The fracture did not spread.
That was the first lie.
Aster felt it before he saw it—
a subtle resistance in motion, like reality had developed friction where none had existed before. When he lowered his hand, the air delayed in following.
Not time.
Permission.
The Hall of Law remained intact, but its silence had changed. The white lines no longer hovered freely; they watched. Not with awareness—
with compliance checking.
"You have been flagged," the Custodian in White said.
Aster tilted his head.
"By who?"
"By what persists when observers are removed."
The symbols rearranged again. One of them—cracked—refused to stabilize. It flickered between forms, unable to decide which rule it was meant to represent.
"That symbol," Aster said, pointing,
"used to define inevitability."
"Yes," the Custodian replied.
"And now it defines probability."
Something shifted—far below them.
Not in the Hall.
In the city.
Aster's vision fractured into overlays. Streets he had walked hours ago appeared again, but slightly incorrect. A child stepped off a curb and hesitated—not from fear, but because the future no longer agreed on where her foot should land.
A man spoke a sentence and finished a different one.
A prayer went unanswered—not because no one listened, but because the outcome had lost priority.
"This is already happening?" Aster asked.
"Yes," the Custodian said.
"You have converted certainty into negotiation."
The cracked symbol pulsed.
"Every system tolerates anomalies," she continued.
"But you are not an anomaly. You are a method."
Aster closed his eyes briefly.
"So this is the price," he murmured.
"Not punishment."
"No," the Custodian replied.
"Maintenance."
The Hall began to thin. Not collapse—
recede. As if it were stepping back from Aster, giving him space the way one does with something unstable.
"When law withdraws," the Custodian said,
"something else fills the gap."
Aster opened his eyes.
In the overlapping visions of the city, he saw it.
Not a monster.
Not a god.
A pattern forming where consistency had failed.
People began remembering events that never occurred—
and forgetting ones that had.
A woman mourned someone who was still alive.
A soldier survived a fatal blow and felt guilty for it.
And somewhere, deep beneath causality, something ancient adjusted its posture.
The Custodian's voice softened—not with compassion, but with finality.
"Arc Two begins now."
Aster laughed quietly.
"Then this was never about stopping me."
"No," she said.
"It was about warning the world."
The Hall of Law vanished.
Aster stood alone on a street that had not existed yesterday, beneath a sky that could no longer guarantee tomorrow.
His shadow stretched unnaturally long.
And for the first time—
the world hesitated before allowing him to exist.