The scream of the coliseum hadn't stopped.
It echoed—not through sound, but through the marrow of space itself. The ground trembled in concentric rings beneath Komus's feet, as if reality itself flinched at what it had just witnessed.
Above him, the three-faced terror that had once been a boy named Idric Fawley—now fully become the echo of Malvorus—hovered with arms spread, spores falling like ash from the gaping lotus of his bloom-split chest.
Komus bled from his side now, his shoulder rotting beneath a spore-burn that no starlight could cauterize. His grip on Mercy faltered. One knee bent. He stumbled.
And Malvorus saw it.
He laughed.
No longer manic, no longer theatrical—this was true joy, low and hungry.
"You fall like light, Komus. Beautiful at the start. But fading, fading, fading."
He raised five arms as one, each clutching a different glowing vial. Each a different death.
Komus raised his hand. And tore the battlefield.
There was no chant. No incantation. Just will. He slashed the air, and space obeyed.
A spiral of inverted starlight coiled around him like a shell, a barrier made from curved event-horizons and broken constellations. It didn't block the attack. It rewrote the geometry between them.
The vials thrown by Malvorus disappeared.
And never returned.
"You want me unmade?" Komus whispered, teeth bloodied. "Then come break me. With your own hands."
Malvorus didn't hesitate. The echo lunged, ten arms forming spears, claws, and surgical blades as he rocketed downward—
But space folded again.
This time not a cut. A collapse. A snare of Komus's own making—a tesseract knot of compressed void, fracturing in recursive silence.
Malvorus hit it.
And stopped.
Mid-air.
He screamed—each voice from each mouth turning inward, echoing into itself like an endless feedback loop.
The echo began to fracture.
One petal at a time.
Qaritas felt it. The echo wasn't dying. It was being forced to remember what it was: an imitation. Not the true Malvorus. A reflection. A lesson.
But still dangerous.
Still real.
Then: Silence.
Daviyi's voice cut across the coliseum like thunder that did not belong.
Daviyi's word unraveled the echo—not with violence, but with finality. The three faces blinked once, and then their bodies collapsed inward, sucked into the narrative thread that first gave them shape.
Malvorus's mouths opened to resist—one final scream clawing at the edges of reality.
But the Library had already begun to erase him.
Daviyi's word had become law.
"Enough."
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. The world obeyed her sentence.
The moment shattered.
Daviyi's jaw clenched, one hand twitching as the word resisted—then bent, finally, to her sentence.
An erased page.
Komus dropped.
Not gracefully.
Not like a warrior victorious.
He collapsed—a crumpled arc of limbs and raw breath, Mercy slipping from his fingers...
Komus lay in Niraí's arms, the light in his eyes dimming like a dying constellation. "Komus!" Niraí was already running.
Her fire dimmed as she reached him, falling to her knees beside his curled form. She rolled him onto his back, eyes wild with fury and something like fear.
"Breathe, damn you," she muttered. "You're not allowed to glitch out on me. Not now."
He blinked slowly, blood running from one nostril, spore-burns glowing sickly along his collarbone.
"...Told you," he rasped, "my space."
He let out a shaky breath, more broken than he'd meant it to be.
"Thought I could handle him alone. I was wrong."
His voice dropped, just for Niraí.
"Next time… don't let me try."
The others followed.
Ayla knelt beside them, pressing a sigil of protective light against his skin.
Hydeius loomed behind them, silent and grim, gaze scanning the air where Malvorus had vanished.
"That wasn't a victory," he said.
"No," Daviyi replied. She looked pale. "But it was survival."
Komus stirred again.
"I didn't kill him," he whispered.
"You weren't supposed to," Daviyi said gently. "This wasn't the end. Only the shape of it."
"Was it... the real Malvorus?" Qaritas asked quietly.
"No," she said. "An echo. A clone written from memory and dread. But the real one is worse."
"Wonderful," Komus muttered, coughing. "Glad I got the warm-up act."
Daviyi stood tall.
"This is what the Library offers you. Not just history. Not just knowledge. But fear. Pain. Understanding."
Her eyes swept across them all.
"And if you can't survive that? You won't survive him."
Komus lay in Niraí's arms, the stars in his eyes dimming like a dying constellation.
Mercy pulsed once beside him—still whole.
Still sharp.
The duel was over.
But war had just turned the page.
Komus shook his head like a glitching signal, dazed from the weight of memory and combat and something far more fragile. His face was buried against Niraí's shoulder before he realized it—and when he did, the entire universe seemed to freeze.
His face turned red. Not the bruised flush of battle, but something almost tender.
"Sorry," he muttered, voice cracked and human. "I—didn't mean—"
Niraí blinked, then smirked. "Next time you fall into my arms, try not to bleed so much."
Ayla broke into a laugh—real, bright, and momentarily unburdened. "Even near death, his shyness survives. Honestly, it's kind of endearing."
Komus, now half-healed by the Library's slower mercy, stood and dusted ash from his coat, clearly hoping the ground might open up and bury him whole. His wounds were closing, lines of golden script knitting skin and time together with every passing moment.
"Book healing hurts less," he muttered, rubbing his shoulder.
Then he turned—quiet, but direct—and crossed the distance to where Qaritas stood watching.
Komus crossed the ash, expression unreadable.
"That night-vision of yours saved us," he said. "I would've missed the first strike."
Qaritas looked away, unsure how to hold gratitude like that.
"You're not just watching anymore," Komus added. "You're part of this."
And for the first time, Qaritas wondered if that was a promise—
Or a trap.
"It wasn't much," he said.
"It was everything," Komus replied. "That ability will save us again—especially on the Path. Not all of Becoming walks in light."
Qaritas nodded, but his thoughts tangled.
They believed he could help. But what if the darkness inside him wasn't just a tool?
What if it was the path?
And not the one they were expecting.
The others were gathering again now—Daviyi stepping forward, eyes already on the next gate, while Ayla joined Qaritas with a nod of quiet approval.
"You handled that well," she said. "You're adapting. Fast."
He hesitated. "I'm just... observing. You're the warriors."
"No," she corrected, her voice low and certain. "You're becoming."
And then—Daviyi raised her hand.
The Library groaned.
Space peeled.
The air hadn't stilled.
It had tilted.
Subtly. Wrongly. Like reality was leaning just a little to the side—waiting to fall.
Even the Library seemed to hesitate, as if unsure whether this echo belonged here... or had followed them in from somewhere else.
Another body was manifesting.
From the far side of the arena, the ground split—not shattered, not torn, but peeled, like paper softened by blood and rain. A shimmer of ink and iron spiraled upward, bone coalescing from broken words, muscle from forgotten sentences. Hair like scorched vellum curled from the forming skull.
Daviyi's voice dropped into a whisper—half awe, half warning.
"This next one," she said, "was never Forsaken. Never corrupted. Never changed."
She turned to Qaritas.
"This one was born broken."
The figure in the circle raised its head.
Eyes of static. No pupils. No color. Just the chaos of interference.
It smiled—a wrong smile. Not cruel. Not false. Just... absent.
Daviyi stepped back.
"Qaritas," she said.
The name fell with weight.
"This one is for you."
He tensed.
"Why?"
"Because it remembers you," she said softly.
The figure lifted a hand—long fingers, impossibly thin. And in its palm, shadows danced—not like his, not shaped or still, but writhing. Twisting.
Trying to be born.
Qaritas didn't recognize the figure.
But the ache in his ribs did.
A breath hitched in his throat. It wasn't fear, not exactly—but something colder. Older. Like a secret he'd once buried inside a scream, now clawing its way out through his bones.
He wanted to run. He wanted to kneel. He wanted to reach out—and that was the worst part.
Because some part of him already knew: this thing had worn his shape once. Maybe still did.
It was like remembering a face seen in a nightmare—something intimate and wrong, stitched to memory by dread. His body recoiled. His shadow reached forward.
And deep inside, the not-empty whispered—not in words, but in shape.
A name he couldn't remember... but already grieved.
His chest ached. Not from fear—but memory.
Something old. Something buried. Something that remembered his shape before he wore it.
Daviyi looked at the figure. Then at Qaritas.
Her lips parted—barely. A breath. A name.
"Ecayrous," she breathed. "A fragment of Eon."