Nullspace
No map could guide them.
No compass turned here.
Nullspace was not a place, but a wound—an idea that had been stripped of shape, story, and sense. It festered beneath the weave of the world, hidden behind reality's stitched seams.
And now, the Shapers would walk into it.
The Five Step In
Kael led, the shard of Remember pulsing in his palm, casting fractured echoes of his memories into the air around him like flickering lanterns. Behind him, the others followed:
Cylin, whose shard now whispered forgotten lullabies in reverse.
Valeir, sword drawn, carving anchors of thought into the void with every step.
The Girl with the Name, holding her shard close, singing truths no longer found in any tongue.
Rovyn, the last to join them—an exile who once tried to erase his own past, now a traitor to both sides.
Their breaths steamed in colors not yet invented.
Around them, meaning dissolved.
Time lost its rhythm. Sound forgot how to echo.
And then—it began to fight back.
Nullspawn
From the walls of the unworld, things began to form—creatures not born, but unshaped.
The first was a mirrorwolf, its body made of stolen reflections.The second, a thoughtleech, whispering doubts in a thousand stolen voices.
Kael struck the mirrorwolf—and saw a version of himself inside it: afraid, broken, choosing to run instead of rise.
"It's feeding on what we could have been," Cylin shouted."Don't kill it with force—kill it with choice."
Kael stared the wolf down.
"I choose to be more."
The image shattered.
The creature howled once—and unraveled into threads of unmemory.
Valeir Falls
The thoughtleech clung to Valeir's shoulder, burrowing in.
"You could have been king," it whispered."You could have ruled. Why follow Kael?"
His knees buckled. Shadows dripped from his eyes.
But the Girl knelt beside him, pressed her shard of Name to his chest, and whispered:
"You are not the crown you lost.You are the fight you chose."
The leech withered in the presence of truth spoken aloud.
Valeir rose again, snarling.
"Next one dies screaming."
At the Core: The Inkheart
At last, they reached it: a sphere of stillness at the very heart of Nullspace.
It pulsed like a silent drum. Not alive, but aware.
"This is where stories go when they die," whispered Rovyn."This is where he came from."
A single black flame hovered at the center. And within that flame… a name.
Not spoken.Not written.
But known.
"Erasureborn…" Kael said."He didn't rise here. He was left here."
"No," Valeir muttered."He chose to stay. Because he hates the world we shaped."
The Countershape
Cylin's shard suddenly flared.
"I see it. The counter. The shape that can fight back."
Kael turned. "What is it?"
"It's not one word. It's not a rule or a sword. It's…""A memory. Of a world that could be. Not what was. Not what is."
"Then make it," Kael said."Shape it. Now."
Together, the five pressed their shards into the Inkheart.
Remember.Name.Anchor.Echo.Hope.
The flame flared, screamed—
—and for a heartbeat, the future rewrote itself.
The First Shardlight
Across the world, a new star appeared in the sky.
A word not yet invented was burned into every soul:
Sierath — that which refuses to be unwritten.
The Erasureborn felt it.
And for the first time since he stepped into the world—
He hesitated.
The Pause
For the first time since the collapse of the Woven Sky, the Erasureborn stood still.
His foot hovered over the threshold of the ancient citadel of Versehold, where the great tomes of the original Shapers were buried. These were not books—they were anchors. Laws. Truths. Realities.
And yet…His next step did not come.
The new star—Sierath—hung in the heavens above him like a defiance made manifest.
The idea of doubt—something he had erased long ago—pressed against the edges of his will.
"They've named a future I did not allow," he murmured."They shaped against me."
He raised a hand to burn the sky.
But the flames refused him.
The Shardlight Spreads
Across the world, Sierath's light began to alter the very threads of shaping.
Forgotten children remembered their dreams.
Lost languages returned to sleeping minds.
Entire regions that had been erased in the first War of the Quill flickered back into being.
Kael stood on the edge of the Nullspace crater, breathing hard, the new shard now fused into his palm. It pulsed with shifting color—a living sigil of futures untold.
Valeir looked to the sky, sword humming.
"We gave the world a word it had no defense against: Hope."
But Cylin's face was pale.
"He felt that. And now he's adapting."
Beneath Versehold
Deep in the vault beneath Versehold, the Erasureborn traced the walls with blackened fingers. Carvings faded as he passed—words losing shape, logic flickering.
But then… one word did not fall.
It blazed golden as his shadow touched it.
A single glyph:
Syreth.
The twin of Sierath. Not hope, but betrayal made sacred.
He stared at it.
"So… the song of the five has a flaw."
He turned toward the stairs.
"One of them remembers who they used to be."
Back at the Camp
Kael awoke to whispers in the dark.
Not words—intentions. Something sliding between the weave of his dreams. The camp was still. The others asleep.
But one shape was missing.
Rovyn.
Kael stood, silent, and followed the faint shimmer of footsteps only his shard could detect.
He reached the cliff's edge. Saw Rovyn crouched over the edge, speaking into a shard not shaped by any of them.
"He knows now. The star's name. Their unity. Their weakness.""He will unravel them… from the inside."
Kael didn't speak.
He simply stepped forward—
—and pressed his shard to Rovyn's back.
Memories clashed. Truth battled lie.
Kael saw everything.
Rovyn had not betrayed them for survival.
He had done it out of belief.
"The world deserves silence," Rovyn whispered, bleeding."Not this chorus of unkept promises."
Kael's voice trembled, but did not break.
"Then I promise you one thing."
He cast Rovyn's shard into the abyss.
"You'll be forgotten."
The Architect Responds
Far away, in a vault thought lost to time, the First Architect stirred.
Once a creator of worlds, now bound by chains made of stories.
She opened her eyes—and for the first time in an age, wept.
"He who was never written… has begun to erase even me."
She turned her gaze toward the star of Sierath.
"Only one story can end him now."
"The Last Song."
And it has not been sung in a thousand years.
Morning After Betrayal
Dawn broke like a wound.The sky was streaked not with light, but with shardfire—that same unnatural pulse born from the new star, Sierath.
Kael stood in silence beside the edge of the canyon, where he had cast Rovyn's shard into the void.
Behind him, the others gathered slowly. Not speaking. Just waiting.
Cylin finally asked the question none dared to voice.
"Was he always working for the Erasureborn?"
Kael didn't answer.He simply turned his palm over and revealed what had remained.
A sliver. Rovyn's memory-thread—still echoing with truths unspoken.
"No," Kael said."He believed in us once."
Valeir's Rage
Valeir snapped.
"And now he's buried how many of our own? How many cities lost because he believed in silence?"
He stabbed his blade into the earth. Lightning cracked from the impact.
"No more half-wars, Kael. No more speeches. We crush them—erase their erasure."
Kael's eyes flicked up.
"You can't erase silence with force. You shape over it. Drown it in song, in fire, in future."
"Then give me a song to fight for," Valeir growled.
The Memory-Root
The Girl with the Name stepped forward.
In her arms, she held a small, withered instrument—a curved reed-harp older than any of them had ever seen. It pulsed faintly with shardlight.
"This is one of the Five Instruments," she whispered."From before the Spiralfall. Before the shaping wars."
Kael blinked.
"You knew?"
She nodded.
"I didn't remember until Sierath sang to me."
"The Last Song isn't words. It's not music. It's memory, reshaped."
The Architect's Warning
Far away, the First Architect walked through ruins of her own design. Her chains—woven of unkept oaths—dragged behind her, each link a forgotten story.
"He is learning to write through unshaping," she muttered.
"And they… are learning to unwrite through remembering."
She carved one final glyph into the wall with her blood.
"When they sing the Last Song, the world will fracture. Either into truth—or into nothing."
First Notes of Rebellion
That night, around a burning tree shaped into a spiral pyre, Kael raised the harp. The Girl with the Name plucked its first note—and it wasn't sound.
It was sensation.
The first time he held his sister's hand.The moment he swore to shape the world for more than survival.The first word he ever created.
Others felt their own memories. They clutched their shards, trembling.
"This isn't a war for power," Kael said."This is a war for what the world remembers of itself."
And then they sang.
Not in words, but in echoes. In harmonics only the soul knew.
The First Verse of the Last Song filled the air.
Somewhere far across the continent…the Erasureborn screamed.