The sky above Shaleven shifted.
Clouds didn't just move—they recoiled, as if the world itself felt the vow rooting deeper, spreading faster than any erasure could stop.
Ashling still knelt where the Ninth Seal had left her, vow-light weaving through the air like veins of molten gold. Her hands shook, but she wouldn't let go of the blade. Couldn't.
Because it wasn't done yet.
Lys scanned the horizon, sword drawn, face tight. "This place… it isn't holding together. We need to move."
But Nyrelle was staring at the memory-threads crawling across the stone, crawling across her arms.
The vow wasn't just tied to Ashling anymore. It was spreading—to them, to the Citadel itself, to every life the Concordium had erased.
"Ashling," Nyrelle said softly. "It's reaching for more. For him."
Ashling stood slowly. "Then we go to the Hall of Severance. Before they do."
Beneath their feet, the Citadel groaned like a waking beast.
For centuries, Shaleven had been silent, obedient to the Concordium's edits. But now memory flooded its walls, scrawling names across ceilings, igniting forgotten mosaics, dragging old ghosts back into the light.
Every step toward the Hall pulsed with heat, like walking into a storm about to split the sky in half.
And through the vow-thread in Ashling's chest came flickers of Keiran's voice:
"Closer… closer… almost there."
It wasn't entirely human anymore.
Far away, in the Grand Concordium's seat above the Crescent Sea, alarms blared across the Grand Archive.
Not sirens—quills.
Every scribe at every desk froze as the quills in their hands began scratching on their own, rewriting entire volumes without permission.
"Thread alignment breach detected."
"Vow-anchor at 83%. Countermeasures failing."
"Deploy the Second Seal."
The words appeared across banners of light above the city.
The Libramancers read them in silence.
Because to deploy the Second Seal meant one thing:
The Concordium no longer cared if Shaleven survived.
Back in the Citadel, the ground split near the Hall's entrance.
Figures rose from the cracks—Echo-Redactors again, but changed. Their bodies were fractured silhouettes, voices backwards, movements like broken frames of film.
The vow had half-restored them, half-torn them apart.
They didn't attack.
They asked.
"Where is he?" one croaked, words stuttering in and out of existence.
"We remember being ordered… to forget."
Ashling raised her blade. "Then follow us. He's in the Hall."
And for the first time in centuries, Concordium agents obeyed someone else.
Nyrelle leaned toward her as they walked. "Ashling… you realize what you're doing, don't you?"
Ashling didn't look at her. "I'm keeping my vow."
"You're building an army out of memories the world itself abandoned."
"Then the world should've abandoned less."
They reached the final doors.
Sealed in crystal, wrapped in glyphs that pulsed like dying stars, the Hall of Severance waited.
The last place Keiran had been whole.
The first place he had been undone.
And as Ashling reached for the doors, the vow-thread in her chest snapped tight.
A final message burned across her vision:
Fragment Three: Awakening.
Severance integrity at 19%.
Containment breach imminent.
Across the sea, the Second Seal was being prepared.
Its keeper did not speak.
Did not walk.
Did not breathe.
She was carried on a throne of chained hours, wrapped in calendars, surrounded by clocks with no faces.
The Chrono-Ascendant herself.
When the Second Seal descended, it would not simply erase Shaleven.
It would turn back its time.
Ashling didn't know that yet.
She only knew the doors were opening, the Hall glowing from within, and Keiran's last fragment beginning to wake like a storm swallowing its own name.