The morning after the Library vanished, silence blanketed the forest. The birds did not sing. The trees no longer whispered. Even the wind, once playful and cool, felt like it had forgotten how to move.
Carter stared at the page he'd received from the guardian, tracing the answer written in ink that shimmered like firelight. "The Wyrm will strike at the place where time first bent. Where stars fell and men forgot."
He looked up. "We're heading to the Cradle."
Ezra, still pale from what he'd lost, nodded. "The place where the First Collapse began."
Sera folded her arms, her expression unreadable. "Then we'll need help. We won't survive this on our own."
Lysara turned away from the others, eyes lingering on a patch of sky that was darker than the rest. "Look."
They all turned.
There, etched across the morning blue, was a jagged line—a scar in the sky itself. It shimmered unnaturally, like broken glass mended by shadow. Lightning crawled through it in slow motion.
"What... is that?" Sera whispered.
Carter exhaled shakily. "It's begun."
As they watched, the scar widened just slightly—and from its center fell a single black feather.
Lysara caught it before it hit the ground. It burned cold in her hand.
"That's not a feather," Ezra said. "That's a warning."
---
They moved quickly through the forest, emerging near the foothills of an ancient mountain range—the Dagger Peaks. Few dared to live near these jagged cliffs, and fewer still returned when they did.
As the sun set, they found shelter in an abandoned monastery carved into the mountain. Its walls were cracked but solid, with faded symbols etched into the stone. A great bell hung rusted and silent in its tower.
Inside the monastery's sanctum, they lit a fire and sat in a wide circle. Shadows danced across the walls like phantoms.
Sera pulled a cloth from her pack and unwrapped a strange artifact—a small, metallic cube with glyphs that pulsed slowly.
"I didn't show this before," she said. "I found it in the ruins of the Cartographer's basement. It was hidden in a false wall."
Carter leaned in. "What is it?"
"It's a memory shard," Ezra said immediately, his voice sharper than usual. "Old tech from before the Rewriting. It stores experience, not just images. If we unlock it, we don't see what someone else saw—we live it."
Lysara frowned. "That could be dangerous."
Sera held the shard tightly. "We need to understand what happened before. Why this world is breaking apart."
Without further debate, she pressed the shard against her forehead.
She convulsed—gasping, eyes wide, frozen.
Then it hit the rest of them. Like a wave.
---
They stood in another world.
It was the same land, but unbroken. The skies were whole. Cities stood tall, shimmering with towers of light. Rivers flowed with clarity. And there—at the center of it all—was a man cloaked in white and gold.
He stood before a council, speaking words none of them understood.
But then, the stars above trembled.
A black shape unfolded from the sky, vast as a god, teeth made of time itself.
The man turned, and the Codex burned in his hands.
He rewrote something.
And the world split apart.
---
They jolted awake, breathless, covered in sweat.
Ezra was the first to speak. "That man... that was the First Architect."
"The one who built the Codex," Carter muttered. "He tried to stop the Wyrm... and failed."
"No," Lysara said slowly. "He did stop it. But the price was everything. Our memories. Our world's shape. Our history."
Sera looked at the cube, which had crumbled into dust in her hands.
"The Wyrm is a wound in reality," she whispered. "And every time someone tries to fix it, the world bleeds more."
A sudden sound echoed from outside the monastery—wings flapping.
Then a voice rang out. "You've meddled too far, Wanderers."
A tall figure stepped into the firelight.
A woman, draped in red and silver armor, her eyes glowing violet, her weapon a blade shaped like a spiral of light.
"I am Commander Vael of the Memory Guard. By order of the Eternal Throne, you are all under arrest."
Ezra reached for his blade. "Good luck with that."
But Lysara placed a hand on his arm. "No. We go willingly."
"What?" Carter hissed.
"Trust me," she said calmly. "There's someone in the Throne who wants us alive. Someone who remembers what others don't."
Sera looked between them all and then sighed. "Then let's go meet this... someone."
The scar in the sky pulsed again, wider this time.
The countdown had begun.