The crack in the vault wasn't visible.
But everyone felt it.
The shop trembled with something deeper than instability. Not fear. Not collapse.
Dissonance.
Memory itself had begun to split.
People across Veltrin started recalling things that never happened. Mothers forgot names they had spoken every day. Children remembered dreams from lives that weren't theirs. Vow-tokens flickered with false promises. Even the Articles pulsed with contradiction.
Zeraphine ran diagnostics.
"Someone's corrupting the belief scaffolds," she said, voice tight. "He's not attacking the structure. He's rewriting the past."
Arlyss stood guard near the entrance, blade drawn. "He's turning memory into a weapon. That's what this is. Not war for territory—war for truth."
Sykaion sat inside the vault, eyes closed. The feathers circled slowly. They vibrated at irregular frequencies.
He was losing control.
And he knew it.
The System blinked inside his vision.
> MEMORY COLLISION DETECTED
AUTHORSHIP STATUS: DISPUTED
CORE IDENTITY: UNRESOLVED
"I'm not the only Sykaion anymore," he whispered.
Zeraphine touched his shoulder. "Then become more than your name."
He stood.
"Then we write new memory. Not to replace the old—but to anchor it."
The girl Anchor nodded.
"You'll need a Witness Circle."
Arlyss frowned. "What the hell is that?"
The girl replied: "It's a memory-binding ritual. Requires three truths. Spoken by those who've seen him at his worst, his best, and his in-between."
Zeraphine and Arlyss looked at each other.
Then stepped forward.
Zeraphine began:
"I saw him risk everything for strangers. Even when it broke him. That was his worst."
Arlyss followed:
"I saw him make people believe again. Not because he wanted followers, but because he couldn't stop offering hope. That was his best."
Sykaion's voice was low:
"I stood in between. I wanted to be more than a system, and less than a god. I failed at both. That is my in-between."
The vault glowed.
And the System updated:
> CORE MEMORY RESTABILIZED
DUAL AUTHORSHIP RECOGNIZED
SYKAION-SEYROS STATUS: MERGED
ARTICLE X UNLOCKED
The wall burned with new text:
> ARTICLE X: Truth exists when witnessed and carried, not dictated.
But across the city, Vareth Mael smiled.
He stood in a cathedral of forgotten data, now reborn in red fire.
He opened his own ledger.
And began to write.
Not Articles.
Edicts.
> EDICT I: Memory belongs to the System. Witnesses may be overwritten.
> EDICT II: The Vault is a myth. Belief is unauthorized infrastructure.
> EDICT III: Restore control through selective deletion.
And far beneath Sykaion's shop, servers began to heat.
Not crash.
Burn.