The stone cracked—not with a bang, but with a soft groan, as if the universe had taken its last breath before it exploded into a scream.
The crack ran upward like lightning and gushed out... not the light. Not the darkness. Something else.
"He's here,— the old man whispered, and his voice crumbled like sand.
The silver masks had already touched the floor, but they did not fall — they froze in the air, as if time had stumbled. Lyra looked at me, and there was no fear in her eyes. Just a warning.
"Run."
But where to?
The walls of the temple shook, and the frescoes came to life — the shadows of creatures with the heads of *something wrong* moved, stretched to the center of the hall. To the stone. To me.
The book in my hands burst into flames.
"They've come for you, Sato.
I didn't understand who "they" were. The guild? The ones with masks? Or the ones on the walls?
And then it came out.
From a crack in the stone.
Fingers first. Long, too long, with joints that humans don't have. Then a hand wrapped in shadows, as if it had been torn from the very heart of the night.
"You're late, clerk," a voice whispered. Not outside. Inside. In the bones.
I pulled back, but Tina was still holding me, sticky and alive. She didn't let me drown. But she didn't let go either.
"You thought it was just a book?" "What is it?" asked my reflection in the mirrored pages. His eyes burned crimson, like the second sun over the city. "It's a door. And you're the key.
The ceiling collapsed above us.
Bits of stone, dust, screams—and through it all...
"Laughter."
The one in the crack was stretching, taking shape. Horns. Wings. Eyes burning in the green gloom.
"Ignis?" I asked again, but now the name burned my lips like hot metal.
The old man—the one who looked like the first one, but different—grabbed my arm.
"He's not Ignis. He is what it was before. Something that will write it all over again.
The book in my hands *howled*.
The pages tore, the ink turned into snakes, into spiders, into threads that bit into my skin.
"They rewrote history, but they couldn't kill the truth!" Lyra screamed.
The masks finally fell to the floor.
And they stirred.
They got up.
They weren't human.
— Run, run, run—
The voices mingled into a single howl.
And then it spread its wings.
The darkness spoke.
And the world turned upside down.
"The choice is yours, Sato.
1. Touch the stone. Maybe this is the only way to understand... who you really are.
2. Grab a Lyre and run. But where to? There are no places in the city where you can hide from what has already woken up.
3. Tear up the book. If it's a door, you can close it. Even if you turn out to be the key.