The Archive no longer whispered.
It throbbed inside him.
Every heartbeat was a memory pulse. Every breath ignited latent glyphs on Skyler's skin. He wasn't just carrying flame anymore—he was becoming it.
---
Inside the sealed sanctum, Aelira watched helplessly as her brother convulsed.
His back arched.
Lines of glowing script slithered across his body like living tattoos—some known only to the gods, some erased from the fabric of time.
"Skyler," she said, holding his arm as he trembled. "You have to resist the Archive's overwrite."
But Skyler shook his head.
"I'm not resisting anymore."
"I'm becoming what I was written to be."
Flames erupted from his skin—not red, not gold, but white-violet, the color of divine memory and sealed truth.
His right arm cracked, skin flaking off like ash—revealing something beneath:
Not bone.
Not flesh.
But raw memory.
Liquid glyph matter that pulsed with remembered pain, loss, and infinite lives.
Orias activated the chamber seals.
"He's mutating," he muttered. "We're not looking at a Novaah anymore."
"This is a Witness-Reclaimer hybrid. A living Archive node."
Skyler slowly rose, his body stabilizing—but different now.
No longer just human.
Not divine either.
Witnessborn.
His voice came layered with echoes—not just of himself, but of past Novaahs, speaking through him.
"I remember my death," he said calmly. "In every timeline. I remember my daughter. I remember the day I was sealed in my mother's flame."
Aelira flinched. "Skyler, your soul is unraveling. You're absorbing too much."
He looked at her. Smiled—sadly.
"That's the point."
"This bloodline was cursed to forget itself. But now?"
His chest glowed with the Fifth Seal sigil. A spiral burning open.
"I am what happens when memory fights back."
He raised his hand—and the chamber walls responded, folding into a sphere of energy that suspended time. Outside, the Hunters' siege paused mid-motion—frozen by Skyler's expanding presence.
The Archive was using him to push into reality.
To reclaim the multiverse.
But in the center of it all, Skyler turned inward—feeling something beneath even the Archive's voice.
A deeper fire. A sealed truth under his ribs.
A voice.
Her voice.
"When the Sixth Seal breaks," whispered Aeria Novaah from within his blood, "you will stop being a Witness."
"And start becoming the Flame That Sees."
Skyler fell to his knees—no longer in pain, but burning with clarity.
"Then let the Sixth Seal burn."
And across the multiverse, the Sixth Chain rattled.
Cracks formed in the Archive Core.
The gods stirred.
And Aelira stepped forward, tears on her face.
"Brother… your skin isn't skin anymore."
"It's script."