Lioren stood—if it could be called standing.

  His form was withered, barely tethered to reality.

  He looked like someone who had survived being erased only because he had helped erase everything else first.

  Ais kept her bde low, eyes narrowed. “He’s not human.”

  “No,” Darius agreed. “Not anymore.”

  Lioren smiled. “I haven’t heard my name spoken in a thousand cycles.”

  He gestured to the walls.

  “All of this was once a world.”

  Ais frowned. “You mean a room.”

  Lioren shook his head. “No. This pce was once an empire. A kingdom of sky and fire. And I helped turn it into this... a cave where memory goes to die.”

  Darius stepped forward. “You were one of the Writers.”

  Lioren chuckled dryly. “I was the third. Out of the Nine.”

  “The Nine?”

  “Creators of the first rewrite. Engineers of the Thanatarchy’s logic. We were supposed to save reality. But instead…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “I helped kill gods.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Silence stretched.

  Darius whispered, “Why?”

  Lioren turned.

  And on the far wall—he pointed to a symbol.

  Not a glyph.

  Not a command.

  A name.

  “Because they feared what would come after gods,” he said. “They feared the idea of a world that could remember itself.”

  Ais stared at the name.

  It pulsed softly in the stone.

  Unfamiliar.

  Unreadable.

  But alive.

  Darius asked, “What is it?”

  Lioren replied, “The name of the first god we erased. And the only one who tried to resist.”

  Ais stepped back. “Wait. You’re saying… the Thanatarchy didn’t just rewrite people and pces?”

  Lioren’s expression was grim.

  “We rewrote meaning. Memory. We erased the metaphysical. The divine. We made the universe forget it could dream.”

  Darius felt cold. “But you survived.”

  Lioren looked at him.

  “No. I failed to die.”

  The torchlight dimmed.

  Outside, they could feel it again—the Thanatarchy moving.

  Not just rewriting.

  Searching.

  They had discovered this ruin was open.

  Lioren’s head turned toward the sound.

  “You don’t have much time.”

  Ais hissed, “You knew they’d find us?”

  “They always do. The Thanatarchy isn’t omniscient—but it remembers deviations.”

  Darius grabbed his arm. “Tell me. How do I stop it?”

  Lioren’s eyes glowed brighter.

  “You don’t stop it.”

  “You overwrite it.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Darius froze. “What?”

  Lioren leaned close.

  “There is a pce. A site that predates even the first script. The origin of memory itself.”

  He reached into his cloak and pulled out a cube—stone, mechanical, humming softly.

  “Go to the city of Veidros. Beneath it, you’ll find the Hall of Roots. That’s where the script was seeded.”

  Ais asked, “Seeded by who?”

  Lioren looked at Darius.

  “You’ll know when you get there.”

  Outside, the sky cracked.

  The rewrite was descending.

  And the ruin would not survive this time.

  Darius turned to run.

  But Lioren stayed where he was.

  Ais looked back. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Lioren smiled.

  “I helped build this prison. I’ll die in it now.”

  He sat down on the stone floor, pcing the cube gently at his feet.

  And as Darius and Ais fled into the forest—

  The rewrite fell upon the ruin like a storm of silence.