Silence.
Not the normal kind.
This silence felt alive.
Heavy.
Endless.
Aze opened his eyes to white stretching in every direction. No ground. No sky. No horizon.
Just nothing.
He was floating.
Sera was limp in his arms, eyes half-open, breath shallow.
"Sera… hey. Stay with me."
Her fingers twitched weakly.
"…brother… where…?"
Aze glanced around.
"I don't know. But we're not erased. That's all that matters."
A voice echoed.
Not the Redactor's.
This one sounded like a broken whisper running backwards.
—…n ot …ete… yet…
Aze narrowed his eyes.
"Show yourself."
The white flickered.
In front of him, a figure formed. Not quite human. Not quite shaped. A silhouette made of fractured outlines, constantly shifting — like a drawing half-erased and redrawn every second.
Sera clung to Aze's coat.
"…that's what chased me… back home…"
Aze's breath caught.
"You mean—this thing wasn't the Redactor?"
The figure twisted, head tilting unnaturally.
—Ca… re…ful …Azelos…
Aze stiffened.
"Nobody calls me by my full name."
Sera buried her face against him.
"Aze… make it stop looking at us…"
The silhouette twitched.
Then the Redactor's voice thundered overhead, shaking the white expanse.
—UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE DETECTED—
—RESUMING ERASURE—
The white around them cracked like glass.
Aze spun, shielding Sera.
"Are you kidding me?! Even here?!"
The Redactor's eye opened above them — massive, silver, endless — cutting a wound in the blank dimension.
Beams began forming.
Not hundreds.
Thousands.
Sera trembled violently.
"Aze… we can't survive that…"
Aze tightened his grip around her.
"Yes we can."
He raised his free hand.
"No more running. No more dodging."
Cracks of black code blossomed across his arm.
Raw, dangerous.
Sera gasped.
"No—Aze—that's the part of your power you're not supposed to use!"
He didn't deny it.
The Redactor spoke again.
—REALITY OVERRIDE DETECTED. FORBIDDEN FUNCTION—
Aze smirked.
"Yeah. I figured you wouldn't like it."
The beams fired.
A rain of silver annihilation crashed toward them.
Aze exhaled.
And spoke the words he had sworn never to use again:
"Rule of Reality — Rewrite."
The white dimension shattered.
Beams froze mid-air.
Time stopped.
Space folded.
The Redactor's eye flickered violently, glitching as if its existence was being overwritten.
Sera stared around, stunned.
"A-Aze… what did you do…?"
Aze's voice was soft.
Quiet.
Almost tired.
"I bought us ten seconds."
Sera looked terrified.
"Ten… seconds?"
"That's all the Rewrite ever gives me."
The frozen beams trembled, cracks appearing in their stasis.
Sera grabbed his sleeve.
"Then we have to run—"
"No."
Aze looked up at the Redactor.
"I'm ending this."
The eye glowed.
As if resisting him.
Aze's own outline began flickering—the cost of forcing the Rewrite already ripping pieces out of him.
Sera shook him.
"Aze!! Stop! You'll disappear!"
"I won't."
His body flickered again.
He forced himself to keep speaking.
"Because I haven't saved you yet."
The frozen beams shattered, breaking free from the stasis.
The dimension roared back to life.
And Aze—
Flew straight toward the Redactor's eye.
Sera screamed his name.
The void swallowed her voice.
And Aze collided with the Redactor in an explosion of black and silver light.
Author's Note
The Rewrite has appeared — and it gives Aze only 10 seconds of absolute power at the cost of tearing him apart. What happens after that collision?!
Ready for Chapter 11?