The skies wept ash.

  Above the ruins of a forgotten sanctuary—once a bastion of divine law, now reduced to a graveyard of symbols—Ascheritt stood alone. The aftermath of his encounter with the Shades still clung to the air, their remnants woven into the cracks of the earth like dried blood in porcelain.

  He had not moved in hours.

  Not because he was lost.

  But because something ancient lingered beneath the surface.

  The Axis of Fate loomed still in the far distance, pulsing faintly, like a wounded heart barely clinging to rhythm. And between here and there, something called to him—not in words, but in pressure. A pulling of threads from the corners of existence. Something was unraveling.

  And he could feel it.

  Then—

  A whisper, brittle and worn, echoed behind him.

  —“You are not the first paradox.”

  Ascheritt turned.

  A figure emerged from beneath a crumbling archway—a man cloaked in fading gold, his body fractured like stained glass, pieces of him held together not by flesh, but by sheer will. His face was half-erased, as if the world had forgotten him but hadn’t finished the job.

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  —“Who are you?” Ascheritt asked.

  The man laughed. It sounded like wind blowing through bone.

  —“I am what remains of a god who failed to die properly.”

  He stepped closer, dragging a sword that pulsed with the weight of forgotten prayers.

  —“In the beginning, all things were given place. Even anomalies. Even monsters. But you…” He pointed the blade, though his arm trembled. “You were not among them.”

  —“I didn’t ask to be.”

  The broken god’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “And yet here you are. Breathing in a world that no longer remembers the cost of breath.”

  The wind howled through the empty temple. Symbols once etched into the walls flickered, trying to remember their purpose.

  Ascheritt lowered his gaze.

  —“Are you here to destroy me?”

  The man paused.

  —“No. I came to witness you. And to give you this—”

  He dropped the sword.

  It sank into the stone without a sound.

  —“This blade was once wielded to slay a nameless being. It failed. But you may find use in its failure.”

  Ascheritt approached the weapon, reaching toward it—but the moment his fingers brushed its hilt, visions erupted behind his eyes.

  A war that stretched across the skies. Gods torn from their thrones by something that did not bleed. And in the center of it all—a child, screaming in silence, with eyes that reflected nothing.

  He pulled back, breath sharp.

  The man watched him quietly.

  —“You will need to choose soon, Paradox. Not between right or wrong. Not between law and rebellion. But between what must be lost… and what should never be remembered.”

  Ascheritt looked up.

  But the god was gone.

  Only dust remained.

  And the blade still pulsed—not with power, but with history.

  He sheathed it into the void behind his back, and as the sanctuary collapsed into silence once more, Ascheritt Velgrind walked toward the Axis.

  Unaware that Caelum had already begun descending.

  Unaware that Eryss had already started to rewrite the script.

  And unaware…

  that something far older than either had just awoken.