The Library of Knowledge did not wake—it unfolded.
One breath, it was wrapped in the velvet dark of cosmic sleep. The next, light bloomed through its bones—not sunlight, but something older. Lighter than gold, deeper than starlight. A first light, the kind that remembered the moment "truth" learned how to breathe.
Ayla stood at its center, her body framed in the glow. Silent. Watching.
Qaritas stood beside her.
He didn't speak. He hadn't for a while now.
Because how do you speak when you're still not sure if the silence you're carrying is yours?
The Library pulsed softly, its shelves reshaping around them like thoughts correcting their posture.
He looked at Ayla—not her weapons, not her title.
Her.
And the thought came before he could stop it:
You've endured more than I can even imagine.
What you suffered in your mortal life… I couldn't even survive it, could I?
He watched her profile—flawless and fractured, like a statue someone once carved from pain and taught to bleed light.
Is that part of my Becoming?
Will I be shown the echoes you still carry just to learn what mercy costs?
Her gaze didn't move from the horizon of shelves ahead, but her lips curved. The smallest smile.
He froze.
She heard him.
Again.
Just like on Ranaesa, when thought had no walls.
He swallowed, blinked, and asked aloud, soft as falling dust:
"Can you hear me again?"
Ayla didn't answer. She just tilted her head and let that small, crooked smile deepen—like a secret blooming where no one had planted one.
He should have said something. Back then. When she bled and didn't break.
But what words could survive where gods demanded silence?
Then she whispered:
"Twenty-nine days until the Becoming."
"One more... to decide which lie to kill in exchange for the truth."
"To choose which fragment of Eon we kill in exchange for the truth."
Her voice didn't waver.
"About what happened to the ascendant children."
Qaritas opened his mouth—but a chill passed through the floor, like the Library itself had heard something sacred...
He stepped back.
Not from fear. Just... to breathe. To make space in his chest where the truth could land.
For a second, he hated the silence. Because it meant the world was listening.
The Library shook.
The books didn't just open—they ruptured. Pages peeled into portals, and from their torn spines came bodies, not illusions. Real. Breathing. Bleeding.
Not memories. Not stories. Survivors.
Cree, Hydeius, Daviyi—but not as they were.
Blood clung to them in alien colors—red like betrayal, blue like memory, silver like burned lullabies. Cree's flames guttered. Hydeius walked like a mountain that had lost its name. Daviyi's jaw was clenched so tightly it looked like it might fracture time.
Their eyes locked on Qaritas.
Then Ayla.
Daviyi flinched.
Cree whispered, barely audible:
"You knew."
Ayla didn't flinch. Just blinked—once. Like a dam choosing not to break. But the breath that escaped her lips was ancient. Too old to be called relief. Too heavy to be called regret.
Daviyi shook her head once, blood drying on her sleeve like poetry gone cruel.
"All nine of my children," Daviyi said, voice raw. "Alive. Changed."
She didn't finish the sentence. Her voice cracked—not from grief, but from something worse. Hope.
The kind that hurts more than betrayal.
The kind that says: *You were wrong to give up.*
Cree nodded. "Same with ours."
Hydeius stared at nothing. "He told us the truth. That's what hurt most."
"We'll have to tell the others," Cree added. "They deserve to know."
"Hrolyn won't allow it," Daviyi whispered.
Cree's flame flared.
"Then we stop asking permission."
"They were never supposed to survive me," Hydeius whispered. "Now we have to be something worth returning to."
The silence cracked.
Then—
Another pulse.
A staircase of nothing walked itself into being—not conjured, not built, but remembered by the Library itself, like a forgotten door finally opening.
Not violent. Not warm. Cold—as if the Library itself had held its breath and never exhaled.
From the upper corridor, where no entrance had ever been, a ripple in reality peeled downward. A staircase of nothing walked itself into being.
And two figures descended.
The first walked with a slouch, shoulders relaxed, smile wide, voice pre-emptively warm.
His skin was void, his eyes ash-grey—but somehow, the darkness around him softened where he walked.
He waved.
"Heeey! Sorry to crash the trauma. I brought...bad timing and worse jokes. Death's usual gifts."
Najen. Ascendant of Death. Bringer of bad timing, worse jokes, and the occasional casserole.
Qaritas stared.
The figure's grin widened as he dropped into a full bow, like a performer finishing an act the universe hadn't paid for.
"Najen. Ascendant of Death. Professional hug-giver. Existentially inappropriate. Also a pretty good cook."
Behind him, a taller form stepped from the stairs, moving like shadow that had learned manners. Rlaucus. The Abyss.
He didn't smile.
He just looked at Qaritas the way mirrors look when they remember you from a dream.
Najen turned, leaned against him lazily, and said:
"This one's mine. My beloved. Don't touch unless you're offering snacks."
Najen's smile flickered—only for a heartbeat.
"Also," he added lightly, "we figured someone should keep an eye on what happens when the Queen of Ascendants plays with prophecy."
Rlaucus didn't laugh.
"Or breaks it."
Rlaucus didn't blink. His voice dropped like a verdict.
"Don't touch."
Najen turned back to Ayla and Qaritas, eyes shining with mischief.
"We felt it," he said. "The Becoming flare."
He glanced upward
"They say it began when the first star learned to fall," Najen added, voice unusually quiet.
Qaritas opened his mouth, but the words choked before they reached the air.
The Library didn't move.
But something in him did.
A tilt. A shift.
Like every version of him that never mattered was stepping back—
One star struck the marble. It turned to glass—and in its reflection, a child's face: crying, laughing, gone.
No crater. Just remembrance.
Qaritas watched Ayla vanish into the starlight.
Her cloak trailed behind her like a comet stitched from prophecy.
"And the gods decided falling could be sacred. Could be a race. Could be a vow."
Najen's voice chimed in, irreverent: "Your second day in Rygartha and already breaking prophecies. Honestly, we're so proud."
Ayla crossed her arms.
"You came for the Rite."
The Library responded—not with sound, but with stillness.
One of the star-lit scrying circles dimmed, its light curling inward like breath held too long.
Even the walls, once alive with whispering texts, fell into reverent hush.
Najen nodded, fake-shocked.
"How did you guess?"
Rlaucus finally spoke, his voice like velvet cut from a scream:
"The Cosmic Star Rite begins at dusk."
Daviyi stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "This Rite was sealed by bloodlines and starlight. You're not on the list."
Najen gasped. Clutched his chest.
"Dav! You wound me. Ascendants don't need lists. The stars write our names when we do something memorable."
He winked.
"You should check yours sometime."
The marble underfoot warmed. Not from heat—but from gravity bending, realigning, like the Library itself had become a stage and the stars its chorus.
As if Rygartha itself inhaled—and the stars outside the Library began to move.
Lines of light—fourteen of them—drew themselves across the sky, each one a different color, texture, memory.
They weren't falling stars.
They were questions.
Each one dared: *Do you remember what you're becoming?
The stars did not fall.
They chose.
When they landed, the ground didn't shake—but the air changed. Every breath tasted like memory. The kind you bury, until it sings through your lungs like fire.
Some screamed as they fell. Others sang.
One carved the sky like a blade reforged mid-flight. Another wept violet, trailing a lullaby too old for language.
Qaritas flinched—not from pain, but recognition.
One of them... remembered him.
He didn't know how. Only that it did.
Ayla didn't look at him. She didn't need to.
Above them, more stars began to fall.
Some looked like war songs. Some like prayers. One, like a name that hadn't been spoken in centuries.
And still, the Rite had only just begun.
Qaritas watched them burn through the sky and land in spirals of gravity that only the Becoming could see.
Ayla stepped closer to him. Voice soft. Clear.
"Fourteen stars—each with a chosen pair."
"Fourteen lines of starlight, each holding a bond."
Each would ride a different line of memory, forged in starlight.
No course alike. No finish line the same.
Only one question:
Who are you when gravity forgets your name?
Ayla's gaze sharpened.
"Becoming isn't about surviving the fall. It's about what survives inside you after it."
She looked at him—not like a goddess, but a survivor.
"Can you carry who you were… without dropping who you're meant to be?"
Najen gave a soft, rare nod.
"That's the trick," he murmured. "It's not about speed—it's about what refuses to be forgotten while you fall."
Qaritas blinked. "Pair?"
Ayla looked at him.
Eyes burning galaxies.
He could step back. Say he wasn't ready. But some truths don't wait. Some vows begin in silence.
"You're mine," she said. "Because no one else saw you. But I did. I always did."
He could've said he wasn't ready.
Could've said he didn't want to matter this much.
But she was already turning away.
And the stars had already remembered his name.
His chest tightened. The stars had chosen him—and would not let go.
The floor felt too real, too solid for what her words cracked open.
Even the air around her had changed—warmer now, but sharper. Like standing near a forge.
His mind raced—this was myth, wasn't it? The kind that devours men who aren't ready to matter.
And yet her voice held no doubt. Only fire.
His breath caught. 'I don't understand—'
He thought of Ayla bleeding, choosing mercy when war would've been easier.
And he—just a name. A spine still learning to carry meaning.
"You will."
A flicker of Ranaesa—her bleeding, screaming, saving—flashed behind his eyes.
He wasn't ready.
But maybe readiness was a myth. Maybe becoming started in the dark.
Then she turned, cloak flaring behind her, and walked toward the edge of the Library where the stars still trembled.
Najen leaned toward him, voice chipper.
"You know what the Rite really is, Qaritas? It's not a race. It's a welcome. A declaration. The stars aren't just asking what you'll become—they're saying: 'Come home.'"
"If he survives," Rlaucus whispered.
Najen's voice softened. "No one ever feels ready, Qaritas. That's the trick of it. But if she chose you, it means you already are—just not in the way you think."
Qaritas stared after Ayla. The taste of starlight in his mouth.
He never said yes aloud. But maybe this was the kind of story that didn't wait for permission—
just stepped into your scars and lit them up from the inside.
Maybe this wasn't a trial.
Maybe it was a welcome.
And for the first time, the silence inside him didn't feel empty—it felt seen.
He rubbed his palms on his coat, trying to remember what normal nerves felt like.
None of this was normal. "What happens if we lose?"
Najen grinned.
"No one loses."
Rlaucus corrected him.
"It sorts out the weak from the strong."
Not death. Not loss.
Just the quiet terror of staying small.
Of never mattering enough to change. That was the only fear he dared not name.
Above them, the stars began to hum.
Not music.
Invitation.
Somewhere far above, one light didn't fall.
It rose.
Far beyond the Rite, in a place where stories still bowed to fear, Ecayrous turned a page—not out of interest, but suspicion.
The ink bled in directions he hadn't chosen. And somewhere, the story had begun to write without him.
Because the ink no longer feared him.
And for the first time, Qaritas didn't flinch—not from gods, or prophecy, or the tale that had finally remembered his name.
The ink bled in directions he hadn't chosen. And somewhere, the story had begun to write without him
He turned a page…
It bled in directions Qaritas hadn't chosen.
And somewhere, the story had begun to write without him.
Because the ink no longer feared him.
And for the first time, Qaritas didn't flinch—not from gods, or prophecy, or the story that had finally remembered his name.
Not patient. Not merciful.
Just waiting—for Qaritas's choice.
And Qaritas's hands had stopped shaking.
That, more than anything, terrified him.