The air in Mirevale smelled of lilacs and sun-warmed stone, a scent too pristine to be real. Children danced in circles with mirrored joy. Merchants greeted each other with choreographed pleasantries. Laughter echoed from every street, carefully spaced, unnervingly identical.
Krael Virex walked unseen among them, his presence cloaked by the Cradle's thread. Yet even as he moved, something in the world moved with him—a subtle tug, like the dream aware of its dreamer.
"This isn't a paradise," Krael said quietly. "It's a performance."
Erisin, beside him, nodded grimly. "Every perfect moment is a lie. Every smile, a script. Watch closely—these aren't people. They're roles. And someone's writing their lines."
As if to prove his point, a fruit vendor dropped an apple. The crowd froze for a fraction too long. Then, as if on cue, a child ran to pick it up, laughter resumed, and the world reset.
That's when they saw her.
A woman, standing still in the crowd—too still. She was not smiling. Her eyes searched desperately, darting across the flawless scene around her. Her clothes flickered, struggling to conform to the world's aesthetic. A glitch.
Krael approached her. "You see it, don't you?"
She flinched at the sound. "You're not… part of it," she whispered. "You remember." Tears welled in her eyes. "Please… take me with you. I don't want to forget again."
Before Krael could answer, a tremor ran through the ground. From the skies above, the light dimmed—and a soundless pressure descended like a god holding its breath.
The Custodian had noticed.
Across the city, the people froze mid-gesture. Their eyes turned—every single one—toward Krael and the woman. Smiles still painted on their faces.
"They're not real," Erisin whispered. "They're hosts. He's using them as vessels."
The Custodian descended like a falling star, its form shifting between angel and machine. No face, only a halo of rings orbiting a hollow core. Its voice was a harmony of thousands, speaking in perfect calm.
"Dissonance detected. Repairing deviation."
The woman screamed as her form shimmered—her memories, her identity—being rewritten. Krael lunged forward, but the Custodian struck with a pulse of null-light, flinging him across the plaza.
"You can't kill it," Erisin shouted, dragging Krael behind a crumbling illusion of a cart. "Not here. This is his domain. He's God in this lie."
Krael's eyes burned with fury. "Then we burn the lie."
He drew the Cradle-thread, now fused to his arm, and plunged it into the illusion itself—into the cobblestone, the air, the code of the world. Reality screamed.
The sky cracked. Buildings trembled, turning to ash mid-breath. The smiles twisted. Some citizens collapsed, revealing hollow forms—shells of memory stitched into flesh.
The Custodian's rings shuddered, flickering.
"You will destroy everything."
Krael stood. "Then I'll start with you."
The world collapsed inward, and they fell—Krael, Erisin, and the woman—into a rupture of raw data and dream. As Mirevale exploded into cascading threads, a voice, ancient and cold, echoed from beyond the fall:
"You trespass, Knight. You unravel what was mended. Come deeper, and you will find only silence."
They landed in a new realm—a forgotten archive of realities discarded by the weaver god. Broken worlds. Echoes of lives that never were.
And something stirred among the wreckage.