Books should not bleed.
But they did that day.
The corridors of the Astral Library were screaming—not the people. The shelves. The archives. The pages themselves cried out in agony, ink melting like veins torn from gods.
And I felt it all.
Because I was now tethered to every star-script carved into this place.
Because I had touched the Rift Relic.
Because I had ascended.
I appeared mid-hallway, starlight still dripping from my hands, constellations pulsing across my skin like a living map of things not yet born.
And before me, the attack was already underway.
The Eternal Radiant Order—clad in whitefire armor that burned with sanctimonious hatred—had breached the inner vaults. Their banner: a sun stabbed through a blackened eye.
Their purpose: annihilation of forbidden knowledge.
Their goal: purge what they call heretical timelines.
Their timing?
Disastrously perfect.
A Seeker ran past me—her robes shredded, one arm gone, her scream raw and wet. Another fell before she could beg. A beam of radiant judgment turned her chest to ash.
I walked forward.
The Radiant Knight who had slain her turned—ready to fire again—
—and hesitated.
Because I didn't just glow anymore.
I commanded light.
"Hold," he said, stepping back, sword lowering. "You wear the mark."
I didn't answer.
The sigils across my arms flared.
Behind me, a pressure gathered in the air. The books—thousands of them—rose into the air as if summoned by breath, swirling around me like orbiting moons.
Pages fluttered. Glyphs burned. History screamed.
And then I spoke.
Not to the knight.
To the library itself.
"Seal the heretics inside."
The floor cracked. The bookshelves groaned. The vault above shimmered—an aether-lock activating for the first time in centuries.
"You don't command this sanctum," another knight barked, voice righteous, blade brightening with solar wrath.
"No," I said, lifting my hand.
"I am this sanctum."
They struck.
Four of them—moving like lances of heaven.
I raised one palm.
Space buckled.
Starlight curved.
And then—
reversed.
They were flung backward through their own trajectories, bones warping, armor screaming, landing in craters of their own inertia.
The hallway dimmed.
Because something darker now approached.
Behind the Order came their captain.
Aether-Prince Solus Vey.
The one who once led the culling of Serenthos.
The one who stole three of my lifetimes.
The one who knew my true name.
He stepped through the shattered archway like a hymn made flesh. Wings of whitefire. Halo of suns. His armor was gold boiled into judgment. He was beautiful.
And completely without mercy.
"So," he said. "You return."
I tilted my head.
"You remember me?"
"I remember all versions of you."
A pause.
He smiled—so softly it ached.
"And I've killed most of them."
The standoff was absolute.
The books shivered.
The walls bled glyphs.
The Radiant Order fanned out, weapons poised, sanctified blades humming with divine math. I stood alone, hands down, heart silent, the stars in my chest aligning in a pattern I had never known before.
"I don't want to destroy you," I said.
Solus stepped forward.
"Then you shouldn't have become yourself."
And with that—he vanished.
The fight was apocalyptic.
He reappeared behind me mid-thrust, but I had already moved—my shadow doubling back and catching his blade mid-air. Not my hand. My shadow.
It had learned to fight without me.
Solus clashed against it, but I had no time to marvel.
Two more knights lunged.
Aether pressure surged.
I tore a rift sideways into reality, turned it into a blade, and split the hallway in two.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
The walls collapsed into a void that did not lead anywhere.
The Eternal Radiant screamed as they fell through it, disappearing into silence that was not death—but something older.
Solus snarled.
His wings erupted—blinding, holy, wrong.
He drove one through my shoulder.
I didn't flinch.
Instead, I grabbed the wing.
And whispered the name of the Third Flame.
His wing ignited.
Not in fire.
But in memory.
He screamed—not because it burned, but because it returned.
Returned every timeline he'd murdered me in.
Every version of me he betrayed.
Every version of himself he buried to become this angelic thing.
He fell back.
Shaking.
"Who are you now?" he rasped.
I walked forward.
Books floating behind me, wind spiraling around my body, threads of Rift matter wrapping my form like a second skin.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I'm not something you can kill again."
I stepped into him.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
And pulled something from his chest.
A thread of light.
Wound tight around a secret.
He convulsed—light sputtering from his eyes, mouth, armor.
And I saw.
I saw a map.
A hidden archive.
A forbidden vault beneath the moon of Solkara.
Where the Eternal Radiant hides their secrets.
Where the memory of my first death is being stored.
Solus collapsed.
The others fled.
The library groaned around me.
I breathed.
And the books came to rest.
It was over.
But not ended.
Not yet.
Because I now held a thread to something older than war.
A thread to what I was before I was Aetherion.
And it was leading me straight into the mouth of an ancient betrayal.
As I turned from the wreckage, a child stepped from the shadows.
Hair silver.
Eyes void-black.
She held a book.
And it whispered my name—not the one I remembered. The one I'd forgotten.
The girl smiled.
And said—
"Your next life wants a word.