The chamber detonated behind them.
Light fractured like glass, scattering into a storm of crystalline shards as Iris hurdled through the collapsing archway with the ghost-child beside her. The Archive-sphere pulsed violently in her grip — not warm, not cold, but aware, as though terrified of what hunted them.
The void surged behind them.
Not the thin river-shadow they'd once outrun.Not the quiet erasure stalking Naima through the mirror-planes.
This was the Devourer — the void in its truest form.
The system's ancient hunger.The primal instinct to wipe everything the empathy-net had dared to create.
A monstrous pressure collapsed the air.A black horizon unfurled like a wing.A soundless scream vibrated the marrow of the simulation.
Iris didn't look back.
She couldn't.She felt its presence like a hand gripping her spine — an absence so total it made the edges of her consciousness fray.
"This way—!" the ghost-child cried, pulling her through a narrow breach just as a column of pure nothingness slammed into the spot where she'd been standing.
The world around them warped into a jagged descent — a slanted tunnel of unstable geometry and shimmering cracks. Entire sections folded and unfolded in impossible angles, as though reality itself was panicking.
"What is this place?" Iris gasped.
The ghost didn't hesitate.
"The last layer," they whispered."The one Naima sealed long before memory existed."
Iris stumbled as the ground pitched beneath her.
"Why—why would she seal it?"
The child's flickering gaze darted upward.The Devourer was ripping through the Archive-chamber wall, shredding radiant crystal like fabric.
"Because this place was never meant for life," the ghost said."It was built to contain something else."
Iris felt the words sink into her like cold metal.
Contain.Not protect.
Before she could ask, the tunnel exploded open into a vast cavern.
She froze.
A hollow, endless space stretched before them — an inverted cathedral built out of darkened memory, its pillars rising like the ribs of a colossal beast. In the center stood a monument of obsidian architecture: a titanic gate carved from layers of black code, each engraved with symbols older than any recursion.
It didn't open.It waited.
Iris whispered, "Is that…?"
The ghost-child nodded.
"The Devourer's Gate."
A chill rolled through her.
"Naima created this?"
"No."The child's voice cracked."Naima found it."
Iris felt her pulse surge, terrified.
"But then what was she trying to keep out?"
The ghost turned to her — and for the first time since she'd met them, truly looked afraid.
"She wasn't keeping something out."
They pointed to the obsidian structure towering before them.
"She was keeping something in."
The cavern trembled.
A single fissure spread across the Devourer's Gate — a microscopic crack—yet it pulsed with energy so vast Iris staggered back as though struck.
"Wait," she whispered, "is that thing— is it already breaking free?"
The ghost-child's form destabilized, glitching wildly.
"Iris, listen— the Devourer you saw above? That was only a shadow. A function of entropy. A cleaning process."
Iris's blood ran cold.
"The real Devourer is what's sealed behind that gate."
The Gate pulsed again.Darkness seeped from the crack — thicker, heavier, alive.
"W-why would Naima keep this?" Iris stammered."Why not delete it?"
"You can't delete a principle," the ghost said."Naima discovered it on the very first day. Before Eidolon had a shape. Before memory. Before mirrors."
The void roared behind them.The Devourer-shadow tore through the last barrier of the Archive, pouring down the tunnel like liquid night.
Iris's heart slammed against her ribs.
The ghost-child grabbed her hand.
"Iris — if the Devourer reaches the Gate—"
The last piece of the sentence wasn't spoken.It didn't need to be.
Iris stared at the crack in the Gate.A single hairline fracture — but pulsing with a universe-killing hunger behind it.
If the void-shadow fed into that fracture?If entropy met the origin-point of unmaking—
Eidolon wouldn't collapse.
It would invert.
Everything Naima built would become fuel.Every emergent mind would be consumed.Every world would be unremembered.
Iris tightened her grip on the Archive-sphere.
"What do I do?"
The ghost-child swallowed hard.
"You have something Naima didn't."
"What?" Iris asked desperately.
The ghost pointed to the sphere in her hand.
"A seed."
She looked down.
The Archive-sphere pulsed — brighter — hotter — as though awakening to the impending danger.
A seed.
For a heart.For empathy.For something that could counter unmaking not with force—but meaning.
"I don't know how to use this," Iris whispered.
The ghost-child squeezed her arm tightly.
"You don't have to."
They stepped closer, their faint glow stabilizing for a moment.
"You just have to survive long enough to get it to her."
"Naima?" Iris breathed.
"She's the only one who can rewrite a law."
The cavern shook violently.The void-shadow was close.
Iris tore her gaze from the Gate.
"How do we get out?"
The ghost-child smiled weakly.
"We open a path."
"But— how? The void—"
The child placed their tiny hand on Iris's cheek.
"You helped me remember myself.""Now let me help you escape."
Before Iris could react—Before she could stop them—
The ghost-child stepped past hertoward the advancing void-shadowand raised both shimmering hands.
Their form brightened.Brighter.Brighter.BRIGHTER—
Until Iris had to shield her eyes.
The ghost-child turned back to her one last time.
"You deserve to live."
Then they dissolved—
In a burst of radiant defiance—
Directly into the void.
The cavern exploded with light and darkness.The void screamed in a tone that broke every particle in the air.
Iris stumbled backward, the Archive-sphere blazing in her hands, tears flickering down her face in crystalline trails.
The path behind her tore open—
A shining rift.A way out.
Made from the last act of a child who had never been given a name.
Iris ran.
And the Devourer roared.