The sky remained blank.
Not empty—
blank.
A scraped-clean page still bleeding ink around the torn edges.
Heaven's nerves exposed.
And under that wounded canopy,
the Cathedral of Seven Crowns finally understood fear.
The floating monolith convulsed.
Its impossible geometry twisted in on itself, folding like a dying starfish.
Pillars bent at wrong angles.
Choir-statues wept molten scripture.
The stained glass of miracles shattered inward in a rain of colorless shards.
SFX: *SHRRRRAAA-THRNNNNK*
A scream rolled across the horizon—
the kind that didn't belong to a throat.
It belonged to a belief system.
Veyra braced her boots against the crumbling balcony.
"Okay," she barked, "who taught the sky to molt?"
Lirien flinched as a piece of falling star-glass grazed her arm, slicing cloth and shadow.
"The world is reformatting itself," she murmured.
"Mourning the rules it thought were unbreakable."
Kael stood at the center of it all, throat tight, heart pounding.
His internal monologue spiraled:
This isn't what I wanted.
I didn't ask to unmake anything.
I just wanted to exist without being rewritten.
Why does existence always come with casualties?
Why does every step feel like destruction?
The balcony shook again.
Below, the Cathedral screamed louder.
THE SEVEN CROWNS BREAK
Inside the collapsing cathedral, the Council of Saints finally lost composure.
Aurelius staggered forward, clutching his starlight crown.
Golden ichor streamed from his eyes like solar tears.
"He is rewriting us!" he hollered, voice cracking like burning metal.
"No mortal should carry that authority—none!"
Nocturne trembled, blindfold bleeding silver, threads unraveling.
"I warned you," he whispered.
"I warned you the moment he loved something the Abyss loved back."
Belladonna giggled—no, cackled—as her rose-bone armor peeled itself from her body like a fleeing parasite.
"Oh, this is divine," she cheered.
"The story now grows teeth! At last!"
Caelum's storm wings flickered in and out of existence, glitching like broken weather.
"He is a cyclone with self-awareness," he thundered.
"And storms with agency rewrite maps."
Vesper ran fingers over his cracked skin, watching embers drip like dying suns.
"Extinction patterns confirm," he murmured.
"Belief structures collapsing in a forty-mile radius.
Fascinating."
Lyria…
Lyria stood unmoving.
The veil around her face fluttered with a thousand grieving breaths.
When she finally spoke, her voice shook the dying cathedral:
"He is not unmaking us.
He is unmaking what we believed we were."
Dominus clenched his quill of divine authority until it snapped, bleeding ink the color of mourning.
His seven halos dimmed one by one.
"So be it," he pronounced, calm even as the room around him crumbled.
"If the world has forgotten its script…
then we will write a new one.
Over him.
Through him.
Into him."
He lifted a hand.
Reality warped.
THE FIRST SACRED LIE FALLS
Kael flinched as a wave of invisible energy slammed into his chest.
SFX: *WHUUM—CRRRAA-THMM*
Air bent.
Stone liquefied.
Veyra stumbled into him, snarling.
"What the hell was that?!"
Lirien's silhouette flickered—
three forms overlapping:
herself,
the witch she had been,
and the martyr she once became.
"That was a divine edit," she murmured.
"Dominus is rewriting your past."
Kael felt it instantly.
A memory—
his mother's voice—
blinked out.
Just gone.
He reeled, hand gripping the balcony rail until stone cracked under his fingers.
"No," he hissed.
"No, no, no—"
Veyra grabbed his coat, barking,
"KAEL. Stay with me."
Lirien stepped closer, fingertips touching his temple.
"You are real.
You are here.
Hold to this moment."
But another edit slammed into him.
SFX: *THNNNNNNK*
His first scar vanished.
His childhood home was erased.
The night Veyra first saw him alive dissolved like sugar in water.
Kael gasped—then choked—then coughed up black static.
They're rewriting me.
They're deleting pieces.
How many pieces before I stop being me?
How many before I become what they want?
Veyra roared, "GET OUT OF HIS HEAD!"
Lirien's shadows surged, forming spears that struck upward toward the Cathedral—
—but the skyline warped to avoid her.
The Saints were too fast.
Too practiced.
And too terrified.
Dominus's voice boomed across the skies:
"YOU HAVE NO ORIGIN.
THEREFORE, WE SHALL GIVE YOU ONE."
THE SECOND SACRED LIE FALLS
A new memory surged into Kael's mind—
one that wasn't his.
A life where he was born to the Church.
Where he served the Saints.
Where he kneeled before Dominus as a child.
"No…" Kael mumbled, stumbling backward.
"This isn't mine—this isn't mine—"
He tasted incense.
He felt cold marble under his knees.
He heard prayers he had never learned.
Veyra grabbed his face between her hands.
"KAEL. LOOK AT ME.
If that memory's real, then who the hell am I to you?"
He blinked—
Her face.
Her scent.
Her heartbeat.
Real.
Unaffected.
Uneditable.
Lirien's voice trembled softly:
"Because she is your anchor.
Because she is chosen, not written."
Kael exhaled shakily.
The false memories cracked.
Dominus's rewrite shuddered.
Across the sky, text flickered:
ERROR: CHARACTER REJECTS REVISION.
Dominus snarled.
THE THIRD SACRED LIE FALLS
A final wave slammed down.
SFX: *KRRRSHHHHH-BOOOOOOOOM*
The balcony shattered.
The spire split in half.
The city buckled.
Kael felt the rewrite crawl into his bones.
His heart stuttered.
His vision blackened—
—and then he felt a hand.
Veyra's hand.
And another.
Lirien's.
Their voices overlapped:
"You are not theirs."
"You were never theirs."
"You choose what you become."
"You choose us."
Kael's heart surged.
Black flame erupted from his ribs—
a pulse of Abyss made from affection instead of hunger.
The rewrite hit it—
—and died.
Dominus's divine scripting exploded in shards of white narrative.
The Cathedral wailed.
The Council staggered.
And Kael—
Kael remembered himself through sheer will.
THE COLLAPSE
The Cathedral split open like a dying beast.
Seven halos cracked.
Seven doctrines warped.
Seven lies the world had been built upon
collapsed at once.
Dominus whispered, voice low, stunned, breaking:
"He…
he resists narrative law."
"No," Lyria murmured.
"He chooses truth over script."
Aurelius screamed.
Belladonna giggled.
Caelum fell to one wing.
Vesper whispered extinction equations.
Nocturne sobbed.
Lyria prayed.
Dominus clenched his teeth.
And the Cathedral—
the holy axis of reality—
came apart in a rain of concept and bone.
FINAL SCENE
Kael stood amidst the rubble, breathing hard, blood on his lips.
Veyra leaned against him, panting.
"Well," she muttered, "that's one way to tell the sky to go screw itself."
Lirien's voice fluttered with grief and awe.
"You have broken their strongest weapon, Kael:
belief."
He lifted his head.
The sky trembled.
The Saints trembled.
The world trembled.
Kael whispered—
a vow, quiet but absolute:
"I won't be rewritten."
Reality shivered.
Because it believed him.