The corridor stilled.
No more flickering, no more distortions. Just dust suspended in the air like snow that had forgotten how to fall.
Rin sat down at the edge of the broken hallway.
Not collapsed, not defeated.
She just… sat.
Her legs ached. Her hands still shook from the confrontation, even if her voice hadn't. And the anchor orb glowed faintly in her palm — warm, like it recognized her.
For the first time in what felt like hours — or days, or chapters — no one was watching. No one was asking her to be strong. Not Aro. Not Weaver. Not the broken world trying to test her.
Just her.
She glanced at the old clock on the far wall. It had frozen at 4:13.
That number meant nothing. But she wrote it down anyway. Quietly, with her fingertip on the dusty floor.
"Even the nonsense might matter later," she murmured.
She pulled her knees to her chest and looked upward through the cracked ceiling. No sky — just ceiling tiles repeating endlessly into a pale gray light.
"Hey," she whispered to no one.
"If you're still watching me, Threadwriter… I hope you made this place real enough to let me cry a little."
A beat passed.
Then she did. Not the dramatic sobbing kind. Just a few tears sliding down without resistance. Small, private, gentle.
There was something brave in not wiping them away.
When she finally stood again, she left the anchor in her pocket, the number in the dust, and the weight in the floor.
And moved forward.
Aro sat in a chair that didn't belong to this world.
Neither did the other four chairs around him.
Alin had taken the one beside him, balancing a crumpled snack wrapper in her lap. Iris had found the highest-backed chair and turned it backward just to rest her chin on the top. Selene, crown princess of a kingdom that no longer existed, sat cross-legged and barefoot in her own seat, regally exhausted.
The fifth chair — Rin's — remained empty.
"This place is definitely messing with us," Iris said, glancing up at the ceiling where paint peeled into constellations that hadn't been invented.
"It always was," Aro said.
Alin tilted her head. "You sound… weirdly calm."
Aro looked down at his hands. They weren't shaking anymore.
"I think I'm remembering how to be me."
Selene glanced at him. Not as royalty. As a friend.
"You think she's okay?"
"No," Aro said. "But she's alive. And that's enough. For now."
Then — a sharp static ripple through the floor. A signal, just like the one Weaver had sent earlier to Rin. Only this time, it didn't pause or hesitate.
It split.
One part went toward Rin.
The other…
Straight to Aro.
He caught it.
It shimmered gold, then red, then a color that didn't belong in this world — and flickered into shape.
A chair behind them blinked into existence.
No one dared sit in it.
He stood before a screen that wasn't a screen.
It looked like glass but bent with memory.
The moment Rin sat down, he paused the footage. Not with a button. Just a thought. Time froze mid-breath — her shoulders curved inward, eyes lowered.
"She's still not broken," he said, voice dry as paper.
"Interesting."
No one answered him.
But there were others present. Hushed figures in the chamber — silent, seated. Developers who hadn't left, not yet. Some out of fear. Some out of guilt. One or two still believed in what he was doing.
He turned away from the image of Rin and walked to the center of the platform.
"Threadwriter still hasn't shown himself," he said aloud, knowing the room would listen.
"He's hiding behind them. Weak, even now. How poetic."
He walked slowly, deliberately. Behind him, a projection of Aro's group flickered on. Chairs. Echoes. Glimmers of memory artifacts that should've been erased long ago.
"This world was meant to be fiction. Mutable. Erasable. We designed it that way."
"He's rewriting the core laws."
At that, one of the developers finally spoke. Quietly. From the dark.
"Maybe… that's what he always intended."
The villain smiled. Not cruel. Not unkind. Just sad.
"Then he should've stayed a writer. Not a god."
He lifted his hand, and the images collapsed into static.
"If he has turned the world real…" he murmured, more to himself now, "then I can no longer rewrite it. Which means…"
"I will have to enter it."