Night fell strangely that day.
The stars blinked into place a little slower. The moon hung in the sky like it had forgotten how to rise. And though the world remained still, it pulsed with one message repeated across dreams, rivers, wind, and stone:
He touched the fragment.
And because of that, something else woke up.
Ilan sat at the edge of the stone platform, glyphs still shimmering faintly on his chest. Three symbols, now fused into one shape, pulsed like a living heartbeat beneath his skin.
Aeris sat across from him, her bag of stones untouched, the faint white lines of her memory scar glowing gently in the dark.
Neither spoke for a long time.
Because both knew what had changed.
The power inside Ilan now wasn't just memory. It wasn't just echo.
It was access.
"I saw the version of Erik that gave up," Ilan finally said, his voice soft. "I held his hand."
"And now?" Aeris asked.
Ilan looked at his palm. "Now I carry what he didn't."
She nodded. "That's not a gift. It's a responsibility."
"I know."
He closed the sketchbook, which had now turned into something else entirely. The pages still turned, but the ink no longer formed drawings or maps. It responded only to intention.
A living log of rewriting.
Far from them, in a hollow of a forgotten mountain, something ancient stirred for the first time in over a thousand years.
A creature—neither god, devil, nor man—opened a single eye.
Its body was woven from failed timelines and severed destinies. Its bones were the leftover possibilities the world rejected, and its voice… had never once been heard by anyone.
Because it never had reason to speak.
Until now.
It rose.
It did not fly.It did not run.It simply moved through reality itself.
Not breaking it.
Bypassing it.
It was called the Keeper of What Shouldn't Be.
And Ilan had become its problem.
Erik felt it immediately.
He had been planting again—quietly tending to a new tree that bore fruit shaped like spinning glyphs—when the wind shifted.
The stars didn't blink.
They turned away.
And in that moment, Erik looked up and whispered one word:
"It noticed."
The soul beside him floated close.
"You didn't seal the Keeper."
"No," Erik said. "Because I never rewrote what couldn't be."
"You didn't think anyone would."
"I didn't think anyone should."
He stood, brushing soil from his palms.
"But Ilan did."
Back at the hilltop, Ilan jolted up from where he sat.
The glyphs on his chest pulsed once—then sank deeper, hiding beneath skin and bone.
The sky overhead changed.
No clouds.No lightning.
Just… a blank spot.
A single patch of sky turned black—not night black. Void black. The kind of absence that doesn't just erase light—it erases meaning.
Aeris looked up.
"That's not natural."
"No," Ilan said. "It's coming."
They ran.
Not away—but toward the next point in the glyph's pull. Because they knew standing still was no longer safe.
The world had acknowledged Ilan.
Now, something outside the world had, too.
The glyph inside his chest burned warmer with every step—less like fire, more like purpose. It wasn't giving him power. It was giving him direction.
Toward the next fragment.Toward the next truth.
Aeris stayed at his side, one hand on her necklace, which now glowed with a soft, rhythmic pulse. The stone that had once been missing had formed—without her noticing.
And within it was a symbol she didn't understand, but her heart did.
The same symbol Erik once bore before becoming the Lockbreaker.
The forest grew thinner as they ran.
And at the edge of it, they saw something impossible.
A tower.
Floating. Inverted. Its base in the sky, its top buried in the ground. Vines grew upward. Rain fell from its base like a waterfall in reverse.
"No one built that," Aeris said.
"No one could."
They stepped into the clearing—
And the Keeper stepped out.
Not a monster.
Not a person.
Just… wrong.
Its body shifted constantly. One second it had three arms, then none. Its face rippled between hundreds of forgotten people. Its voice, when it came, wasn't sound—it was regret.
"You carry what should have stayed buried."
Ilan stood his ground. "It wasn't buried. It was ignored."
"Erik made peace. You disrupt it."
"I remember him. That's not a disruption. It's the continuation."
The Keeper stepped forward, the grass beneath it turning grey and flat.
"Rewrite no further."
"I don't need your permission."
Ilan raised the sketchbook—and for the first time, the glyph on the cover turned gold.
It burned.
Not as a weapon.
As a truth.
And in that moment, Erik appeared.
He didn't arrive in light.He didn't flash into view.
He simply stepped forward.
Past time.Past boundaries.Past endings.
He looked at the Keeper and frowned.
"You didn't stop me when I broke the laws."
The Keeper's form glitched.
"You broke what was meant to end."
"And he," Erik said, nodding to Ilan, "is choosing what was never meant to begin."
The two stared at each other—two impossibilities facing off.
Then Erik turned to Ilan.
"You're not me," he said. "Don't try to be."
Ilan nodded. "I know."
"Then go. The next fragment isn't here. It's beneath what used to be holy."
Aeris narrowed her eyes. "The Vault?"
Erik smiled.
"No. Beneath the Vault."
The Keeper did not follow.
Because it couldn't.
Not where they were going.
It whispered once more as Erik turned to face it fully:
"You defied gods and devils. Will you defy me too?"
Erik gave no answer.
He just stepped forward—arms wide, voice soft.
"I'm not here to defy you…"
"…I'm here to remind you that stories don't end when you say they do."
And far beneath the shattered roots of the old Vault…
A pulse.
A glow.
And the Fourth Glyph opened its eye.