The world was an echo. A reverberating sound, distant but sharp. Kairo found himself falling through the rift, his body twisting in unnatural ways as his surroundings blurred. Light fractured, bent, and split apart like broken glass, and for a moment, everything ceased to exist. There was no sense of time. No sense of self.
He was suspended in nothingness.
No ground, no sky. Only infinite black, stretching forever, like a void that had never been touched by light. His thoughts became like whispers, faint ripples in the endless sea of nothing. His mind screamed for him to move, to grasp onto something, but there was nothing to hold onto.
Was this the end?
The rift had consumed him, taken him far beyond the city, beyond the realm of reality he knew. He was slipping, lost between dimensions, between timelines.
A voice broke through the silence.
"Still fighting, Kairo?"
The voice was a whisper, but it carried weight. It was familiar, yet distant, like something he should know but couldn't quite recall. The air seemed to pulse with it, wrapping around his thoughts and pulling him deeper into the void.
He didn't need to look to know who it was.
It was her—the Binder.
He reached out, his hand feeling like it was made of smoke, slipping through the nothingness.
"I told you. You can't run from it." Her voice was soft, almost pitying. "You are part of the story now. It's always been this way."
Kairo tried to speak, but no sound came. He wanted to scream, to rage against the endless cycle he had found himself in. But the words wouldn't come.
The void shifted, the darkness deepening around him. And then, in the distance, something else began to form. Slowly at first, like a faint glow far beyond his reach. But it grew brighter, until it was blinding—shapes, figures, flickers of the city. Memories?
Images from his life—his past, his fragmented present—flashed in the void. His mother's face, the street where he had first encountered the Glyphs, the Manuscriptorium, the people he had failed to protect. They played like a film reel spinning out of control, each scene more distorted than the last. Faces turned into shadows, places into dreamlike landscapes. None of it made sense.
"You don't understand," the Binder said. "This isn't about you fighting the narrative. You were born from it. You're nothing but a fracture in the story, Kairo. A consequence of what the Architects did. A break in the script."
Kairo felt his body lurch forward, unable to stop himself. The world around him twisted and turned, each image more fragmented than the last. He couldn't grasp any of it—couldn't make sense of it.
"Why me?" he managed to ask, his voice weak, almost drowned by the vastness around him. "Why did they choose me?"
"The question is never why, Kairo," the Binder's voice echoed through the void, louder now, reverberating against the dark walls. "The question is: Why not you?"
The scene shifted again. A distant memory came into focus. The city. His city. But it was different now. The streets were empty, the buildings cracked, and everything seemed to be decaying. Time seemed to have no meaning.
He saw himself. A younger version of himself, standing there, unaware of the looming presence behind him. The Glyph of Binding. The first time he had encountered it.
The Binder's voice reached him again, but this time, it felt... closer. "You're not the first, Kairo. You were always meant to be one of them. A copy. An echo of something else. They all were. Every iteration of the story that failed. Every character who broke the rules. And every time, they... failed."
"But I'm not like them." Kairo's voice was defiant. He could feel the words fighting to escape his throat. He could feel the anger building in his chest. "I'm not a character in their story. I'm me. I'm Kairo."
"Are you?" The Binder's voice was laced with something like amusement. "How can you be sure?"
The void trembled. The world around him cracked again, the seams of reality tearing further. Kairo's head spun, and his thoughts began to feel like fragments, pieces of a puzzle scattered in the dark.
"You're wrong," he muttered, trying to steady himself. "I don't belong to them. I don't belong to anyone. I'm in control."
"Control?" The Binder's laugh was soft but chilling. "Do you really think you can control what has already been written?"
The city in front of him began to collapse. Buildings crumbled like paper. The sky shredded into pieces. And Kairo felt it all. The weight of the destruction, the weight of the knowledge. The world was coming apart, and he had no answers.
"No... no, I won't let it end like this," he said, desperate now, his voice trembling with frustration. "I'll find a way out. I'll make my own path."
The Binder's image flickered before him. Her form was becoming less distinct now, as if she were fading into the rift itself. "You can try. But it won't change what you are. It won't change the narrative."
Kairo's fists clenched. He wasn't going to let the story end here.
"I'll find a way," he whispered, as the void closed in around him. "I will."