Chapter 40
The world was still breaking when Orion finished taking that single step.
Reality continued to tremble long after his foot touched the fractured ground.
Not because of the step—
but because the island recognized him.
A deep rumble rose beneath the earth, as if miles of buried stone were shifting to kneel. The skies stitched themselves back together, but the scars remained, thin luminous cracks stretching across the firmament like glowing spiderwebs of regret.
The messenger's voice cracked.
"H-he's stabilizing the destruction around himself… the island is adjusting—rewriting—to contain him…"
The crowned Watcher lowered its massive head, understanding dawning in its star-filled eyes.
"This place remembers your bloodline."
Orion ignored both of them.
His attention was on the ground.
More accurately—
on the heartbeat thundering beneath it.
BOOM.
A second heartbeat answered.
BOOM.
A third joined.
The entire island pulsed like a colossal organ awakening from hibernation.
Orion stepped forward again.
This time the world did not shatter.
Instead, the land opened in smooth, deliberate motion—like doors that had been waiting centuries to obey him.
A canyon carved itself where there had been only flat soil.
Obsidian trees bent aside, branches twisting like serpents to clear a path.
Wind wrapped around him in spirals of black and white, forming ancient symbols only he could see.
The messenger whispered:
"No… no… this isn't just memory.
The island… it serves him."
The crowned Watcher disagreed quietly.
"No.
It served what he once was."
Orion's twelve wings folded slightly, letting the cosmic winds pass between them. His new mantle—the Crown of the Unwritten—expanded like a vortex of eclipse rings drifting behind him, each rotation rewriting the air.
He descended into the canyon.
Every step triggered a reaction.
Shards of ancient stone drifted upward like reversed waterfalls.
Runes burned themselves into the canyon walls, illuminating the darkness.
Ghostly silhouettes of forgotten guardians flickered into existence—bowing their heads before dissolving.
And deeper still, the heartbeat grew louder.
Not hostile.
Not welcoming.
Knowing.
Orion narrowed his eyes as he reached the canyon's core.
A massive gate waited below—carved into the very bedrock. Not with tools, but with cosmic force. The gate was seamlessly smooth, yet filled with moving constellations and temporal rivers flowing across its surface.
At its center was a symbol.
A half-white, half-black infinity loop—
broken at the middle, forming a wound that refused to heal.
Orion's third, hidden eye flared faintly within his soul.
That same symbol pulsed behind it.
The messenger, arriving behind him, fell silent the moment they saw it.
"That sigil… t-that is—"
The crowned Watcher finished the sentence with a deep resonance:
"The Crest of the Unwritten Line."
The canyon walls shook violently at the name.
Dust cascaded downward like dying starlight.
The gate cracked open by a fraction—responding not to force, but to recognition.
Orion stepped closer.
The moment his hand hovered inches from the gate—
The world changed.
A wave of black-white light surged outward, not harming anyone but erasing everything for an instant—color, sound, weight, existence—before returning it all in a new order.
The gate fully opened.
Behind it lay a chamber as vast as a star's interior—
lined with swirling cosmic mist and anchored by ancient monoliths drifting in orbit like silent moons.
At the center stood a floating throne of shattered timelines and compressed space.
But it was empty.
Waiting.
Stagnated.
Dormant.
The messenger's breath trembled.
"It… it's a Throne of Paradox. A seat that only a being outside the ten Stages can—can even stand near…"
The crowned Watcher gazed at Orion.
"Someone once sat there.
Someone who carried your bloodline.
Someone erased from all memory—except this island."
Orion's wings slowly unfurled.
The entire chamber pulsed in response, monoliths rotating faster, space tightening, time swirling like a cyclone around his presence.
He approached the throne.
And when he stood before it—
A voice whispered behind his ear.
Soft.
Ancient.
Familiar.
"Welcome home."
Orion froze.
Not from fear.
Not from surprise.
But because the voice was one he had heard only in the deepest fragments of his broken memories—
a voice intertwined with the black bamboo forests,
with the illusions of rivers and mountains,
with the woman the island told him waited at its heart.
He turned.
Slowly.
And there—
standing half-formed like a silhouette of light and shadow—
was a figure.
A woman.
But her face was blurred.
Her outline imperfect.
Existence fought to define her, failing each time like she was a memory reality couldn't stabilize.
Her wings were vast.
Her hair flowing across time itself.
Her presence layered with echoes of universes collapsing and reborn.
She lifted a hand.
"You took long enough."
Orion's heart stopped.
Not literally.
But the emotion was real.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
Her blurred smile brightened.
"Your beginning."
A pause.
"And your undoing."
She stepped forward—
And the chamber exploded with white and black light.