The dust of the unmade creature drifted upward,glimmering like ruined stars.
Aurelianth knelt on the cliff, chest heaving, every vein trembling with the new power he had awakened inside himself. Lioren held him tightly, as if anchoring him to the world.
The air smelled strange.....sharp, electric, unsettled.
Something had changed.
Far above them, the night sky stirred.
A tremor rippled through the constellations.
The moon flickered.
The clouds froze in place, hanging like torn cloth.
And then.....
click.
A sound sharper than bone snapping echoed across Umbralune.
Aurelianth flinched violently.
"It heard you," Lioren whispered.
The Pulse wasn't quiet anymore.
It was listening.
The sky darkened further.
Stars winked out one by one.
The matriarch strode onto the cliff, staff glowing.
"Everyone.....RETREAT TO THE LOWER PATHS!" she commanded sharply. "NOW!"
Hunters grabbed wounded villagers.
Children cried.
Lanterns swayed violently.
Lioren tried to pull Aurelianth.
"We have to go....Aurelianth, MOVE....!"
He didn't move.
He couldn't.
Because something inside him was answering.
His cracked rune pulsed once.
Twice.
Then a chilling third time.
Lioren's breath hitched.
"…Aurelianth?"
He lifted his face.
His eyes....gold and violet....glowed with a new, unnatural sheen.
"I can feel it," he whispered.
"Feel WHAT!?"
He looked at her, voice trembling.
"The Pulse is opening."
The Eye Splits the Sky
The constellations cracked.
Lines of darkness spread between them like veins on shattered glass.
Aurelianth clutched his chest.
"The Tear isn't forming," he whispered.
"This isn't a breach…this is something bigger."
A deep rumble rocked the cliff.
Stone groaned.
Wind reversed direction.
Lanterns extinguished themselves.
The matriarch's voice wavered.
"By the moons… what is it doing…?"
Aurelianth forced himself to stand....one knee shaky, the rune over his heart sparking.
He pointed upward.
A single black point appeared in the center of the sky.
Barely the size of a fingertip.
Then it widened....slowly....smoothly.....into a slitted, vertical shape.
Lioren's heart dropped.
"It's… it's like an EYE."
Aurelianth nodded, trembling.
"Yes.
Not a Tear.
Not an echo.
Not a breach."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"A witness."
The sky stared back.
When the Pulse sees
The vertical slit widened further, glowing with silver-black radiance.
It wasn't round.
It wasn't human.
It wasn't monster.
It was simply.....awareness.
A colossal, impossible pupil shifting behind darkness....studying the world.... like an open book.
Lioren squeezed Aurelianth's hand so hard his bones ached.
"Aurelianth…it's looking at YOU."
He didn't deny it.
The Pulse was not looking at the village.
Not at the cliffs.
Not at the ruins.
Not at the bodies.
Only.....him.
A booming vibration rolled across the world...
not sound,but comprehension.
Aurelianth doubled over as if hit.
"AH....!"
Lioren caught him.
"Aurelianth....what's wrong!?"
He pressed a hand to his temples.
"It's… reading me."
"What!?"
"My thoughts.....my memories.....what I just did.....my refusal.....my identity.....it's all....."
He choked on a breath.
".....being scanned."
The sky shuddered as the Pulse learned him....not the version it predicted,not the broken original,but the one who defied fate.
Lioren's voice broke.
"Can you stop it!?"
He shook violently.
"No.
It already has the rulebend inside me."
The cracked rune pulsed again.....aching, reacting, responding.
The Pulse whispered through the sky:
click...click...
THUMP.
Aurelianth's veins spasmed.
"That… that's my heartbeat."
Lioren's eyes widened.
"It's syncing to you again....!"
"No," he whispered.
He looked up at the sky with horror.
"It's syncing with me."
The Pulse speaks
The slit widened further.
Silver ripples radiated outward, distorting clouds and stars, bending reality around the Pulse's gaze.
A hollow vibration filled the air.
Then....
A voice.
Not spoken.
Not heard.
Felt.
Inside bone.
Inside blood.
Inside meaning.
"Deviation."
Aurelianth froze.
Lioren gasped.
Hunters collapsed to their knees.
Lantern-flames shrank to pinpoints.
The Pulse spoke again,directly into Aurelianth's mind.
"Deviation."
Aurelianth swallowed hard.
"…stop calling me that."
"Deviation.
Rulebreaker.
Unwritten."
His chest ached.
Lioren shook him desperately.
"DON'T ANSWER IT....Aurelianth, don't....!"
But he raised his head.
"I broke your rule."
The eye widened.
"…Yes."
"I rewrote the memory of your creature."
The sky pulsed.
"…Yes."
"And I denied your ending."
Silence.
Then.....
The Pulse's answer came like a cold caress:
"You did."
Aurelianth's voice cracked.
"Then what do you want from me!?"
The sky dimmed.
The eye narrowed.
And the Pulse whispered:
"I want the rest."
Aurelianth staggered back.
"THE REST OF WHAT!?"
"…Your name."
The Truth of Names
Aurelianth shook his head wildly.
"You can't take that!"
"It shapes you."
"I shape ME!"
"Your name is unfinished.
Perfect."
Lioren cried out:
"YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM! HE'S NOT YOURS!"
The Pulse's attention flicked....just briefly.....
toward her.
Lanterns shattered.
Lioren cried out and fell to her knees.
Aurelianth roared:
"DON'T TOUCH HER!"
The sky brightened with cold silver.
"She matters to you."
Aurelianth's voice trembled with fury.
"Yes."
"Then she is irrelevant."
"NO."
The Pulse ignored his anger.
"I want you."
"Why!?" Aurelianth shouted.
"Why me!? Why my name!? Why my identity!?"
The Pulse's eye widened in unnatural delight.
"Because…"
The world leaned forward.
The cliff trembled.
Lioren grabbed his sleeve, terrified.
The Pulse's final answer split the air:
"You are the first name.....I did not write."
Aurelianth went pale.
Lioren whispered, horrified:
"Then… it wants to finish you."
The Pulse pulsed.
"…Yes."
The sky cracks again—but for him alone
A small Tear opened directly above Aurelianth.
Only above him.
A single spiral of darkness twisted downward like a fingertip....reaching.
Lioren screamed.
"AURELIANTH...RUN....!!"
He didn't.
He COULDN'T.
The Pull was different.
Not hunger.
Not consumption.
Not attack.
Invitation.
Aurelianth clutched his chest as the rune burned white-hot.
He gasped:
"It's calling my NAME....not my body....my NAME...."
Lioren grabbed him, shaking.
"YOU CAN'T GO....WE WON'T LET YOU....!!"
He forced his gaze up.
"No," he whispered.
His voice cracked into a sob.
"It's not trying to take me."
Lioren stared.
"Then what is it doing?"
Aurelianth's throat tightened.
"It's trying to WRITE me."
The sky hissed.
The Pulse whispered:
"Let me finish you."
Aurelianth screamed with everything he had...
"NO!!!"
And his cracked rune burst in a violent flash of light.
The Tear snapped shut like a slamming door.
The Pulse's eye narrowed.
Silence....fell....hard.
Then the Pulse whispered one last thing:
"Two nights remain."
The eye closed.
The sky restored.
But Aurelianth collapsed...bleeding light from the rune over his heart.
Lioren screamed his name.
"AURELIANTH.....!!!"
And Night Two.....ended.