The fracture widened until the whole lattice trembled like glass under pressure.
Light poured upward in steady breaths, a pulse timed to his own heart.
Every colour in the spectrum folded into white; every sound thinned into one sustained note—the hum of something about to change state.
He crouched, peered into the crack, and saw the world below:
oceans looping through clouded atmosphere, streetlights blooming like nervous systems, rain glittering on the roof of a small apartment where a man once sat surrounded by books.
He felt a jolt of recognition so fierce it bordered on pain.
That body waiting below was him, half-forgotten, half-promised.
"This is not exile," God said.
"It's calibration. You've learned the pattern; now test it against dirt and hunger."
The glass beneath him fractured again.
Lines of gold raced outward, sketching his outline in flame.
He felt weight return—knees, ribs, heartbeat, breath.
The clarity of the lattice began to haze, edges softening into atmosphere.
"Will I remember?" he asked.
"Not as knowledge," God replied.
"As rhythm. You'll move the way the truth moves—cut, bind, speak.
The rest will hide inside ordinary gestures."
Wind from the crack lifted his hair.
It smelled of rain and static, the same scent that had haunted every vision.
He realised it was the smell of unfinished thought.
Below, the city rotated slowly like a coin about to settle.
He could see the street where he'd walked before the fire, the window where he'd waited for meaning to answer.
The distance between heaven and ground was only a thought's thickness now.
"Step through," said God.
"The scar will hold."
He looked once more at the vast classroom—the twelve lights fading, the galaxies still turning, the golden seam that stitched the universe closed.
He wanted to stay, to listen for another measure of the cosmic song.
But even here he could feel stasis creeping, the beginning of perfection's decay.
"Every vision curdles if kept too long," God murmured.
"Balance demands return."
He nodded, folded the Pen into his palm, sheathed the Sword of light, swallowed the last whisper of the Word.
The three tones settled in his chest like chords held in suspension.
He stepped forward.
The floor broke, not violently but with the tenderness of something releasing its own weight.
He fell—not downward but inward, through light that thickened into time, through warmth that condensed into skin.
Every scar he'd earned stitched itself to his bones as memory.
As he descended, he heard the last echo of God fading behind him, a single line carried by the wind:
"Cut clean.
Bind true.
Speak only what you're willing to live."
Then the crack closed.
The lattice was gone.
Only the hum of blood remained.
He opened his eyes to darkness and the sound of rain against glass.