Impact never came.
Instead—
The world stopped.
Mid-motion.
Mid-breath.
Mid-existence.
The creature froze inches from Gideon, its elongated limb suspended in the air like a broken concept.
Everything else—
Silent.
Still.
Dead.
Gideon blinked.
And something blinked back.
Not in front of him.
Not around him.
Within him.
A presence unfolded inside his mind, vast beyond comprehension. It did not speak with words.
It was meaning.
"You are not supposed to awaken yet."
The thought pressed against his consciousness like a weight too heavy to bear.
Gideon staggered, clutching his head.
"What… are you?"
The answer came immediately.
"I am what remains when everything else is forgotten."
The symbols on his chest burned brighter, spreading across his body like living script. Each mark pulsed with an ancient rhythm, syncing with something deeper than his heartbeat.
"You were not made," the presence continued. "You were left behind."
Gideon's breath came in short, sharp bursts.
"Left… by who?"
Silence.
Then—
A memory.
Not his.
A glimpse of something vast—beings of impossible scale, tearing reality apart, rewriting existence as if it were nothing more than fragile ink on a page.
And in the center of it all—
Him.
Not as he was now.
But something else.
Something—
Terrifying.
"You were their answer," the presence said. "And their mistake."
The frozen world trembled.
Cracks formed in the stillness, like glass about to shatter.
"They are coming back," it whispered.
Gideon looked at the creature in front of him.
At the village behind him.
At the broken sky above.
"Then tell me what I am," he demanded.
The presence faded slightly.
But its final words remained.
"You are the end that even the end fears."
Time resumed.
The creature's strike completed—
But Gideon was no longer there.