Night fell differently in the Iridium Forest.
Stars didn't shine—they pulsed like they were alive, living concepts trying to escape erasure. Trees whispered to each other in fragmented timelines. The ground hummed with the vibration of events that had never happened. Everything looked alive.
And yet, Ren walked through it untouched.
Unshaped.
Even the fabric of causality avoided him. Where he stepped, there was no before or after—just presence.
---
The girl, still trailing behind him, finally asked what had been on her mind since the beginning.
"Who are you really, Ren?"
He paused.
Then, he looked at her...
He answered quietly.
"I'm someone who doesn't belong. Someone who once did—but was cut out from the script of everything."
---
The wind shifted.
And from it came voices—not spoken, but remembered.
Echoes.
Voices of people who had forgotten Ren but had once fought beside him. Friends who had wept for him. Enemies who had sworn to destroy him.
Now, none of them knew his name.
That was part of the cost.
"Someone erased you?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No. I erased myself."
---
Suddenly, the sky bent.
Not the clouds, not the atmosphere—but the idea of sky.
And from that fold stepped a figure draped in robes that shimmered like broken reflections.
Archivist Solen the embodiment of yin and yang
A being who lived within memory itself. He didn't remember Ren—but the gap in his records burned.
"You should not exist," Solen said, raising a finger made of time-ink. "And yet… here you are. A hole in the infinite."
He pointed it at Ren.
"I will record you, I will do anything necessary to bind or destroy you. Even if it destroys everything else."
---
The girl panicked. "Ren—!"
But it was too late.
The Archivist tried to erase him.
His scythe that existed everywhere simultaneously.
Swung across ren, but all was meaningless before ren.
But all the quills broke.
The pages withered.
Even the concept of "memory" around Ren fractured.
Because…
You can't erase, bind or define what never was.
Ren's eyes opened—every single one.
And Solen, the Archivist of yin and yang, crumbled into oblivion reduced to nothingness, even that nothingness got erased.
"I'm not meant to be known," Ren whispered.
"Not yet."