The cracks crawling across the walls were silent at first—thin, hairlike fractures in the stone, glowing faintly with the same impossible color as the sky rupture. But then the sound arrived: a low, resonant hum that didn't echo in the air, but inside the skull, like a vibration meant for nerves, not ears.
Elyndra stepped back, hand already glowing with arcane sigils.
Mael didn't step back. He stared at the cracks.
Because the glow inside them… was moving.
Like something alive was on the other side, pushing through.
A soldier raised his rifle. "Sir, should we—"
The wall split open and the soldier vanished.
No flash, no scream, no body.
Just gone, erased mid-sentence, like reality forgot he ever stood there.
A second crack opened across the ceiling.
A third across the floor.
The humming deepened, and something like breathing came from the fractures—slow, steady, wrong.
Elyndra's voice shook, but not with fear—with recognition.
"This isn't a creature. This is a threshold event. Something is forcing a crossing."
Mael felt something colder than fear slide down his spine.
"From the other side of the anomaly?" he asked.
"No." She looked up at him.
"From inside you."
The fractures pulsed.
Mael's vision blurred.
The room faded.
Something pushed against his mind— not a voice, not words, but awareness, like a light turned inward.
The same phrase from his dreams surfaced again:
"The light does not save. The light remembers."
Mael staggered, clutching the table to stay upright. The council room dimmed, not like darkness—but like the world was losing definition, like a page being erased.
Elyndra caught his shoulder. "Mael. You have to resist it. If you let it in, you won't be you anymore."
He looked at her, breathing hard.
"What if I was never supposed to stay me?"
Before she could respond, the cracks converged—forming a single rift in the air.
Not a hole, not a portal—something more conceptual, like a line cut through existence.
And from it, a hand emerged.
Not flesh. Not shadow.
Something made of light so pale it was almost colorless—light that didn't illuminate, but consumed the idea of light around it.
Not warm.
Not divine.
Not alive.
The soldiers opened fire. The bullets vanished before reaching the hand, erased like the first man.
Elyndra grabbed Mael's wrist. "We have to leave. NOW—"
But Mael didn't move.
Because the hand wasn't reaching for her, or the soldiers, or the dead council.
It was reaching for him.
Not in attack.
In recognition.
Like it already knew him.
Like it was claiming something that belonged to it.
Mael's heartbeat slowed. The world blurred. He heard nothing. Felt nothing. Except a pull—deep in the chest, right behind the sternum—as if something buried inside him was being woken up.
A second shape formed in the fracture—an outline of a face, more suggestion than solid, eyes white and empty like the council's corpses.
And then—it spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside every mind in the room.
"You were not supposed to break first."
Elyndra gasped. "It's communicating through consciousness fields—"
But the voice continued, ignoring all but Mael.
"The seal was meant to hold until the last cycle.
You have accelerated the collapse.
Therefore, you will bear the consequence."
Mael forced the words out. "What are you?"
The shape tilted its head—human mannerism, inhuman presence.
"I am memory. I am the record of unmade worlds. I am the light that should not be."
The fractures widened.
The world shook.
Elyndra's voice trembled. "Mael—we need to run. If this thing crosses fully, the Sanctuary, the city, everything—"
Mael didn't move. Because something inside him was… responding. Not with fear. Not with rejection.
With recognition.
The pale being lifted a second hand, and the cracks in Mael's palms—cracks he had hidden beneath his gloves—began to glow in the same impossible color.
Elyndra's eyes widened. She grabbed his hands and stared.
"You've been marked."
Mael did not deny it.
He couldn't.
The voice spoke again:
"You are the bearer of the unbound fragment. The last vessel. The rupture is not coming for your world. It is coming for you."
A pulse of white light burst through the chamber—every soldier except Elyndra dropped unconscious instantly.
Only Mael stayed upright.
Only Mael could still hear the voice fully.
"When the fifth rupture opens, the choice ends.
There will be no world left to save.
Only a world left to remember."
The rift began closing— not like something retreating, but like something finished talking.
Mael stepped forward.
Without fear.
Without permission.
As if he had finally realized what he already knew:
The destroyer wasn't invading.
It was coming to reclaim what was already inside him.
The voice faded, but one last line echoed—
"The question is not whether you will become us.
The question is whether you will choose it."
The fracture sealed.
Silence returned.
But Mael was no longer looking at the room, or Elyndra, or the unconscious soldiers.
He was staring at his own hands.
At the glowing cracks beneath the skin.
At the truth that couldn't be unlearned:
He wasn't becoming the anomaly.
He was the anomaly.
And the world wasn't breaking because of him.
It was breaking to reach him.