The sound was not meant for mortal ears. It twisted the earth into impossible geometries, bent the sky into screaming tunnels of colorless void.
Still Aiden advanced.
Etari joined him, weaving a tapestry of stabilizing runes with her hands, threads of silver memory crisscrossing the path behind him.
Callas was there too, his presence a silent defiance, rewriting the ground Aiden stepped on to resist the unraveling.
Together, they made a single sentence.
A single stand.
A single story.
The Name counterattacked, reshaping itself into a monstrous form—a towering, shifting labyrinth of concepts that rejected form even as it consumed it.
Every second that passed, reality thinned.
The world around them faded like ink washed away by relentless rain.
Soon there would be nothing left.
Unless—
Aiden plunged the Sword of Becoming deep into the ground.
The world bucked.
And then, with trembling hands, he began to speak.
Not aloud.
But in the core of existence itself.
A Story.
