The silence didn't end. It multiplied.
Every breath of wind stopped. Every sound swallowed itself. No bird dared call. No beast dared stir. Even the residual fragments of divinity that clung to the fallen temples curled inward, hiding from the shape pressing against the edge of the world.
Korrin collapsed mid-rune.
Elyse clutched her ears, her healing magic sputtering like a candle drowning in wax.
Naia snarled, flame blooming from her wrists but flickering uncertainly, refusing to form.
Thessaly stepped in front of Liss, sword drawn, eyes tracking the air itself like a predator watching something it couldn't see.
Liss didn't move.
Because the shape… the thing pressing against the fabric of existence… wasn't attacking.
It was arriving.
Above them, a star appeared.
It wasn't there before. No constellation claimed it. No prophecy named it. It pulsed a slow, soft white—not hot, not cold.
Just wrong.
"That's not a star," Korrin muttered, blinking sweat from his eyes. "That's a name."
Naia narrowed her eyes. "A name?"
He nodded, fingers trembling. "A forgotten one. One that never made it to the page. One that… that was erased before it was born."
Elyse knelt, her lips moving silently. Praying. But not to the Twelve. They were gone. Her prayer was older. Lower. Whispered to the soil.
And Liss—Liss stepped forward.
The void inside her didn't resist. It pulled.
"I know that light," she whispered. "I dreamed of it. When I was a child. Before the seal. Before the name 'Liss' was ever spoken."
Thessaly reached for her hand.
Liss didn't flinch, didn't move away.
But her voice was trembling. "It remembers me."
"Then we stop it," Thessaly said.
"No," Liss replied. "We meet it."
And with a pulse of her power, she tore open a gate in the sky.
The light welcomed her.