They fell—not through space, not through time, but through something far more fundamental.
Orion barely had time to register the sensation before reality slammed back into place. He hit the ground hard, breath torn from his lungs as his body struggled to reorient itself. The air was thick with an unfamiliar weight, like a place that should not exist.
Lyra landed beside him in a roll, eyes scanning their surroundings with sharp efficiency. The Vault Keeper, though rattled, remained composed as always, rising with an eerie calm.
They were somewhere new.
Or perhaps—somewhere that had never been.
The landscape around them pulsed with a strange contradiction of existence. The sky was an expanse of fractured light, pieces of something vast and incomprehensible woven together by unseen threads. The ground beneath them shimmered, shifting between states, as if reality couldn't decide whether it was solid or merely the idea of solidity.
A whisper brushed against Orion's thoughts. Not words. Not a voice. An impression.
A presence that had been watching.
"Where are we?" Lyra's voice was steady, but there was a sharp edge beneath her control.
The Vault Keeper exhaled slowly. "A place between the written and the unwritten. A fragment caught in the spaces where reality frays."
Orion swallowed. "That thing back there—it didn't just exist. It was undoing existence."
The Keeper nodded grimly. "Yes. And you—" He turned his gaze to Orion. "You wielded something that opposed it. Something that should not be possible."
Orion clenched his fists, the lingering silver glow still faint beneath his skin.
Lyra's eyes narrowed. "You recognized it, didn't you?"
The Keeper hesitated. "I suspected. But if that power has chosen you, then this is far greater than I feared."
A ripple passed through the air. Something shifted.
Orion turned sharply—just in time to see the space ahead of them fold inward.
And then—
A figure stepped through.
Unlike the horrors they had faced, unlike the unnatural entities lurking in the void, this figure was human. Or at least, it seemed to be.
Tall, wrapped in layers of flowing dark fabric that shimmered with the same paradoxical light as the sky above. Their face was obscured, a shifting blur of undefined features, yet their presence felt real.
"You do not belong here."
The voice was calm. Measured. Ancient.
Lyra's grip tensed at her side. Orion instinctively shifted his stance.
The Keeper, however, did not move. Instead, he lowered his head.
"As I suspected," the Keeper murmured. "A Keeper of the Unwritten."
Orion's pulse quickened. The title alone sent a shiver through his mind.
The figure turned its attention toward him. Even without eyes, he could feel its focus.
"You are bound to something that does not yet have a name."
Orion's breath hitched. "What does that mean?"
The figure tilted its head slightly. "It means you are at a crossroad, Orion. And what you choose will decide more than your own fate."
The air trembled again.
This time, it was not an attack.
It was an invitation.
A path unfurling before them. A choice that had not yet been written.
And Orion knew—this was only the beginning.