The wound never truly closed.
Though the Rift was sealed and the Dream That Didn't Finish had been named and ended, something still lingered in the bones of the world. Something deeper than fear.
It was loss.
Not of people, not even of time—but of meaning.
Aiden stood at the heart of a vast plain of translucent stone. Beneath his feet, fragments of forgotten stories shimmered like ghosts in glass—each one a tale that would never be told. He traced a line in the dust with his foot.
"I used to remember what laughter felt like," he said quietly.
Myne, who knelt nearby tending to her sword—a blade that hummed with metaphors sharpened into edge—glanced up at him.
"You still can," she said. "You just haven't written it yet."
The Book of What Was lay open beside Aiden. Its pages were dim, each one bleeding soft strands of ink into the empty air. The letters no longer stayed in place. They wept. They wandered. The story was becoming liquid.
