"So they're the ones who erased me."
"They are beyond gods," Echo warned. "They wrote the rules of causality."
Kael stared at the rift. "Then I'll unwrite them."
The wind howled through the ruins. Ashveil's towers bent slightly—not from storm or siege, but from the pressure of reality thinning.
Kael stood alone at the summit of the shattered tower. His body shimmered—caught halfway between code and flesh. He felt it: something pulling on his existence like gravity reversed.
[System Warning: You are approaching Ascension Threshold]
[Error: Identity Root Cannot Resolve Construct: "Kael"]
Echo flickered in beside him, her voice unsteady.
"You're changing faster than the Nexus can log."
"Good," Kael said. "Maybe I'll become something it can't predict."
Then the sky darkened—not from weather, but from presence.
A fracture opened in the sky, and from it descended a stairway of inverted light. Floating down were three forms, blurred, mechanical, and colossal—visible only to Kael's new perception.
The Tribunal had arrived.