The flames danced around Aeren—but they did not consume.
They pulsed with rhythm, with memory, with potential.
He stood at the epicenter of his newly written Verse—Ashborn Awakening—its energy still swirling in the air, unfinished but alive. The Codex in his hand flickered with shifting glyphs, constantly rewriting the composition in real time.
> Warning: Verse Zero unstable. Resonance spikes detected.
Effect: Multi-dimensional bleed imminent.
"Yeah," Aeren muttered, wincing, "I noticed."
The trees had become semi-transparent. The wind moved in reverse. A rock on the edge of the clearing hummed in an unfamiliar key—then phased out of existence.
Lyssa ran toward him, drawing a blade laced with anti-resonant runes.
"Aeren, stop! It's bleeding into the other layers!"
"I can't shut it off!" he shouted. "It's not finished—I'm not finished!"
The Verse screamed louder, threads of sound twisting upward like spires made of light.
Then—a break.
A discordant tone echoed across the clearing. Not from Aeren's Verse.
From something else.
The Verse collapsed instantly, like glass shattering in silence.
---
From the shadows at the edge of the clearing, it stepped forward.
Not walked—unfolded. Piece by piece.
The Dissonant Prototype.
Its form shimmered like a half-remembered melody—wrong in all the ways that mattered. No face. No emotion. Just a pulsing presence that mirrored Aeren's own resonance.
It spoke, voice stitched from thousands:
> "Codex Signature Matched.
Emotional Fragment Detected.
Primary Objective: Terminate the Composer."
Lyssa instinctively moved between them. "Aeren, what is that?!"
He stared, cold dread rising in his gut. "It's... me."
Not metaphorically.
Not symbolically.
It was built from early Codex fragments. Coded from the same core resonance that now lived in him.
A failed version of what he was becoming.
And it had come to kill its successor.
---
The Prototype raised a hand. Music notes formed—red, jagged, sharp as blades.
Aeren reacted too slow. The attack struck—but instead of cutting, the sound erased.
A line of forest simply vanished.
No explosion. No impact. Just absence.
"Lyssa, run."
She didn't move. "You're not facing this alone."
The Codex pulsed in his hand, vibrating with urgency.
> Adaptive Composition Activated: Verse Zero – Override Attempt Detected.
Aeren narrowed his eyes.
"I wrote the Verse. That means I can change it."
He stepped forward, blood trailing down his arm.
And then, for the first time, he sang.
Not a stolen song. Not a divine chant.
His voice.
The Verse twisted—evolved. Flames turned blue. The sound turned inward, folding over itself. And with a motion of his hand, he caught the Prototype's next attack in a burst of raw rhythm, disarming the strike.
> "You're not my future," Aeren said.
"You're my mistake. And I'm rewriting it."