Chapter 45
The sky wasn't supposed to bleed.
But it did.
As Nezutsu looked up, the massive glyph above the Trial Temple pulsed with living geometry — runes looping in impossible directions, writing themselves across dimensions. It wasn't magic in the usual sense. It was cosmic bureaucracy, ancient logic meant to govern what could exist... and what shouldn't.
And right now, it was rewriting reality to erase him.
Velgrim threw a warding shield around them just in time to stop the glyph's first strike — a cascading spiral of light that vaporized half the ruined temple.
"That's the Archive's Judgement Protocol," Velgrim growled. "It's trying to overwrite your thread."
"Can you stop it?" Nezutsu asked, the violet fire already stirring in his lungs.
"Not unless you plan to punch a hole into the Core itself."
"That's where they took Kaelith."
Velgrim cursed under his breath. "Then we don't have a choice."
He threw Nezutsu a crystal shaped like a dagger's hilt. The moment it touched his hand, it bloomed into a skeletal key wrapped in broken sigils.
"That's a Corebreaker," Velgrim explained. "One-time use. It'll tear open a breach into the Archive's inner sanctum. But once you go in, there's no way back. Not unless you find a terminal gate."
"What's inside?"
"Memories. Forgotten souls. Alternate timelines. Reality as data. And the Archivists — they don't bleed, but they erase."
Nezutsu didn't hesitate.
He stabbed the Corebreaker into the ground.
Reality tore like cloth.
Inside the Archive
The breach dropped him into silence.
A white void stretched infinitely. Floating across it were translucent cubes, some larger than mountains, some the size of fists. Inside them flickered frozen moments — stolen memories, suppressed truths, people who had been deleted from history.
"Welcome, Unwritten," echoed a voice across the space.
Nezutsu spun.
A figure stood atop one of the memory cubes — tall, faceless, draped in layered scrolls of living ink. Its voice wasn't heard — it was installed into his thoughts.
"You are a hazard. Your presence corrupts causality."
"I'm here for Kaelith."
"She is being corrected. Expunged."
"Then I'll correct your correction."
The flame burst from his chest.
But the Archive didn't burn.
It warped.
The ground flipped sideways. Dozens of cube-memories collapsed into themselves, opening corridors of suspended logic. Nezutsu was pulled down one — a hallway made entirely of ink and regret.
At the end, he found her.
Kaelith's Chamber
She was suspended in a sphere of light — unmoving, unconscious, her thoughts being stripped into scrolls that the Archivists fed into void portals.
Each memory was being judged, scored, and rewritten.
"Subject: Kaelith of Starfall. Deemed unsuitable for continued narrative presence. Imprint to be dissolved. Affections marked as divergent."
Nezutsu stepped forward.
"Then I'll take them all."
"Clarify request."
"Give me her erased memories. I'll carry them. Burn them into my flame. Make them mine."
"Warning: Unification of external narrative streams is prohibited."
"I'm not asking."
He touched the sphere.
The fire flared, and for a moment — every memory Kaelith had surged into Nezutsu's mind.
Her childhood.
Her dreams.
Her first fear.
Her moment of falling in love with him — watching him try to smile through loneliness.
He burned for her.
The Archive screamed.
It couldn't erase what had been chosen.
The glyph in the sky shattered.
The Archivists swarmed.
But it was too late.
Kaelith woke.
"You came," she whispered.
"Always."
They stood back to back.
He held the flame.
She held the stolen memories she had managed to snatch from the void — fragments of the Ancient Godfire, glimpses of his first life, visions of a war long buried.
And together, they ignited the chamber.
Project Silex
As they escaped through a collapsing memory corridor, Kaelith suddenly gasped.
She clutched her head.
"I saw something—before they erased it completely."
"What?"
"The Archivists… they weren't acting alone. They're following a protocol called Project Silex."
"What is it?"
"It's not just about erasing you. It's about resetting the entire World Thread. Rebooting magic from scratch. You're a glitch in their eyes, Nezutsu. And I…"
She hesitated.
"I think I'm part of the original code."
Nezutsu turned to her, the flame flickering uncertainly.
"Then we don't just fight for ourselves anymore."
"No," she whispered. "We fight for the soul of the world."
Behind them, the Archive began to tear.
Reality wouldn't hold for much longer.
And somewhere deep inside the collapsed vaults of forbidden memory, something ancient... something bound in iron and god-runes... opened one eye.
[TO BE CONTINUED…]