Ari drifted in and out of consciousness.
His body ached—not from physical pain alone, but from the burn of magical backlash. Every thread of his soul felt like it had been unraveled and stitched back together wrong. Around him, voices murmured, muffled as if underwater. The chamber was still heavy with silence.
But above all, a feeling settled in the air: defeat.
Not by sword.
Not by power.
But by understanding.
The Fragmentwalkers stood still in the fracture between dimensions, partially phased into a prism of broken reality. Their bodies shimmered in patterns that defied conventional Thread types—anomalies of time, memory, and failed futures. One of them stepped forward, facing the assembly of nobles, kings, and scholars.
His voice was cold, precise—like a scalpel made of syntax:
"You cling to a broken System like orphans to rusted cradles. You mistake structure for truth. But you do not understand what you wield."
The king of Ari's kingdom rose from his throne, fury on his face.
"You speak in riddles and half-code! You strike down a boy who's only just awakened his lineage!"
The walker tilted his head.
"A boy?" He glanced at Ari. "You call the Originis Heir a boy?""He is the last prototype—the spark that should never have rekindled."
Cerys' fingers tightened around Ari's hand.
"Then why spare him?" she demanded, her voice trembling with fury. "You could've erased him. Why didn't you?"
A silence. A knowing pause.
Then the lead Fragmentwalker replied.
"We cannot. Not yet."
Gasps echoed through the room. Even the professors and Matriarchs leaned forward.
"Explain," Eluin said flatly, stepping forward, her violet eyes shining with restrained tension.
"Because," the walker said, "the Final Thread is incomplete. The last command embedded into the Pre-Originis Core requires one key: the soul of the last Scion."
"And what does that mean?" asked one of the Obelmar elders.
The walker smiled.
"It means that the boy must walk further. Deeper. He must awaken the Source Glyph—and only then can the true rewriting begin. You believe your world has been stable these thirty million years?" He gestured to the skies visible through the broken glass dome. "You've been living in a simulation. A memory. One we allowed to continue."
"Why?" whispered Lysira, her eyes wide. "What are you trying to do?"
The Fragmentwalker stepped back, halfway fading into the prism fracture.
"We are not trying to destroy your world. We are trying to overwrite it. To return it to what it was meant to be."
The silence was absolute.
Then another Fragmentwalker, smaller, younger in form, spoke.
"This 'System' you worship was not built by the Originis. It was built from their ashes. And we were the fire."
His form crackled with sigils that predated even glyphs—marks of the Progenitor Rebellion, once spoken only in forbidden archives.
Meanwhile, Ari's vision flickered.
He saw something else—not the chamber, but threads. Not magical, but conceptual. Names. Bloodlines. Lineage markers floating in a sea of darkness. A voice—a child's voice—spoke to him, echoing like before.
"They're not the final enemy," she said. "They're version two."
"Then what's version one?" he asked, weakly.
"You."
Back in the throne chamber, Eluin drew her blade. Not to fight—but to mark a line in the air. A Signum circuit.
"You should leave," she said, deadly calm.
The lead Fragmentwalker tilted his head once more. Then smiled.
"We will. For now. But remember this, little Syntax children—your brightest star has already burned out once. If it flickers again… we will be there."
With a hum of anti-glyphs and reversed runes, they vanished into the fracture, which sealed behind them with a chime like a memory being erased.
Aftermath:
Ari was rushed to the sanctum's infirmary, his pulse slow but steady. The magical backlash continued to unravel parts of his newly restored Originis code, forcing Cerys and Eluin to work tirelessly to stabilize him.
The king summoned an emergency war council. Fear now had a new face—not the neighboring kingdoms, but the truth they'd all buried.
The professors of Sanctum began re-examining ancient archives, unsure what reality even meant anymore.
Lysira sat alone on a balcony, gripping a broken glyph shard in her hand. She wasn't crying—but her expression was one of heartbreak.
The only person who didn't panic was Cael, who stared out toward the horizon and simply said:
"They made their move early. They're scared. That means we still have time."