He stood, turning slowly. Behind him, the mountain had grown jagged with unfamiliar geometry. Angles that broke logic. Shadows that twisted toward rather than away from the light. From within them emerged a figure—not a god, not an Outer, but a child of their decay.
Clad in robes that shimmered like erasure, they carried a quill of bone and a book bound in silence.
"You reach for the Flame, but do you know what must be offered?" the figure asked. Their voice fractured into multiple tongues with every word.
Aiden nodded once.
"Everything that came before."
The figure smiled. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Simply with inevitability.
"Then begin."
He stepped into the fire.
It did not consume him.
It unfolded him.
Each part of Aiden's existence was laid bare—his victories, his failures, the threads he'd severed, and those he'd woven anew. The flame tasted each one, tested their weight, and accepted their offering.
In its place, it gave him the first thread of the Rewritten Flame.
