The Spiral was still burning.
Reality wavered on the edge of collapse, caught between myth and absence, memory and forgetting. The Nameless Zones had slowed—but not stopped. The Codex Null continued to bleed ink. Time curled inwards like ash falling into itself.
And Darius stood in the heart of the Spiral's most ancient chamber—naked, trembling, alone.
Except for her.
Celestia.
She approached without sound, her white robe trailing golden light behind her, her bare feet untouched by the floor. But her eyes—those sacred, sun-kissed eyes—were soft with devotion, and burdened with something rarer than faith.
Fear.
Not for herself. For him.
"You're losing your center," she said, voice a whisper, as though afraid to disturb the fragile reality around them. "Your myth is fading. Your shape... slipping."
He didn't answer.
Because she was right.
