The Spiral of Narration awakened between Bakuzan's palms.
A force from another age, a whisper born from the very first page of the world.
Around him, the constellations bent, swallowed by infinite curves — lines of ink and light slowly coiling, forming a vortex that did not turn in space, but in the very concept of becoming.
Each rotation rewrote what had been: particles, causes, origins.
The fabric of the universe began to vibrate like a sentence endlessly rewritten.
Ancient runes, from the lexicon of creators, floated and vanished as soon as they appeared.
The Spiral whispered in all languages at once:
> "Every story returns to the author. Every being returns to its sentence. Every act returns to its source."
Sakolomi was at the center.
Caught in the twist of the cosmic text, his body seemed to be disintegrated and recomposed by narrative code lines.
Fragments of his form detached like letters torn from a divine book.
The void itself bent under the effect of ontological relabeling: all that he was — existence, cause, memory, identity — was translated, decomposed, reformatted into a language unknown to any causality.
Bakuzan shouted:
— Spiral of Narration… Rewrite him!
Let him disappear from all possible versions!
The vortex intensified.
Each word spoken became law.
Each emotion, an order for the story.
Time collapsed under the weight of this divine grammar.
Space arched, groaning like a parchment burning.
Then, there was silence.
A written silence, perfect, absolute.
Bakuzan gasped, staring at the heart of the Spiral where Sakolomi was no more than a spark of light.
At last… he had succeeded.
Everything seemed frozen.
The entire cosmos bowed before the end of his adversary.
Time folded onto itself.
In the suspended tumult of the battle, the Spiral of Narration slowly wound around Sakolomi, weaving its rings like living lines of text, seeking to recode him, to assimilate him into its absolute flow.
Symbols wrote themselves in the air, each letter vibrating with archaic will.
Then, in the silence of his mind, a rosy light unfolded.
A silhouette stepped forward, hair floating like aurora filaments, forehead crowned with murmurs of stars.
It was Ñout, who came into Sakolomi's consciousness.
— So… Sakolomi, she said in a soft voice that made the very matter of the spiral vibrate, are you already affected?
Sakolomi, seated in this misty light, gently fell onto his knees, his head resting against the goddess's vaporous thighs.
A breath escaped his lips.
— No… It's not that, he whispered. Bakuzan is simply stubborn. I don't know why he insists so much… It's not because we want to stop him. We just want… for him to stop suffering.
Ñout ran her fingers through his brown hair, a slow caress that made the Spiral around them tremble.
— Perhaps, she said with a smile, that this suffering has become his strength. Perhaps without it, he would stop moving forward. His pain, Sakolomi, has become his engine.
He nodded, eyes lost in the shifting light.
— I know, Lord Ñout. I thought about it even while fighting. They call him the Black Grief, the Ebon Woe… all his will comes from that — from the burden he carries alone.
Ñout nodded slowly.
— And do you think, little Broken Verse, she said, tilting her head, you can offer him a reason to live greater than his pain?
Sakolomi faintly smiled.
— It wouldn't be difficult… Our goals are almost identical. The business with Samaël will just be another chapter to add.
Silence fell.
Ñout looked at him long, reading him like a text with erased lines.
Her thoughts stayed mute, but the Spiral heard them.
> Sakolomi is not like Ebon Woe. He does not seek to dominate his brother, but to save him. He hesitates still: should he do it by force, or by gentleness?...
Then she raised her eyes toward the spheres above them, where the Spiral kept turning.
An ancient name returned to her memory, woven with sweet nostalgia.
— Broken Verse… she whispered. That is what the gods named him. Because at their first meeting, he was only an inconsistency, an error in the Song of All. A tiny flaw in the divine text and logic.
She then remembered her visions of the past: the silent child, observed from afar, weaving his dreams to repair what he did not yet understand.
A tender smile touched her lips.
> No, she thought, Sakolomi does not deserve that name. He is not only a Broken Verse. He is the word that repairs, the one that reattaches the scattered lines of the world.
He never sought to kill, even facing Grafay when death was the only way out. He never wanted to dominate, only to protect, even if that meant becoming the strongest.
Another voice echoed in Ñout's mind — gentle, distant, but slightly ironic:
"You want to give him a new mythological name?"
Ñout blinked, slightly surprised.
"Mü Thanatos?"
The wind blew over her celestial islet, lifting her blue hair in golden clouds. The air vibrated with divine light. Her face, as impassive as always, turned to the goddess's misty silhouette.
"Do you really think it's the right time to think about a name?" asked Mü Thanatos in a calm, almost weary voice. "As if he were your own child."
Ñout smiled wryly, an ironic gleam in her eye.
"It's never too late, nor too early."
Then, in a falsely innocent tone:
"Why that reaction, Mü Thanatos? Don't tell me you're… jealous?"
Mü's cheeks flushed with an almost imperceptible red, while a small vein throbbed on her temple.
"Jealous?! Nonsense… I was just saying you could… wait until their fight ends before having fun with it."
Ñout nodded slowly, the smile still fixed on her lips.
"Maybe. But what's the point of waiting? Sakolomi will win. It's obvious."
Mü did not answer immediately. Her eyes lost themselves in the golden void of the sky, as if trying to read the lines of fate.
Ñout resumed, more softly:
"Rise… Rise as One."
She raised her hand, tracing the name in the air. The letters flamed with white light.
"That will be his new mythological name."
"Rise as One?" Mü repeated, almost in a whisper.
Ñout nodded.
"A transcendent unity. He rises to protect all around him. Rise as One: the mortal capable of changing everything for his own."
Mü looked away.
"That's your call alone. And anyway… I doubt he's still mortal. You know that as well as I do."
Ñout let out a brief crystalline laugh.
"Maybe. But then, what is he really? None of us know. Yet he has always lived and evolved like a man… even if what he truly is begins to awaken."
She held out her hand, palm open, and a luminous projection of Sakolomi appeared.
Her gaze softened.
"Go, Rise as One…" she whispered.
"Go save your brother, the one who believes pain is a weapon, not understanding that this weapon turns against him — the inverse reflection of his own name. And who better than a brother to remind him of that?"
Then, aloud, so Sakolomi could hear beyond the planes:
"Go. End this fight. As quickly as you can."
Then, the golden world faded like mist.
Sakolomi opened his eyes again.
He stood once more in the Spiral of Narration, where every story finds its end… or its new beginning.
But then — a sound resonated.
A crack… slight at first, almost unreal.
Then another.
And yet another.
The rings of the Spiral were cracking.
Not like matter — but as if the very concept of a narrative trap refused to hold.
The runes shattered like dead syllables, dissolving into a rain of ink and stardust.
The vortex began to vibrate, then exploded into thousands of luminous fragments, falling like broken glass into the sidereal void.
At the center, standing, intact…
Sakolomi.
Not a scratch.
No trace of rewriting.
His eyes, calm, now reflected all the stories never written.
He took a step forward, gently placing his gaze on Bakuzan — that look without anger, but charged with a nearly divine irony.
Then he smiled.
A slow, deep smile, that made the lines of reality itself tremble.
— You tried to rewrite me, he said in a soft, almost whispered voice.
But tell me, Bakuzan…
How can you rewrite someone who has never been written?
A breath crossed the space.
The fragments of the Spiral dissolved permanently — and it was as if the entire concept and meta-concept of "Narration" had just bowed before him.