The world had survived.
No gods.
No rewritten fate.
Just silence—and the faint hum of rebuilding.
For weeks, the Sanctum stood quiet. Villages rose again. Memory settled into place. The sky, once scorched with fire and rewritten time, finally calmed.
But peace, Reyan had learned, was fragile.
And lies…
Lies were immortal.
---
Reyan sat alone beneath the tree of echoes—Kael's tree. The place where shadow and flame once warred inside his soul.
The Fang's shard still pulsed under his skin, quiet now, but never still.
He no longer saw visions when he closed his eyes.
He heard them.
A voice.
Not the Flame.
Not Kael.
Something else.
"Truth is nothing without belief."
---
Selene paced outside the council hall, arms crossed, tension riding her spine like frost.
"He hasn't spoken in days," she said.
Aesthera looked up from the shattered scrolls of law. "He's stabilizing."
Selene shook her head. "No. He's changing. Again."
Aesthera raised an eyebrow. "He's not a god."
"No," Selene whispered. "But something's watching him. I feel it."
---
Far from the Sanctum, where the wind still whispered remnants of old prayers, a statue stood half-buried in ash.
Not of Kael.
Not of the Flame.
Of something nameless.
Faceless.
Just a cloaked figure, hands outstretched.
Waiting.
No one remembered building it.
No one remembered its name.
But still, travelers would stop and bow—without knowing why.
---
Reyan dreamed.
He walked through the Archive—not the twisted, flaming one—but a cold version. Frozen pages. Silent stories.
Everything locked in ice.
A woman waited for him there.
White dress.
Eyes hollow.
She smiled, though her mouth didn't move.
"Do you know what happens to lies when the truth dies?" she asked.
Reyan shook his head.
"They rot. And from rot, something grows."
---
He awoke gasping.
Selene rushed to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Reyan!"
He sat up. "It's still here."
She frowned. "The Flame?"
He shook his head. "Worse."
---
That day, the rivers of the Sanctum turned black.
Only for a moment.
But long enough for the builders to pause. The children to cry.
And the sky to blink.
Only once.
Only wrong.
---
At the heart of the Sanctum, Aesthera found the Fang of Mortem had cracked again.
No new energy.
Just a whisper.
"You cannot kill a story."
She called the council.
Only half of them arrived.
The rest?
Gone.
No record.
No memory.
Like they'd never existed.
---
"We sealed the Flame," Selene snapped.
"We shattered the gods," Aesthera added.
"So what is this?" a soul whispered.
Reyan entered the hall, cloak dragging behind him, eyes distant.
He answered for them.
"It's the last lie."
---
Silence.
Then whispers.
"What lie?"
Reyan looked up.
And said a name.
One no one remembered.
But everyone suddenly felt.
A crawling sensation on their skin. A pressure on their lungs. A crack in their thoughts.
The name didn't echo in their ears.
It scraped through their bones.
"The Forgotten God."
---
Selene's voice broke. "Kael destroyed the last of them. We saw the throne burn."
Reyan nodded slowly. "But this god… it never existed. It was a lie so old, even the Creator forgot it. But now that the Creator is dead… it's free."
Aesthera whispered, "Free to do what?"
Reyan's eyes turned black for a heartbeat.
"Free to be believed in."
---
That night, across the Sanctum, dreams changed.
No fire.
No death.
Just a throne.
Empty.
And a whisper.
"You remember me now."
Some woke screaming.
Others didn't wake at all.
But in the morning, carved into the side of the council hall, was a phrase:
"What is forgotten… belongs to me."
The words carved into the wall weren't written in ink or etched by hand.
They had appeared.
No one saw it happen. No spell had been cast. No tool had touched the stone.
And yet, there they were.
"What is forgotten… belongs to me."
Aesthera stared at the inscription, fingers trembling. The ancient wards around the council chamber hadn't even flickered. Whatever did this had bypassed divine and mortal laws alike.
Selene approached quietly. "This wasn't the Flame."
"No," Aesthera muttered. "This was something… older. Or perhaps... newer, born from what's been left behind."
---
In the village, whispers spread like frostbite.
"Did you see the eyes in the water last night?"
"My sister vanished. I swear she existed yesterday…"
"They say there's a god who lives in broken memories. If you forget it… it remembers you."
Reyan sat on the edge of a well, eyes scanning the nervous crowd. The wind brushed past him, carrying voices that hadn't been spoken.
"You're slipping."
"You were never whole."
"Why do you remember Kael?"
He didn't answer.
He just stared at the shadow forming on the inside of the well wall.
It blinked.
---
A knock echoed in the Sanctum's great archive. Aesthera looked up from her decoding circle.
The door creaked open slowly—no one behind it.
But a book lay at the threshold.
Bound in skin.
Untitled.
She picked it up carefully.
The pages were blank.
But the first line burned itself into existence as she opened it:
"Once upon a time, the world believed in nothing. And Nothing answered."
She slammed the book shut.
Too late.
Her reflection in the archive's polished wall was gone.
In its place, a cloaked figure with no face stared back.
---
Selene stormed into Reyan's quarters. "I saw it."
He didn't flinch.
"The Forgotten God."
"I don't think it's a god," Reyan replied. "It's worse."
"What could be worse than the Creator or the Flame?"
He looked up at her.
"It's a gap. A missing piece of belief. A hole shaped like a god."
Selene's mouth went dry. "Then how do we fight it?"
Reyan stood.
His shadow didn't move with him.
"We don't fight it with swords. We fight it by remembering."
---
But remembrance is fragile.
That night, three council members forgot their own names.
They couldn't speak.
They couldn't write.
Their minds collapsed into silence.
In their place, the cloaked figure appeared—only briefly.
But it watched.
Not attacking.
Just... collecting.
Like a predator who had all the time in the world.
---
Aesthera conducted a soul-ritual beneath the sanctum, pulling threads of ancient memory from the Echo Vault.
Reyan sat in the center of the circle.
She placed her hands on his temples.
"Show me what it's doing to you."
Reyan's body convulsed—
And she saw it.
A vast library with empty shelves.
A throne room filled with statues missing faces.
A boy forgotten by history, chained to silence.
At the center, a throne of mirrors.
And on it…
A lie.
With eyes made of every soul that had ever stopped remembering.
---
She pulled away, sweating, blood running from her nose.
"It doesn't feed on faith," she gasped. "It feeds on absence. On being unnoticed. It's growing stronger every time we look away."
Selene gritted her teeth. "So what's the plan?"
Reyan opened his hand.
In his palm, the shard of Kael's Fang still pulsed.
"I'm going to find it," he said. "And I'm going to name it."
---
Aesthera's eyes widened. "No! Giving it a name could bind it to existence. That's exactly what it wants!"
Reyan didn't flinch.
"I'd rather know what I'm fighting… than let it unmake me from the inside."
Selene stepped beside him. "Then we go with you."
"No." Reyan looked at her. "If I forget myself… you have to remember me."
Selene grabbed his hand. "I will. Even if the world forgets you, I won't."
---
He walked into the dark woods beyond the Sanctum.
Where shadows bent wrong.
Where names faded the deeper you went.
Where reality peeled like old paper.
And the world's greatest lie waited to be known.
---
Behind him, Selene whispered a prayer.
Not to a god.
To Kael.
And for a moment, the wind curled around her wrist—
Black fire dancing—
Silent.
Watching.
Waiting.
The forest beyond the Sanctum wasn't mapped.
Not because no one dared, but because every map drawn faded within hours. Compasses spun without purpose. Spells misfired. Even memory twisted.
This was the Oblivion Hollow—a place where belief unraveled.
Reyan walked in alone.
Every step pulled pieces of him away.
His name.
His past.
Even Kael's voice, once echoing like a heartbeat, had gone silent.
But he held on to one thing: resolve.
---
The trees here had no roots.
They hovered, suspended in midair, dripping black liquid that hissed against the earth. Shadows shifted not with light, but with intent. They watched.
Waiting.
Reyan moved steadily, eyes unblinking.
His right hand burned—the shard of Kael's Fang responding to the weight of anti-memory around him.
Then he saw it.
Not a throne.
Not a temple.
Just a ripple in the world.
Like a place trying not to exist.
He stepped through.
---
The ripple gave way to a clearing—a circle of white mist.
At the center stood a mirror.
Tall.
Frameless.
Endless.
And in it, Reyan saw himself.
But not as he was.
Not as Kael's echo.
Not as a vessel of death or flame.
Just… a boy.
Lonely.
Shaking.
Forgotten.
---
Then, the reflection spoke.
Not in his voice.
But in everyone else's.
Kael. Selene. Aesthera. Even the Creator. Even the Hollow God.
"Do you know why you were chosen?" it asked.
Reyan swallowed hard.
"No."
The reflection smiled without lips. "Because you were nothing. And nothing… is perfect."
---
Suddenly, the clearing twisted.
No sound.
Just distortion.
The trees turned inward.
Reality bent into a spiral of memories that never happened.
Reyan dropped to one knee, clutching his chest.
Names—countless names—flooded his mind.
Names of people who never lived.
Events that never occurred.
Pain that was never felt.
The Lie was feeding.
**And it wanted him. **
---
Then a voice spoke in his mind—not the Lie.
But Kael.
One word.
One echo.
"Define."
---
Reyan opened his eyes.
The mirror cracked.
He stood, stepping closer.
The Lie hissed through the cracks. "You can't name me. No one can."
Reyan pressed his burning hand against the glass.
"I name you Vel'thar—the God of Forgotten Things."
The mirror shattered.
Light exploded.
The trees fell upward.
And the ground split in a perfect spiral beneath his feet.
---
Reality warped.
Reyan found himself standing in the Lie's true form.
A black cathedral with no ceiling. Rows of pews made from faceless bodies.
Vel'thar stood at the altar—formless, cloaked in memory and void.
"You've bound me with a name," it said. "But now… I remember you."
Reyan's voice was steady. "Good. Because I remember Kael. And I remember what silence did to gods."
Vel'thar moved forward. "You can't destroy a lie."
"No," Reyan said, lifting the Fang shard.
"But I can make it bleed."
---
The shard flared in obsidian light.
He hurled it forward—
And it embedded in Vel'thar's chest.
No scream.
No sound.
Just stillness.
Vel'thar staggered back.
A line of truth cut through his form like fire.
He looked down at the wound.
"What have you done?"
"I've defined you," Reyan said.
"And now? You can be forgotten again."
---
The cathedral trembled.
Pews collapsed.
Walls cracked.
The void began to consume itself.
Vel'thar reached out. "You will forget this victory. You will forget me."
Reyan smiled bitterly.
"I'll forget you."
"But someone will remember me."
---
Back in the Sanctum, Selene clutched her chest as her brother's name flared in her mind.
Reyan.
His pain. His strength.
The echo of Kael's will.
And then—
A crack of light tore through the sky above the Sanctum.
And a voice whispered across the world.
"Vel'thar has been named."
"The Lie is bound."
"Remember the boy who chose to remember us all."
---
In the ruins of Oblivion Hollow, there was nothing.
No throne.
No mirror.
No Vel'thar.
Just a single word etched into the dirt.
REYAN.
And beneath it:
"Truth is pain. But it is ours."