The air folded around me.
Not with sound. Not with force.
With understanding.
The moment Lucien's spear fell from his trembling hands, I felt it.
Something in the space between my ribs began to ache—like my soul was stretching in directions it had no name for.
The floor cracked beneath me, not from weight… but reality unfastening.
And then—
I heard the Rift.
"Open."
It was not a command.
It was a memory—older than my heartbeat, buried beneath lifetimes of silence.
A scar that had always been there, waiting to split open.
And it did.
With no warning, no fire, no divine choir…
just soundlessness.
Space tore.
Right behind me.
No light. No color. No shape.
Just an absence so total it screamed.
I turned.
It was… a wound in the world.
Floating midair, jagged and wide, as if someone had clawed through existence itself and left the tear to bleed.
From within that tear poured two things:
Light that burned like birth.
And shadow that crawled like memory.
The Rift.
The first of many.
I could feel it whispering—no, remembering—me. A connection reigniting after a long death.
"By the stars…" Lucien murmured, stumbling back, his voice hollow with something dangerously close to awe.
He looked at me the way priests look at forbidden scripture.
Like he wanted to worship and burn it all at once.
"You were supposed to be sealed."
"I was," I said quietly. "Twelve times."
The Rift pulsed, its edge flickering, reality trembling at its edges like torn paper under water. A low hum filled the corridor—no, not a hum.
A heartbeat.
Mine?
No.
The Rift's.
And it was syncing with mine.
I stepped closer.
Each movement brought sharp pain to the wound Lucien had left in my side. But the bleeding had slowed. No—reversed.
Golden light flowed back into me now, not out. Reweaving tissue. Closing the hole. But also… changing something.
Beneath my skin, glyphs burned to life.
Runes I'd never seen, but instinctively knew.
Words of power that didn't belong in mouths—only stars.
I stood before the Rift and reached out.
The space around my hand shimmered—like a stone dropping into a still pond, rippling the unseen.
And when my fingers touched the edge—
Time stopped.
Everything—Lucien, the corridor, the flickering torches—froze mid-breath.
All sound vanished.
All sensation, gone.
Except one.
Weightlessness.
The Rift dragged me forward—not with force, but gravity deeper than physics.
It wanted me.
Not as prey.
As its origin.
And in that moment, it showed me.
Not memories.
Not visions.
Paths.
Thousands.
Millions.
Infinite.
Each one a different version of me.
Aetherion the Tyrant, crowned in the ashes of gods.
Aetherion the Savior, cradling a universe reborn in his palms.
Aetherion the Betrayed.
The Dead.
The Lost.
All of them screaming forward.
"Choose."
The Rift whispered again.
No, not whispered.
Waited.
Because I had already chosen.
Twelve times before.
I reached deeper.
And the Rift—
Split.
Like a mouth opening around its first breath in eons.
From within it, a being emerged.
Not fully formed.
More like an idea made flesh.
It shimmered, shifting between wolf and flame, dragon and shadow.
Eyes like twin eclipses stared back at me.
"You summoned me," it said in a voice layered with echoes—male and female, human and not. "But you don't remember my name."
"No," I said. "But I remember yours tasted like lightning."
It nodded.
And then knelt.
Lucien fell to one knee behind me—whether in pain or reverence, I couldn't tell.
Even the corridor bent—walls curving inward, like the world was bowing.
And me?
I stood still.
One hand in the Rift.
One eye in eternity.
One truth blooming like a starflower in my chest:
I am Riftborn.
Not created.
Not chosen.
Not blessed.
Remembered.
And now—
Now the world would remember too.
The Rift pulsed once more, and this time, I didn't just stand beside it.
I stepped in.
And the second I did—
Everything shattered.
When I opened my eyes again…
I was standing in a sky that had no stars.
Only voices.
And every single one of them was screaming my name.
"Aetherion..."