The road out of the village curved between wide fields silvered by morning dew.
Everything looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Lysa walked beside Eris, unusually quiet. Her usual restless energy had narrowed into sharp awareness. Her eyes tracked the sky more than the path.
"You ever get the feeling," she said finally, "that we're walking inside a story that already knows the ending?"
Eris didn't slow. "Yes."
"Comforting."
"It shouldn't be."
They walked another stretch in silence.
Then Lysa stopped.
"Eris."
He turned.
She pointed behind them.
Their footprints in the damp earth…
Were gone.
Not fading.
Not drying.
Gone.
Like they had never pressed into the soil at all.
Eris knelt, touching the ground. Still wet. Still soft.
No trace of them.
"It's learning," he said quietly.
"Learning what?"
"How to remove presence without disturbing surroundings."
She swallowed. "That sounds… advanced."
"It's precise."
Lysa looked ahead. "So why haven't we been erased?"
Eris stood slowly.
"Because it hasn't decided where I end yet."
The air trembled.
Not shaking—misaligning.
Like two versions of the same place trying to exist at once.
The fields ahead flickered.
For a split second, Lysa saw—
Nothing.
No grass.
No sky.
Just a pale, endless blank.
Then the world snapped back.
She grabbed Eris's arm. "I saw—"
"I know."
They kept moving.
Faster now.
The sun climbed higher, but its light felt thinner, weaker. Shadows didn't stretch correctly. Sounds arrived a fraction late.
A crow cawed—
—and the echo came before the call.
Lysa winced. "Okay, that's officially wrong."
Ahead, the road dipped into a shallow valley.
And in the center of that valley…
Space itself wavered.
Not like heat.
Like a reflection on disturbed water.
A tall, narrow distortion stood upright in the air.
Not glowing.
Not dark.
Just missing.
The grass around it leaned inward, as if reality were being pulled toward an invisible drain.
Lysa stopped walking.
"Tell me that's not it."
Eris didn't answer.
Because he could feel it now.
Recognition.
Not sight.
Not sound.
Something beyond senses had turned its attention fully on him.
The distortion pulsed once.
The world skipped another beat.
When it resumed—
A tree at the edge of the valley was gone.
Not fallen.
Not broken.
Just… removed.
No stump. No mark. No memory in the air that it had ever grown there.
Lysa's voice came out small. "Eris… that thing doesn't destroy, does it?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"It edits."
The distortion elongated slightly.
Like something testing the shape of existence before stepping through.
Lysa tightened her grip on the charm stone in her pocket.
"Okay," she said, voice shaking but steady underneath. "So what's the plan?"
Eris took a slow breath.
Golden light flickered faintly beneath his skin—power answering fear, instinct answering threat.
"For the first time," he said, eyes fixed on the impossible tear in the world,
"I'm not going to run."
The air went silent again.
Longer than before.
The distortion widened.
And from within the blankness—
Something shifted.
Not a body.
Not a face.
A presence pressing against the skin of reality…
Trying to enter a world it had already begun to erase.