They reached the scorched valley by morning.
No trees.No birds.Just ash.
The girl looked up.
Even the clouds avoided this place.
The boy walked ahead, dragging the sword across the dirt.
Each step—heavier.Each breath—shorter.
The fourth Vault still whispered in his veins.Equations burned behind his eyes.Everything he saw came with numbers now.
Trajectories.Heights.Heartbeat patterns.
He hated it.
The girl finally spoke.
"You're bleeding."
He didn't answer.
Blood dripped from his nose.
Black.Not red.
She grabbed his arm.
"Stop. Rest."
He shook her off.
"I don't have time."
She stared at him.
"Time is the one thing you're losing."
Ahead, the fifth Vault waited.
But it didn't look like a Vault.
It looked like a wound.
A fissure in the earth, pulsing.
Not chakra.
Not energy.
Just wrongness.
Like the world had been stabbed here, and never healed.
They stepped inside.
No stairs.No doors.
Just descent.
Gravity shifted.
Air pressed down.
Their ears popped.
And then—
Silence broke.
But not with noise.
With memory.
They weren't in a Vault anymore.
They were in a loop.
The girl gasped.
Her hand opened—then closed again.
The same blink.Three times.
He looked up.
The stars above them were moving in reverse.
This Vault was built around time.
Not to control it.To bleed it.
The boy saw a flicker of himself—stepping forward.
Then again—but walking backward.
His head spun.
"Which one's real?" the girl asked.
He didn't know.
They walked anyway.
Inside the loop.
The blade pulsed.
A fifth eye opened on the hilt—but it didn't blink.
It twitched.
Spasmed.
Like it hated being here.
And then—
They saw the prisoner.
A boy.
Nailed to a pillar of bone.
Eyes open.Mouth stitched shut.
But he wasn't breathing.
He wasn't moving.
He was looping.
The same moment.Over and over.
A scream that never left his throat.
The girl stepped forward.
"This… this is the fifth Vault's guardian?"
"No," the boy said.
"This is the fifth Vault."
The pillar cracked.
The boy's head turned—
But not toward them.
Toward the sword.
Recognition.
The stitched mouth trembled.
And then—
Bled.
Words flowed out.
Written in air.
Backwards.
Like the past trying to speak.
The boy read them aloud.
And the Vault began to collapse.
The sky shattered.
Literally.
The sky above them cracked like glass.
Light flooded in.
But not sunlight.
Moments.
Flashes.
The girl screamed as a dozen versions of herself appeared—Some dying.Some laughing.One standing over his body, sword through his chest.
The boy fell to one knee.
Time was breaking.
Not outside.
Inside him.
The prisoner floated down.
His body decayed—but his words kept writing.
"TO OPEN THE LAST, ONE MUST DIE WHO NEVER LIVED."
The girl stared.
"What does that mean?!"
The boy looked at her.
And realized something.
She was flickering.
Half-real.
Half-shadow.
She didn't see it.
But he did.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
Not hers.
His.
An older version.
Scarred.Blind in one eye.
Wearing the mask of the Hunter.
The older self whispered:
"Stop opening the Vaults."
"You're building your own chains."
Then vanished.
The girl caught him before he fell again.
The fifth Vault cracked open beneath them.
Nothing inside.
Just darkness.
And numbers.
But not equations.
Dates.
His date of death.Her date of vanishing.A future that never finishes.
The sword screamed.
The fifth eye burst open.
Not blood.
Not fire.
Just light.
White and endless.
When it dimmed—
The loop was gone.
The Vault was quiet.
But the boy… wasn't the same.
His fingers moved on their own.
Drawing glyphs in the dirt.
She grabbed his face.
"Look at me!"
He blinked.
Twice.
Then focused.
"I'm here," he rasped.
But even he didn't believe it.
They left the valley as the clouds returned.
But behind them—
The wound never closed.
It still pulsed.
Still bled.
Waiting.
For someone to try again.
At camp that night, the girl didn't sleep.
She watched him sketch in the dirt.
Symbols.
One word repeated.
"Unbirth."
She didn't ask.
Didn't interrupt.
Only said:
"What happens when you open the sixth?"
He stopped writing.
Stared into the dark.
"Then the Vaults stop opening."
"Because there won't be a world left to hold them."
Far away—
The masked man stood on a bridge of bones.
Speaking to someone deeper in shadow.
A voice replied.
Mechanical.Elegant.
"Five Vaults opened. The pattern collapses."
"And the sixth?"
The masked man smiled beneath the porcelain.
"It's already waking."
"And it remembers everything."
To be continued.