The ghost of Dr. Petrov's final moments clung to the cold stone of the waystation, a patina of despair. The name he had given their hunter—[Oblivion]—hung in the dead air between them, far more tangible than any phantom of the Ossuary. It was not a monster to be fought, but a tide to be outrun. A law of this reality: foreign memories were errors to be corrected. And they were the most foreign thing of all.
"We cannot stay," Jaya said, her voice hollow. The hope the structure had offered was now a poison. "This isn't a sanctuary. It's a lair. A place it knows to look."
Rohan, his face a grim mask of pain, nodded from his sled. "He said it was a 'living idea.' How do you kill an idea?"
"You don't," Aryan answered, his voice flat. The void within him felt strangely resonant with this new understanding. "You replace it with a better one. Or you erase the slate upon which it is written." He looked at his hands. "We move. Now."
They fled the stone sepulcher, plunging back into the roaring current of the Neural Jungle. But the Jungle had changed. Or their perception of it had. Every flicker of light, every whisper of thought, now felt like a potential herald of the end. The vibrant [Curiosity] felt like a predator's scrutiny. The deep, rhythmic [Metabolic Process] felt like the footfalls of a approaching giant.
Aryan's navigation became frantic, desperate. He was no longer just avoiding turbulent emotions; he was trying to outmaneuver a concept. He led them through narrow channels of stagnant [Apathy] and across plains of shimmering, distracting [Aesthetic Appreciation], anything to mask their psychic scent. But they were tainted, foreign bodies in a living mind, and the mind's white blood cells were hunting.
The attack did not come with a shriek or a claw.
It came with a sigh.
The vibrant, electric-blue light of a cluster of dendrites ahead of them simply… greyed out. The color didn't fade; it was extracted, leaving behind a dull, ashen monochrome. The soft whisper of [Logic Patterns] flowing through them ceased, not into silence, but into a profound absence of sound. The greyness spread, not like a fire, but like a nullification, a wave of un-being washing towards them.
It was [Oblivion]. Not a creature, but a condition. A state of non-existence made manifest.
"It's here!" Elian screamed, his voice cracking with a terror that was entirely his own.
The edge of the grey wave touched a stray, glowing root. The root didn't wither or decay. It ceased to have ever existed. There was no ash, no memory of its form. It was simply… gone.
Jaya fired one of her mend-blades, the projectile glowing with the stored crimson of Rohan's agony. The blade flew into the grey tide and vanished without a ripple. It didn't just disintegrate; it was retroactively erased from the timeline of its own flight.
It was consuming the world behind them, unmaking the path they had taken. There was no retreat.
"Aryan!" Rohan bellowed. "A wall! Like before!"
Aryan stared into the advancing nothingness. The void within him trembled, not in fear, but in a terrifying, rapturous recognition. This was its sibling. Its pure, undiluted purpose. To fight it was to fight himself.
Let it come, the void whispered, its voice sweeter than ever. It is the answer to all pain. The end of all struggle. Let it wash over you. Become one with the great silence.
The thread of [Connection] stretched to its breaking point. He saw Jaya, backing away, preparing another futile blade. He saw Elian, trying to somehow become more scared than he already is. He saw Rohan, defiant even in helplessness.
He could not let it take them. The cost was irrelevant.
He stepped forward, placing himself between his companions and the tide of [Oblivion]. He did not raise his hands. He opened his mind. He didn't try to create a wall of [Stasis]. To do so would be to create something for the tide to erase. Instead, he did something far more dangerous.
He made himself a conduit.
He reached out with the Null-Shard and did not push against the [Oblivion]. He pulled.
He focused all his will on a single, desperate command: [Annullation Target: Aryan].
It was an invitation. A sacrifice. He was a lightning rod for the storm of un-being, offering himself as the most enticing, most foreign piece of data in the vicinity.
The grey tide hesitated for a fraction of a second, the mindless concept processing this new variable. Then, it converged. It ignored Jaya, Elian, and Rohan. It focused into a razor-sharp beam of absolute nothingness and slammed into Aryan.
The pain was not physical. It was the pain of the universe denying he had ever been born.
He felt the memory of his mother's face begin to dissolve. Not fade, but be proven a fiction.
The sound of Jaya's voice,the weight of Rohan's hand—all became lies he had told himself.
His own name became a meaningless collection of syllables.
He was being unmade. And a part of him, the part that was the void, welcomed it with open arms. This was peace. This was truth.
But the thread held.
In the core of his dissolving consciousness, one thing refused to be negated. It was not a memory or a name. It was the raw, foundational sensation of the thread itself. The [Connection]. The undeniable, illogical fact that he was not alone in this darkness. He clung to it, a man hanging over an infinite abyss by a single, silken strand.
The tide of [Oblivion] receded seeing as the food was clearly not being devoured.
The greyness pulled back, the world flickering back into color and sound as if a switch had been flipped. The Neural Jungle returned, untouched, as if the last minute had never happened.
Aryan collapsed. He did not fall to his knees; he folded, like a puppet with its strings cut. He lay on the pulsating ground, gasping, his body wracked with tremors that had no source in muscle or nerve.
Jaya was at his side in an instant. "Aryan! Look at me!"
He looked up. His eyes were voids, but in their depths was a new, shattered horror. He could remember the taste of his own non-existence.
"I… I can still feel it," he whispered, his voice the rustle of dead leaves. "The place where I wasn't. It's… empty."
He had faced the Guardian, the acid, the Phantoms. But this was different. He had not fought [Oblivion]. He had let it inside, and a part of him had agreed with its verdict. He had stared into the mirror of his own power and seen his true face: not a savior, but an instrument of the same erasure he fought.
He was saved, but he was contaminated. The void had not been defeated; it had been validated. And as they gathered their shattered resolve to press on, the knowledge was a cold stone in all their guts: [Oblivion] was not gone. It had simply found a more interesting target. It had tasted him. And it would be back.