There was no light here.
No sound.
No time.
No distance.
Only breath.
Only steps.
Only the weight of a thousand names falling away, piece by piece, like ash from burned bone.
Lys felt her own slipping first.
Not violently.
Gently.
Like waking from a dream where you forget your own face.
She touched her chest where her mark had been.
Nothing.
No scar.
No tether.
"Sevrien…"
The name caught in her throat.
Because it no longer belonged to anyone.
Not down here.
Ahead, he walked without pause.
Not fast.
Not slow.
As if each step carved the path into being.
As if without him, there would be no path at all.
His shadow had no shape.
His breath left no mist.
Even the world around him seemed reluctant to remember he was there.
But still… he walked.
They came to the Door.
Not of wood.
Not of stone.
Not of memory.
Simply… there.
Waiting.
It had no lock.
No handle.
No hinge.
Only a mark in its center.
The same mark Sevrien carried.
Had carried.
Would always carry.
The Severance.
But here… not broken.
Here, whole.
Here, burning like a wound in the skin of the world.
"You know what's beyond this," Lys said.
Her voice sounded wrong.
Like it came from someone else's mouth.
Sevrien nodded.
"What was forgotten."
"And if you go through?"
"I end it."
"End what?"
He looked at her.
Eyes black now.
Not cruel.
Not empty.
Just… finished.
"The cycle."
"Of names?"
"Of forgetting."
Lys stepped closer.
Not afraid.
Not anymore.
Because she had seen what forgetting did.
Not just to people.
To worlds.
To history.
To truth.
"Then why am I still here?"
Sevrien almost smiled.
"Because someone must remember."
He pressed his hand to the Door.
It bled light.
Not white.
Not gold.
Something older.
The color of first breath.
Of first word.
Of first sorrow.
The Door opened.
Not outward.
Not inward.
It simply ceased to be.
And behind it—
Nothing.
And within the nothing—
Everything.
The source.
The root.
The place before memory, before name, before self.
Not god.
Not void.
Not home.
Just beginning.
Waiting to be spoken.
Waiting to be shaped.
Waiting for one who had walked without name long enough to speak the first again.
Sevrien stepped through.
The mark burned away.
The body fell behind.
The soul unfurled like smoke from a candle long snuffed.
He became…
Not one.
Not many.
All.
The Solituded One.
No longer carried by moons.
No longer bound by Concordium, by cycles, by scar or sorrow.
The first breath.
The last word.
Lys watched.
Watched him vanish.
Watched the Door close.
Watched the world above shudder like breath drawn sharp in a drowning lung.
And she whispered—not aloud, not with lips—
"Keiran."
Not a plea.
Not a hope.
A memory.
Because someone still had to remember.
Above, the moons flickered.
Vaelen dimmed.
Ashrah bled light.
Their pull faded.
Their orbit broke.
And the world, for the first time in an age, hung without balance.
Not broken.
Not whole.
Waiting.
In the silence beneath the world, Lys stood alone.
But not forgotten.
She still carried his name.
Not as a burden.
As a promise.
"I remember you."
Even if no one else did.
Even if the world began again tomorrow.
Even if no stars burned to mark the sky.
Someone would know he had been here.
That he had ended it.
That he had stepped through.
And beyond that Door, where nothing waits—
A new word is spoken.
Not aloud.
Not in language.
Simply… spoken.
And from that word, the world shudders.
Beginning.