The Sanctum groaned.
Not metaphorically — the marble itself sighed like a sleeping beast, and as Ilyan stepped forward, something in the air adjusted, as if time politely made room.
The final chamber wasn't a chamber at all, but a collapsed atrium, fractured open like a broken clock. Roots of vanished trees dangled from the ceiling. Books written in scripts that shifted too quickly to read spilled from the walls like waterfalls of paper. Beneath it all, in a cradle of shattered stone and hushed air, the relic pulsed.
It looked like an orb — but not spherical. It was more of a suggestion of sphere, constantly failing to decide what dimension it belonged to. It thrummed like a heartbeat spoken in backwards poetry.
"Nope," Ashwen muttered. "Absolutely not."
Ilyan stepped forward anyway.
Groat buzzed in alarm. "Do not touch it unless you're ready to remember things you've never done, in places that haven't happened."
"Remember?" Ilyan asked. "Not learn?"
"Exactly. Truth doesn't arrive, Ilyan. It returns."
He touched it.
The relic pulsed — and reality buckled.
Suddenly, there were five Ilyans. Then twelve. Then one. But the others were still there, watching. One blinked with gold eyes. Another wore a mask made of regret. A third held Groat in his mouth like a coin he'd swallowed out of spite.
Ashwen screamed. Or maybe it was laughter. She wasn't sure. She reached toward Ilyan — and vanished into one of the fractures.
Ashwen found herself in a different life.
She stood above Ilyan's body — her sword in her hand, blood steaming on the blade. He was younger. He wore the uniform of a bureaucratic courier.
She had killed him.
A voice beside her said, "This wasn't your choice. But you made it."
It was the jester — Loup — sitting atop a pile of metaphors. He juggled skulls that laughed when they hit the floor.
"What is this?" Ashwen growled.
"A story. One that didn't happen. Or might have. Depending on how you walk."
She shook her head. "Let me out."
He tapped his nose. "Let him choose."
Groat spun frantically. "You! Fancy jester! Stop sitting there being cryptic — say something useful!"
Monsieur Loup stood. "Ah, but mon ami... when you perform, do you shout the punchline?"
"You are not performing. You're loitering with flair."
Loup bowed. "Then I'm good at it."
Ilyan, somewhere between self and selves, opened his eyes. And truths spilled from him like birds fleeing a burning cathedral:
He had once been a god. He hated it.
His death was stolen, not given.
He loved someone, and forgot who.
Ashwen appeared beside him, gasping.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"No," he whispered. "But I think I'm supposed to be."
The relic dimmed. The fracture healed.
Only one Ilyan remained. He stood slowly, eyes no longer fully human. One of them glowed faintly — sideways, as if always peering into something no one else could see.
Groat hovered close. "You have survived revision. That's rare. Most people splinter until they dream themselves into fiction."
Monsieur Loup clapped slowly. "Bravo. The tragedy lives on."
Ilyan buried something beneath a spiral tree that hadn't been there when they arrived. The bark shimmered with languages that hadn't existed yet.
Ashwen didn't ask what it was. She only stood beside him, silent.
Monsieur Loup tossed a coin into the dirt. "A wish for the next fool."
A courier approached.
He wore a hat with feathers shaped like punctuation marks. "Invitation," he said.
The envelope he handed over was wax-sealed with a symbol they didn't recognize.
Groat read it aloud. "The Pale Guild requests your testimony."
Ashwen sighed. "We just finished a crisis."
"Then you're warmed up," Groat chirped.
The invitation lay heavy in Ilyan's hand, though the paper was impossibly light. Pale ivory, sealed with a wax crest that refused to stay still — it shimmered between the shape of a cathedral, a bone, and an eye.
Ashwen frowned. "Pale Guild. Sounds like a party for ghosts."
Groat floated closer, narrowing his nonexistent eyes. "Technically accurate. The Pale Guild manages testimonial integrity for the Departed and the Half-Forgotten. Which, as of today, includes you."
Ilyan tilted the envelope. "Do they know what I just went through?"
"That's why they're inviting you. They audit memory surges and narrative leaks. You're leaking, Ilyan. Like a plot with too many main characters."
Monsieur Loup somersaulted over a hedge for no reason. "Oho! The Pale Guild! I played cards with their shadow archivist once. Lost my ability to conjugate verbs for three days!"
Ashwen raised an eyebrow. "You conjugate verbs?"
"Only in polite company."
The Pale Guild was a building that existed in thirds: one third in reality, one third in rumor, and the rest in legal ambiguity. Doors appeared only after you denied their existence. Hallways looped like arguments with your younger self.
Clerks in translucent uniforms walked backwards while filing emotional affidavits. The walls sighed every few minutes. Someone wept into a filing cabinet marked 'Misremembered Triumphs.'
They were ushered into a chamber made of soft lamplight and dust.
A woman sat behind a desk that looked like it had once been a church pew. She wore a mask that resembled Ilyan's face — but older. Sadder.
"I am Archivist Third. You will give your testimony. You will speak only what you know, not what you believe."
Ilyan nodded slowly. "And if the truth has changed?"
"Then we welcome the edit."
Groat leaned against a brass inkwell. "Just don't embellish. Poetic flourishes are taxed."
Ilyan spoke.
He spoke of his return from death, of the Vault and the truths unearthed. Of fractured selves and the relic's pulse. He spoke of the lady who stitched him back into memory, of Ashwen's blade and Loup's riddles, of Form 27B and the quiet void it avoided.
As he spoke, the mask on Archivist Third's face shifted — his own features melting and rearranging into expressions he hadn't realized he could make.
At the end, she dipped her quill and wrote a single word.
"Unresolved."
The city had shifted slightly. All the buildings had traded rooftops. A man was arguing with his shadow over child custody.
Ashwen stretched. "So... now what?"
Groat fluttered upward, proud. "You have completed Quest 009-A: Restoration of Bureaucratic Continuity. Your reward is acknowledgment by the Ministry of Posthumous Affairs, and official reinstatement as a Semi-Living Probationary Entity."
Ilyan groaned. "That's it?"
"Oh, and this." Groat produced a badge. It looked like a paperclip married a halo.
Monsieur Loup peered at it. "Charming. I once earned a medal for Most Theatrical Betrayal. Less shiny."
Ashwen crossed her arms. "Well, we got through it. No thanks to our mysterious clown."
"Ah, chérie," Loup purred. "The thanks are yet to come. My usefulness blooms in crisis!"
Ilyan looked ahead. The streets of Uvvvaek spiraled in strange geometries. Above, clouds curled like forgotten questions. The journey wasn't over.
Far from it.
He tucked the badge away.
"Let's walk."
Ashwen rolled her eyes, but followed.
Loup juggled imaginary pineapples and danced behind them.
Groat sighed. "This is going to be a long second act."