she parried, she saw glimpses of herself in other moments—a thousand Talias flickering like reflections on broken glass. One screamed. One laughed. One fell.

And one whispered, You shouldn’t have come here.

Talia gritted her teeth and drove her sword into the creature’s torso. The blade met resistance like frozen light—and then split it open. The creature did not bleed. Instead, from its wound spilled streams of silver sand that dissolved into the ground.

The forest went still.

The Keeper’s voice was soft. “You’ve undone a minute that should have never been born.”

“I’ve undone worse,” she said, catching her breath.

But when she looked back at the body, there was no corpse. The ground where it had fallen now sprouted black vines that coiled in loops of impossible geometry.

Talia sheathed her sword. “I came for the Hourglass,” she said. “You know why.”

The Keeper circled her, the air rippling with his presence. “The Hourglass is not an object. It is an oath. To possess it is to be trapped within it.”

“Then I’ll break the oath.”

He laughed—a sound like glass cracking under ice. “You can’t break what exists outside time.”

“Everything breaks,” she said, “given the right pressure.”

He leaned close. “And what will you do when time cuts back?”

Their eyes met—or rather, hers met the blur that should have been his. Something stirred behind it: a memory of her face, older, colder, watching herself die in an hour yet to come.

Talia forced herself not to look away. “If time wants to fight,” she said, “it should know by now—I never lose.”

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