The world was quiet now. Almost too quiet.
Kael stood on the balcony of what was once the High Citadel, now rebuilt as the Hall of Threads—a beacon for what remained of the timelines they'd salvaged. Wind whispered across marble etched with forgotten languages, a gentle hum like lullabies sung by ghosts.
Aeris stood beside him, her hair catching the starlight, the faint silver glow of her veins betraying the power she still tried to pretend she didn't carry.
"They're getting louder," she said softly.
Kael didn't need to ask what they were. He'd been hearing them too.
Not voices exactly, but echoes. Snippets. Laughter that sounded like Aeris's but wasn't. Screams that didn't belong to anyone who existed. And yesterday, a moment of absolute stillness, during which Kael could've sworn his mother walked past him in the corridor. Alive. Smiling.
"You said the threads were stable," Kael said, watching the stars. One blinked—and didn't blink back.
"They were," Aeris murmured. "Until three nights ago."
She didn't add that three nights ago, she'd dreamed of herself dying. Not metaphorically. But being unwritten, as if every moment of her had been a lie—retconned by something watching from the Outside.
Behind them, Dray entered the hall, his rune-skin glowing, eyes dark with unreadable worry.
"We have a problem," he said. "Something breached the Anchor."
Kael turned. "The Anchor's buried in the causal core. Nothing can breach that."
"Exactly," Dray said grimly. "Nothing real can."
Aeris's breath hitched.
Kael's pulse froze.
And outside, the stars shifted—not in motion, but in sequence. As if time itself was about to remember something it shouldn't.