Some were shaped like humans, while others had long since abandoned such pretense. Each one had been erased in some timeline, some version of history, and yet they endured here—anchored not by fate, but by memory.
By Aiden.
He stood among them not as a leader, but as a survivor.
And yet all eyes—if they had them—were on him.
He closed his own, letting the silence stretch. Beyond this broken cradle of Remembrance, something stirred.
The Before-God was dead.
The Thought That Never Was had dispersed.
But the war had only evolved.
What now pressed against the boundary of this last flicker of meaning was not a god or concept.
It was a truth.
An absolute.
And it was knocking.
Aiden took a step forward. The platform beneath him, formed of narrative threads and echoes of law, crackled underfoot.
"Myne," he said softly.
She stepped from the ranks, her form steady but scarred—no longer the same as she was in their first world, but resolute nonetheless.
"I'm here," she said.
