The walls cracked.

  Not like stone breaking.Not like ruins falling apart.

  This was something deeper.

  Something being erased from existence.

  Darius felt it—the weight of the rewrite pressing down on them.

  This temple was not meant to exist.

  And now—the Thanatarchy was correcting the mistake.

  Ais grabbed Darius’ wrist.

  “We need to move. Now.”

  But Darius wasn’t moving.

  He stood frozen, staring at where the figure had been.

  The st fragment of a forgotten world.

  Gone.

  Not just erased.

  Unwritten.

  Ais yanked him sharply.

  "DARIUS!"

  The floor beneath them fractured.

  The temple was colpsing.

  Darius’ breath caught.

  Then—he ran.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The hallways were breaking apart.

  The pilrs that had stood for centuries were vanishing in bursts of white nothingness.

  Not turning to dust.Not shattering.

  Just ceasing to be.

  Ais kept ahead, her movements swift, precise.

  Darius followed, heart hammering.

  His mind was still racing.

  The Thanatarchy did not erase completely.

  It erased the idea of something.

  But if that was true—then why had this temple resisted for so long?

  Why had the figure remembered his name?

  And why had the Thanatarchy failed to erase Darius completely?

  The pieces weren’t fitting together.

  Because something was still missing.

  The exit was close.

  The temple’s great entrance—a shattered archway of stone and faded inscriptions—was just ahead.

  They sprinted toward it.

  Then—the air shifted.

  Darius’ instincts screamed.

  "DOWN!"

  Ais didn’t hesitate.

  They hit the ground just as the archway colpsed inward.

  A wall of white void surged forward, swallowing the entrance whole.

  The Thanatarchy was sealing them in. Darius pushed himself up.

  His breath was ragged.

  Ais wiped dust from her face, eyes sharp.

  "They're not letting us leave."

  Darius gritted his teeth.

  "Then we make another way out."

  He scanned the crumbling temple.

  There—a side passage, half-broken, leading deeper underground.

  It was their only chance.

  Ais followed his gaze. "That could be worse."

  Darius exhaled.

  "Staying here is worse."

  Ais smirked. "Fair."

  And together—they ran toward the darkness. The passage twisted downward.

  Tight corridors. The stone beneath their feet was old—older than the temple itself. Darius felt it.

  Something beneath this pce was even older than the rewrite.

  The air grew thicker.

  Not suffocating.

  But heavy.

  Like it remembered something the rest of the world had forgotten.

  Ais's voice was low. "What is this pce?"

  Darius did not know.

  But whatever it was—the Thanatarchy had not erased it yet.

  That meant it was important.

  That meant it was dangerous.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The passage ended in a vast chamber.

  At its center—something pulsed.

  Not a light.

  Not a shadow.

  Something in between.

  Something that was trying to exist.

  Darius and Ais stopped.

  And for the first time since the erasure began—

  They felt something watching them.

  Something that was not the Thanatarchy.

  Something older.

  And then—it spoke.

  "You are not the first to come here."

  Darius' breath stilled.

  Ais’s fingers twitched toward her dagger. "Who said that?"

  The presence in the chamber shifted.

  And the voice answered.

  "You stand at the threshold of something that should not exist."

  The air shuddered.

  And in the center of the chamber—

  The past began to wake.