Myne's voice cut across the nothingness. "It's afraid of us."
He nodded. "Yes. Because for the first time, we're not trying to survive within its story."
He turned toward the breach—where the final curtain of unreality fluttered like a wound in the void. The silence deepened as he stared.
Then a tremor.
Not of sound. Not of energy.
Of absence.
Something moved behind that curtain.
Not a thing. Not a god.
A will.
The silence between stars split open.
The entity that emerged did not roar. It did not announce its presence.
It simply was.
A chasm, shaped like nothing, rimmed with the memory of screaming. The essence of denial, crystallized into form.
It was not an Outer God, nor a forgotten one.
It was something older.
Something that had never accepted the idea of existence to begin with.
Aiden whispered the word, though it scalded his throat. "The Before-God."
