(Lawless Arc: Part XXXIX)
The void did not have hands.
So it borrowed narrative.
Kael entered a realm where echoes were currency — the Library Between Pulses, suspended not in time, but between heartbeats. Books hovered like tombstones, each one humming with abandoned destinies.
The System residue stirred again, weaker, quieter, older — but present:
[VETTING STATUS: NOT REQUIRED HERE]
[VOID SCRUTINY: ACTIVE]
[REVIEW SOURCE: UNIDENTIFIED]
Kael frowned.
"So it reviews now."
A page materialized in the air, edges burnt like dying universes, words forming themselves without voice or quill:
Kael walks like an ending.
Not loud. Not silent. Inevitable.
Kael exhaled sharply.
"That sounds like judgment."
The page rippled, rewriting itself again, the tone deepening:
Judgment is for gods who can be punished.
Observation is for anomalies who punish gods accidentally.
Kael stared at the hovering Library.
"So the void observes me."
Another line formed, ancient, brittle, cold:
[VOID MEMORY TRACE: 'Familiar anomaly detected.']
Kael froze.
"You recognize me?"
The System did not answer.
The Library did — and the void behind it bent into presence, whispering into the air itself, older than creation but quieter than silence:
"The void doesn't recognize names.
It recognizes impact.
You shook something once.
It still limps when you walk."
Kael clenched his fists.
"I'm not limping anymore."
The Library trembled, shelves of paradox groaning like the foundations of reality, pages rustling without wind:
"You limped because you feared remembering yourself.
You walk now because you fear forgetting her."
Kael's breath hitched again.
"Sera…"
The Library silenced instantly, corridors folding inward like a body recoiling from a forbidden thought.
[REVIEW LOCKED.]
[REASON: NAME BLEED TOO EARLY.]
Kael looked away from the page.
"Not yet."
The Library exhaled.
Not relieved.
Warned.
Kael turned, walking toward the deepest archive of the Library, where a single floating codex waited, marked with a sigil of cosmic relevance he had never seen before:
[TAG: 'Story Worth Devouring']
[EFFECT: Narrative recursion immunity]
Kael reached for it.
Not to devour.
To read.
Because now he understood:
The void was not writing reviews to mock him.
It was writing reviews because someone inside the story had finally become review-proof.
And the void wanted to test if a being without a name could survive being described instead.
Kael whispered into the Library's spine:
"Let's continue."