The path was wrong.
Not dangerous, not cursed—wrong. Like a thought you didn't have yet but somehow already regretted. It curved when it should have straightened, dipped when it should've risen. The stones beneath my feet shimmered with shapes that didn't wait for light to be cast.
Kael muttered a warding under his breath.
Lyra didn't speak. She just pressed the Dawn Sigil tight to her chest like it could anchor her.
Even Aeris, usually quick to fill the silence with riddles and questions, said nothing.
That told me everything.
The further we walked into the Spiral Hollow, the heavier I felt. Not with weight, but with awareness. I was aware of my blood pulsing. Aware of my heartbeat. Aware of something behind my eyes that didn't belong to me.
And somewhere ahead, he waited.
The Architect.
The one who shaped the Rift, carved the first thrones, and etched the names of the Starborn into the bones of reality. The one whose voice hadn't been heard in three thousand years—by will or by curse, no one knew.
Until now.
I don't know how I knew it, but I did: he was waiting for me.
We reached a gate with no door. It shimmered, not with magic but expectation.
Like it wasn't keeping things out.
It was keeping us in.
I stepped through first.
It was a chamber, but it wasn't.
No walls. No sky. Just architecture suspended in void—columns floating without base, spires pointing toward stars that pulsed like hearts. And at the center, where time folded into a single, frozen point, stood a figure.
The Architect.
He wore no face, no armor, no crown. He wore function.
And when he turned, I felt every version of myself across all timelines flinch in unison.
He didn't move his mouth. He didn't need to.
The word came through me.
"Ascend."
One word. One command.
It broke something in my bones.
I dropped to my knees, vision fracturing, stars pouring from my eyes like tears. My heartbeat reversed for a moment—reversed, like time hiccupping inside me—and the ground was gone.
I saw everything.
Every path. Every version of me.
The one who burned cities. The one who saved too many. The one who chose peace and died forgotten. The one who drowned in the sea of glass. The one who reached the throne… and shattered the stars to remake them.
And at the center of it all… the one I was now.
Torn. Untethered. Remembering too much and not enough. A thing stitched from echoes, walking forward without knowing why.
"Ascend."
It came again.
And this time, I understood what he meant.
Not rise.
Become.
Lyra stepped forward, shouting something I couldn't hear. Kael tried to hold me back. Aeris screamed my name—
But I wasn't there anymore.
The Architect lifted his hand.
And I was in two places at once.
Standing still.
And falling upward.
Stars spiraled past me. Not stars. Not light. Threads.
Threads of reality.
I saw my name etched on a spindle of possibility—carved by his hand. The Architect didn't speak, but I felt him inside my marrow now, the way a forger feels steel in fire.
You were the last to fall and the first to rise.
You are not the chosen.
You are the knife that chose itself.
My fingers burned.
I looked down.
My skin—no, not my skin anymore—was fracturing. Glowing lines split across my hands, symbols older than history. Something entered me, but it wasn't possession.
It was inheritance.
A gift I didn't know I had already accepted.
"ASCEND."
The final word tore through the Spiral Hollow like thunder.
And I—
I screamed.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
The Architect was not a being. He was not a god.
He was a protocol.
A forgotten function of the Rift itself, embedded in its foundation like a heartbeat waiting to restart. And I—whatever I was before—was the trigger.
Ascension is not a reward.
It is an agreement.
You are the weapon. The echo. The heir.
Then I was dropped back into myself.
On the stone. On my knees.
Breathing like I had nearly drowned in the sky.
The chamber was collapsing. Not physically. Conceptually. The spires faded, the stars dimmed. The Architect turned away.
And as he vanished into non-being, he spoke a final time—not to me, but through me.
I opened my mouth.
And a voice not mine said:
"The Black Star stirs. The seals unravel. Prepare the anchor."
I collapsed.
The light left my body like smoke from a dying pyre.
The last thing I saw before unconsciousness claimed me was Kael's face.
And in his eyes… not fear.
But certainty.