Chapter 42
The world reassembled slowly—
threads of reality weaving themselves back together like a wounded tapestry sewing its own flesh.
When the light faded, Orion stood alone at the center of the chamber.
The throne hovered behind him.
The monoliths circled in perfect silence.
The air trembled with residual echoes of the woman's disappearance.
But she was gone.
Not dead.
Not vanished.
Not erased.
Stored.
Like a memory sealed inside the fracture she forced into him.
Orion exhaled, and the breath carried heat—
not fire,
but the friction of two identities grinding against each other inside his soul.
A pressure built in his skull, behind his hidden third eye.
A distant heartbeat echoed beneath his ribs.
A fog of forgotten timelines drifted at the edge of his vision.
The messenger finally dared approach, trembling.
"M-my lord… what happened to her? Who—who was that being?"
The crowned Watcher bowed its head deeply, wings folding in reverence.
"That was the Echo-Mother.
The last remnant of the Unwritten Bloodline."
Orion didn't respond.
He was staring at his own hands.
They were shaking.
Not from fear.
Not from weakness.
But because memories—
long buried, long sealed, long forbidden—
were clawing their way back into him.
A voice whispered inside his skull:
Do not resist.
Let the fragments return.
He clenched his fists.
Reality rippled.
For a moment—
the room changed.
He saw another version of himself sitting upon the throne, wings far larger, eyes burning with black-white flames, the universe bending around him as if he were the axis it revolved around.
Then—
another vision crashed into him:
A battlefield drowned in fog.
Monoliths broken.
The Echo-Mother kneeling, holding a small child carved of starlight—
holding him—
as something vast and impossible closed in.
And the whisper:
"Do not die, my son."
Then darkness swallowed the memory.
Orion staggered, gripping the nearest monolith for support.
The Watcher stepped forward cautiously.
"My lord. The forbidden memories… you must not accept them too quickly. The last heir of the Unwritten Line died because the truth overloaded him. You—"
Orion's gaze snapped toward him.
One look silenced the guardian instantly.
Inside Orion's third eye, a ring of black-white fog began rotating—
the first sign that something ancient within him was waking.
"What was sealed," he said quietly,
"is unsealing itself."
The monolith he held vibrated.
Lines of forgotten runes carved themselves across its surface, responding to the touch of their lost heir. The chamber shifted again, darkening, as if preparing for a revelation long overdue.
The messenger swallowed hard.
"L-lord Orion… is this safe?"
"No," the Watcher whispered.
"Nothing about the Unwritten Line is ever safe."
Orion released the monolith.
And the world froze.
Time stopped.
The island stopped.
Even the messenger's breath halted mid-exhale.
Only Orion could move—
and a soft pulse of black-white light rippled from his chest as everything around him turned silent and still.
A new voice spoke.
Not the Echo-Mother.
Not a memory.
Not a god.
It was himself.
Or rather—
the version of himself the Echo-Mother erased.
"You shouldn't have remembered me this soon."
Orion spun.
Behind him stood a silhouette—
his exact height,
his exact wingspan,
his exact presence—
but older.
Sharper.
Colder.
A version of him that carried the weight of galaxies in his gaze.
Stage 0.
The Unwritten Heir.
The Orion who once ruled this island.
And he was smirking.
"But since you opened the door…"
He stepped closer, time bending with every footfall.
"…let me remind you what you used to be."
The chamber screamed as the two Orions faced each other—
past and present,
forgotten and reborn,
truth and the lie that protected it.
The older Orion lifted a hand.
Reality cracked.
"Remember the first law of our bloodline."
The younger Orion's heart pounded.
"What law?"
The older version's eyes glowed with black-white fire.
"Anything that remembers us—dies."
The throne behind them began to awaken, responding to the presence of its true master.
And the younger Orion realized:
The island wasn't remembering him.
It was warning him.