Night did not fall.
It devoured.
The moment the sun dipped below the horizon, the entire sky rippled like a sheet of black water struck by a colossal hand.
Aurelianth felt the pull before the stars vanished.
A pressure inside his ribs.
A faint tremble in the cracked rune over his heart.
Lioren stood beside him, gripping his hand so tightly her knuckles whitened.
"Aurelianth…"her voice was a whisper of fear and love.
"It's beginning."
The matriarch stepped forward, staff raised.
"Everyone inside the lower caverns!.....
No one stays above but the Chosen and the watchers!"
But no one truly wanted to watch.
Because the sky was opening.
When the sky tears like paper
A single line thin as a strand of spider silk split horizontally across the heavens.
No silver.
No glow.
Just a black scar against black sky.
But that single line hummed.
Aurelianth's veins hummed with it.
"Is that....?" Lioren began.
Aurelianth nodded, throat dry.
"Yes...The Pulse."
The line widened.Slowly, impossibly, unbearably as if reality itself were being unzipped.
Wind reversed direction.
Trees leaned toward the tear.
The moon trembled as if afraid.
Lioren gasped:
"The stars....!"
They weren't twinkling.
They were running.....sliding across the sky like spilled beads.
Gravity warped.
The tear widened further until the entire sky was a single, vertical mouth.
And behind it....the Pulse.
Or rather.....a piece of it.
A suffering of it.
A dream of it.
A shape language could not hold.
Aurelianth staggered.
Lioren grabbed him.
"Stay with me....stay with me....!"
"I'm trying...!" he gasped, clutching his chest.
The cracked rune pulsed in agony.
The Pulse's full form
Something stepped out of the tear.
Not a silhouette.
Not a shadow.
Not a vessel.
Something REAL.
The Pulse took form....if the word "form" could apply.
It was height without body.
Depth without shadow.
Presence without shape.
Its limbs were lines of unlight.....drawing themselves into existence only to erase themselves again.
Where its face should be,an endless slit of vertical void glowed with silver hunger.
Aurelianth choked on air.
Lioren whispered:
"By the moons…that's… it."
The Pulse tilted its non-face toward them.
Aurelianth instinctively stepped forward and the world bent around him.
Wind bent around him.
Sound bent around him.
Even light bent around him.
The Pulse was altering reality to place him at the center.
Lioren screamed:
"Aurelianth....DON'T GO....!!!"
He froze.
Because the Pulse spoke.
Not with words.....with reality.
"De…vi…a…tion."
Aurelianth flinched.
The Pulse's attention tightened.
"The Unwritten Child."
"The Ruleless Name."
"The Ending I Desire."
Aurelianth's heartbeat stuttered painfully.
"No," he whispered.
"I'm not your ending."
The Pulse's vertical slit widened.
Silver-black radiance spilled out reaching....
Lioren lunged, dragging him backward.
The radiance stopped.
The Pulse's attention snapped to her.
"…Irrelevant."
Aurelianth roared:
"DON'T TOUCH HER!"
The Pulse tilted its head.
As if curious.
As if amused.
"She matters to you."
Aurelianth's veins glowed white-silver.
"Yes."
The Pulse's voice deepened.
"Then she will be kept.After your name is finished."
Lioren froze.
"…kept?" she whispered.
Aurelianth felt his blood run cold.
He stepped forward.
"Pulse," he whispered.
"You will not write me."
The sky shuddered.
"You wrote a rule."
Aurelianth's cracked rune pulsed.
"And I stand by it," he said, voice trembling but firm.
"Then let us finish."
Reality rearranges around them
The Pulse extended one arm.
Not a limb.
A dimension.
A shimmering length of impossible geometry,
shifting between shape and unshape.
It touched the cliff floor and the stone bent under its presence like wet parchment.
A ring of silver-black runes erupted upward,
surrounding Aurelianth and the Pulse.
Lioren slammed against an invisible barrier.
"AURELIANTH....!!"
Aurelianth reached for her but his fingers passed through the air like it wasn't air.
Like time.
Aurelianth whispered:
"A… time-lock…"
The matriarch gasped from behind Lioren:
"NO....THAT IS A RITUAL STAGE...."
Aurelianth's veins froze.
"A WHAT!?"
"A realm where only two truths exist!"
the matriarch cried.
"The writer....and the written!"
Lioren slammed her fists into the barrier.
"Aurelianth.....DON'T...THIS IS WHAT IT WANTS!"
The Pulse lowered its hand.
"You changed one rule."
"I will change the rest."
Aurelianth forced his shaking body upright.
"I'm not letting you write me."
The Pulse's eye-slit glowed intensely.
"You cannot refuse forever."
Aurelianth's eyes flared gold-violet.
"Then write this....Pulse....
I CHOOSE MYSELF."
The air screamed.
The tear shrieked.
The runes shattered.
And a new battlefield formed.....
The Naming Realm
Aurelianth crashed onto white marble but the marble folded like paper beneath his weight.
He stood in an infinite, pale realm,shifting like a half-awake dream.
The Pulse hovered above him....its shape clearer here,its hunger sharper,its presence near overwhelming.
This was not the Before.
Not the world.
Not reality.
The Naming Realm.
The place where identities are carved.
The Pulse's voice echoed everywhere:
"This is the place where stories are finished."
Aurelianth coughed.
"…Then finish yours."
The Pulse's eye slit narrowed.
"I will finish.....you."
It pressed a hand of glowing geometry to its chest and a thousand fractal versions of Aurelianth appeared around him.
Alive.
Dead.
Broken.
Twisted.
Consumed.
Hollowed.
Taken.
Written.
Every version except one.....
The version who wins.
Aurelianth whispered:
"…You can't imagine me surviving."
The Pulse's voice darkened.
"You are an error.
Errors do not survive."
Aurelianth's cracked rune blazed wildly.
"I'm not an error," he whispered.
"I'm a CHOICE."
Aurelianth rewrites the battlefield
The Pulse raised its hand.
A wave of silver-black identity-fire erupted toward him.
Aurelianth didn't block.
He rewrote.
He slammed his hand to his chest.
His personal rune glowed.....white....silver....
gold and a faint thread of black braiding into a new color.
Aurelianth stepped forward and declared:
"My name is MINE."
The identity-fire shattered like brittle glass.
The Pulse went still.
"…Impossible."
Aurelianth's voice cracked with power he didn't understand:
"I am not your ending."
Fragments of rejected versions dissolved.
"I am not the original Aurelianth."
The bitter ones collapsed.
"I am not your prediction."
The Hollow versions vanished.
"I am ME."
And the entire Naming Realm trembled.
The Pulse's voice warped.
"You.....Are.....UNWRITTEN."
Aurelianth smiled faintly.
"Yes.
And that means....I get to decide."
The Pulse screamed....its shape fracturing into impossible angles and the Naming Realm shattered into blinding light.
Returning to the world
Aurelianth slammed back into his real body landing hard on the cliff.
Dust exploded around him.
Lanterns flickered.
Lioren caught him instantly, wrapping her arms around him.
"Aurelianth....Aurelianth, LOOK AT ME....!!"
He looked.Eyes shining with a new, terrifying identity.The Pulse was abovet them....shaken, distorted,but not defeated.
The matriarch stared in awe.
"What… did you DO!?"
Aurelianth stood, trembling.
"I told it the truth."
The Pulse whispered voice weakened, jagged.....
"…Unwritten…still…unfinished…"
Aurelianth stepped forward.
"Then rewrite this....Pulse....I refuse you."
The Pulse's slit closed halfway.
Like a blinking eye.
"Night…not over…"
Aurelianth glared.
"Then come again."
The Pulse froze.
Lioren grabbed his sleeve.
"Aurelianth....WHAT ARE YOU DOING...."
He raised his voice.
"COME AGAIN."
The sky shuddered.
"COME FOR ME."
The tear in the sky contracted in shock.
Aurelianth's cracked rune glowed fiercely.
"Because I am not afraid of you anymore."
The Pulse trembled.
And then....it retreated.
The tear sealed shut.Silence hit the cliff like a hammer.
Aurelianth collapsed again into Lioren's arms but he was smiling through exhaustion, pain, and fear.
"…Night Three…" he whispered faintly ".…has only just begun."