The creature's shadow fell over him like a second sky.
It roared....a broken, echoing sound formed from stitched memories.
Aurelianth felt it deep in his teeth, in his bones, in the aching crack of the rune on his chest.
But for the first time....He did not retreat.
Lioren grabbed his sleeve, wide-eyed.
"Aurelianth, DON'T.... your rune.... your hear
..... you CAN'T fight this thing...."
He stepped forward anyway.
"I'm not fighting it with power."
The creature lunged.
"WHAT!?" she shrieked.
"I'm fighting it with identity."
He raised his hand and the rune over his heart flickered,painfully, dangerously,but not with Pulse-light.
With his light.
The creature's massive arm slammed down...
ripping stone from the cliff, sending hunters scrambling back.
Aurelianth dodged sideways, barely avoiding being crushed.
The creature twisted its head, following him with a blank, twisted mockery of his own face.
Its hollow voice rippled through the air:
"Aure…lianth…"
It wasn't calling him.
It was remembering him.
It charged again.
Aurelianth whispered:
"…That's why I can beat you."
The Battle of Refusal
The creature swung at him with a stone arm thick as a pillar.
Aurelianth leapt backward, boots skidding across dust.
The creature struck the cliff wall.....cracks splintering upward in jagged veins.
Aurelianth winced at the shockwave.
Lioren's voice cut through the chaos:
"You can't beat it head-on!!"
"I know!" he shouted back.
"Then WHAT....."
"Names!"
Lioren blinked, utterly baffled.
"What!?"
Aurelianth dodged another crushing blow.
"It's built from the Pulse's MEMORY of my name!
Its version of me!
Its prediction of my ending!"
The creature hissed an awful, rattling sound that made the lantern-light warp.
Aurelianth shouted louder:
"But I am NOT its memory!"
He placed a hand to his chest and the cracked rune responded with a fragile glow.
Lioren's breath caught.
"Aurelianth....your rune...."
"It's ME," he said. "Not the Pulse. Not the original. ME."
The creature roared and lunged again.
This time Aurelianth didn't dodge.
He ran toward it.
"ARE YOU INSANE!?" Lioren screamed.
"Probably!"
He slid under the monster's arm, palm brushing the runes carved along its elbow.
His own rune sparked.
And he felt it....
The memory-threads inside the creature.....
flashes of the original Aurelianth....
Terror.
Screaming.
Begging.
Moonlight bleeding into shadow.
Hands reaching for help that never came.
The Pulse's whisper swallowing his name.
Aurelianth jerked back, gasping from the psychic collision.
Lioren grabbed him.
"What did you SEE!?"
He swallowed.
"…His fear."
Lioren froze.
"Aurelianth… that thing feels?"
"It doesn't feel," he said.
"It remembers."
And then.....
He understood the Pulse's cruelty.
The creature swung again.
Aurelianth lifted his hand.
This time he didn't block it.
He touched it.
His voice trembled:
"I refuse your memory."
The creature staggered as if punched.
Its stone face cracked.
Aurelianth shouted again....
louder....
stronger....
"I refuse your story."
The creature reeled back, clutching its head with both hands, runes flickering.
Aurelianth stepped forward.....fire in his veins....identity blazing sharper than fear....
"I. AM. NOT. HIM."
The creature's true nature reveals itself
The memory-creature froze.
Then its head twisted at an unnatural angle.
Its voice tore the air:
"You must become him."
Aurelianth glared.
"No."
"You must return to the ending."
"No."
"YOU MUST COMPLETE WHAT THE PULSE BEGAN."
The cliff shook.
Stone ruptured under its feet.
The creature shuddered as if losing control of its shape.
Its form flickered....flesh-stone-shadow-rune
like a corrupted slideshow.
Then it began changing.
Not growing.....
Clearing.
Its outline sharpened.
The runes along its arms brightened.
Its shadow-face distorted into something nearer,closer,more like.....
"Aurelianth…" Lioren whispered.
He stared.
The creature was starting to look exactly like him.
"That...." he gasped, stepping backward....
"that's what the Pulse wants me to become!"
The creature screamed a raw, warping wail as its features solidified:
His jaw.
His eyes.
His mismatched colors.
His veins...but blackened.
Twisted.
Claimed.
Lioren covered her mouth in horror.
"Aurelianth… it's becoming your Hollow version…"
He stepped back.
"No… this is the version the Pulse PREFERRED."
Aurelianth Hollowborn.
Aurelianth Claimed.
Aurelianth-ending.
His nightmare.
The Pulse's dream.
The creature's voice deepened, becoming eerily similar to his.
"Come."
Aurelianth snarled:
"No."
"Belong."
"No!"
"Finish."
"NO!"
He slammed his hand to the ground.
Moonlight runes obeyed him...not because he forced them,but because he fit them.
A pulse of white-silver exploded outward.
The creature staggered again...but recovered faster this time.
It was learning.
It was adapting.
It was becoming him.
Lioren's voice cracked:
"Aurelianth....if it becomes fully like you...."
"I die," he finished.
No room for lies.
No room for hope that wasn't earned.
"If it becomes me," he whispered,"I stop being me."
Aurelianth embraces the one thing the Pulse can't predict
He stepped forward.
Lioren grabbed his arm.
"What are you doing!?"
His eyes glowed softly.
"I'm going to beat it with something the Pulse cannot record."
"What?"
Aurelianth looked at her and he smiled.
Not bravely.
Not confidently.
Not proudly.
Just.....gently.
Lioren nearly dropped her lantern.
"Aur… Aurelianth… what....?"
"The Pulse predicts rules.
It predicts endings.
It predicts patterns."
He lowered his voice.
"But it cannot predict free will."
He raised his hand.
And for the first time....he didn't use power.
He used choice.
"I CHOOSE," he said,"to be someone impossible for the Pulse to predict."
He closed his eyes and reached deep.
Deeper than the Before.
Deeper than memory.
Deeper than the rune or his body.
To a place inside him that did not belong to the original Aurelianth nor to the Pulse nor to this world.
His soul.
The thing that crossed worlds.
The thing that should not exist here.
The thing that made him Deviation.
He whispered his true oath:
"I am the Aurelianth you did not write."
The cracked rune over his heart flared....not Pulse-silver,not world-white...but a third color.
Something new.
Gold-silver-black,braided together in impossible harmony.
The creature went silent.
Then it screamed....long, high, broken....as if its very existence was cracking.
Aurelianth stepped forward.
Lioren whispered his name, breath trembling with awe:
"Aurelianth… what are you?"
He didn't look back.
He whispered to the creature....to the Pulse....
to the prediction.....
"I am the ending you will never own."
And he touched the creature's chest.
When he rewrites the creature
The moment his fingers made contact....the world broke.
Not violently.
Not explosively.
Quietly.
Like a single snowflake deciding to melt early.
The creature's shadow writhed.
Its stone cracked.
Its false veins burst into dust.
Aurelianth's newfound light spread through it like a slow sunrise.....unmaking the Pulse's prediction.
Unwriting it.
Unbecoming it.
The creature gasped....a strangled, echoing sound....as its form dissolved from head to toe.
Not destroyed.
Released.
Into soft, drifting fragments of silver dust.
And then....the face of the original Aurelianth appeared in the dust.
Not twisted.
Not screaming.
Just faint....eyes gentle....as if relieved.
Aurelianth whispered:
"…I'm sorry."
The dust floated upward....toward the sky where the Pulse watched.
And for the first time…the Pulse did not react.
Not with hunger.
Not with clicking.
Not with tearing reality.
Just....silence.
As if confused.
Aurelianth collapsed to his knees.
Lioren rushed to him....caught him.....pulled him into her arms.
He shook against her shoulder.
"…I beat it," he whispered.
"You rewrote it," she corrected softly.
He looked at her.
"I… I did."
"Yes."
Her voice trembled.
"And now the Pulse knows you can."
Aurelianth's heart stuttered.
Because that wasn't victory.
That was the beginning of real war.
The sky answers
The sky pulsed once.
A single, cold click echoed across the cliffs....
click.
Aurelianth stiffened.
Lioren swallowed hard.
"What… what does that mean?"
Aurelianth stared upward.
His veins glowed faintly.
His rune trembled.
"It means," he whispered,"the Pulse is rewriting too."
Night Two wasn't over.
It was listening.
Learning.
Planning.
And now.....it wanted.....more.