The world no longer had shape.
It had fracture patterns.
Space folded in impossible layers where Eryndor once stood, each layer replaying a different version of reality—some alive, some dead, some never created at all.
In the center of it all—
Gideon stood still.
Lyra stood beside him.
And for the first time since she arrived—
She understood the weight of standing next to him.
"You're shaking," Gideon said quietly.
Lyra scoffed, though her fingers trembled slightly with arcane overload.
"I'm not shaking. I'm adjusting."
A pause.
Then—
"You always talk like that?" she asked.
"Like what?"
"Like the world already ended and you just forgot to care."
Gideon didn't answer immediately.
Because part of him—
Had no memory of ever caring.
Above them—
Azael Veyr descended again.
But differently this time.
Not as a figure.
As a law correcting itself.
"You have formed a deviation," Azael said calmly.
His eyes shifted toward Lyra.
"And a secondary anomaly."
Lyra raised her hand instantly.
"Aether Sequence: Seventh Collapse."
Runes erupted across reality itself, not just the air—layered sigils forming impossible structures that rewrote space as weapons.
Gideon stepped forward.
"Don't waste energy."
Lyra shot him a look. "I don't take orders from walking existential crises."
A faint pause.
Then—
Gideon almost smiled.
"Good."