Ash floated in the air, curling like spectral feathers.

The scrolls had stopped burning. Nothing remained—no light, no parchment, not even smoke. Just fragments of memory folding in on themselves like forgotten dreams.

Avel’Zeyhn stood in the center of the silence. Alone. As always.

His cloak draped down his shoulders like gravity refused to let go. One of his horns flickered—gold fire coiling from its tip, retracting like it had tasted something too real.

He looked up. The cracked ceiling gaped above him, exposing the swirling ether above Keia.

And then—

A faint tone. Not from the air.

From within him.

The third horn pulsed, once. Resonance trembled through the ground. The floor beneath his feet rippled like ink struck by a bell.

He turned his head slightly.

A whisper brushed across his spine. “So. You broke the seal.”

The voice was not his.

It was above his.

Avel’Zeyhn smiled faintly.

“I told you it was never meant to hold.”

“You moved before the convergence. You know what that means.”

A pause. Slight. Thought surged.

Avel’Zeyhn chuckled softly, stepping through the ash.

“I know exactly what it means. And I know you’re watching him.”

“The Ashikaga?”

“No,” Avel’Zeyhn said, his tone sharpened. “The Shardborn.”

The resonance pulsed again. Another echo bloomed—this time revealing an outline of something immense—a figure barely visible, made of orbiting concepts and radiating colors that had no name.

The God Creator. Watching. Not intervening. Not yet.

“He’s not ready.”

“No one ever is,” Avel’Zeyhn replied. “Read your own codexes. The bloodlines don’t wait. They choose.”

“He’s only a fracture.”

“Every fracture leaves an edge.”

A beat of silence. Not absence—intentional pause.

“If you do this,” the Creator said, “you’ll set the motion of inheritance. Across all races. Across all realms.”

Avel’Zeyhn’s third horn sparked violently. For just a moment, six Ashikaga sigils rippled across his arm—then vanished.

“I didn’t start this lineage,” he whispered. “But I’ll finish it.”

The resonance began to fade. A single thread of golden energy left, burning like fire in a container.

Before it did, the Creator said one more thing.

“If Shukan finds out who you really are…”

“I hope he does,” Avel’Zeyhn murmured. His hand raised, thigh level. Sharpened tips, the plates under slid with no sound.

He turned his back to the ruins. The cape flew, like a violent wind shook it backwards.

“Because that’s when the timelines will finally break.” A single foot forward, and with that, he vanished. Not teleported. Just… unexisted.

The Memory Pillars of Keia stood in silent ruin.

And far, far away… a golden eye opened for the first time.