The stars refused to shine.
Not because their light had died, but because something greater commanded silence.
Je walked through the hollow path of shattered constellations, each step sinking into dust that once burned as suns. The silence clung to him — heavy, sacred. He knew instinctively that he was not merely moving through space. He was walking through memory.
The System stirred.
Not with quests. Not with hunger. But with words he could not ignore:
> [Anniversary Protocol Engaged.]
[The Thirty-First Verse is Written.]
Symbols bled into the void, older than language, older even than the gods that once roamed the galaxies. They burned into Je's sight, impossible to read yet impossible to forget. Each sigil carried weight, as though it were chiseling itself into his very soul.
He tried to breathe, but the void had no air.
He tried to blink, but the visions did not vanish.
And then he saw them.
Shadows — tall, endless, robed in silence. They stood on the edge of the broken stars, faceless but watching. He knew these were not the failed devourers. They were something older. Witnesses. Chroniclers of the path no mortal was meant to walk.
One stepped forward.
Its form bent like smoke, its voice like rusted iron dragged across stone.
"Thus begins the Thirty-First Verse of the Devourer.
Thus it is remembered.
Thus it resounds."
The words struck like chains across Je's chest. He staggered but did not fall. His will burned against the weight of destiny pressing down on him.
The shadow raised its hand, and the fissure of memory opened. Je glimpsed fragments of himself — moments yet to come, choices he had not made:
His hand drowning in galaxies, his hunger endless.
His knees bent beneath a light he could never devour.
His name whispered as both salvation and curse.
The vision cut off.
The fissure closed.
The shadow's presence dissolved, leaving behind only silence.
But Je understood the meaning.
This was not merely another chapter.
This was the cosmos itself pausing, acknowledging, engraving his existence into its eternal ledger.
A milestone.
A verse in the endless hymn of the void.
And somewhere beyond, laughter stirred again. Patient. Watching. Waiting.
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