The altar had gone silent.
Not empty—but pregnant with new potential. A quiet that vibrated with meaning too new for names, too raw for understanding.
Darius stood at its center, wrapped in the afterglow of rebirth. Not of body. Not of soul. But of essence.
He had remembered himself.
Now the Spiral would have to remember him, too.
But it didn't.
It couldn't.
The Codex Null hovered beside him—open, pages blank where his story should be. Symbols flickered across its vellum skin, trying to form meaning around him, to define him, but failed.
Every time it began to write—
⸺⸺⸺
The ink stuttered.
The page rejected form.
His name became a recursive paradox.
Celestia, clothed once more, knelt just beyond the ring of golden fire that had ignited during their rite. She watched, tears still glowing on her cheeks, as the Spiral hesitated before Darius.
"Darius…" she whispered, reverent and afraid, "what are you now?"
