The obelisk screamed.
Not sound, but pressure—a wave of meaning that crushed thought. Around it, the air bled shadows. The Null Order dropped to their knees, some clutching their heads, others trying in vain to shoot the darkness. Bullets passed through it like stories with no plot.
Kiran stood frozen, watching as the inky mist around the obelisk spiraled toward him, answering a silent call. His shadow detached, stretched, and began to take shape. Not a beast. Not a man. Something in between—a silhouette that was all elbows and wings, eyes like open brackets.
"Kiran!" Selena's voice burst from the lantern. "Now! Before it anchors to something else!"
Leon grabbed his arm. "What is that thing?"
"It's him," Aria whispered. "Or what's inside him."
The woman from the Null Order backed away, her burned eye wide. "You brought it here... you brought the Hollow One."
The obelisk cracked. A voice coiled from the breach:
"I was never named. I was never needed. Yet I remain."
The shadow-thing rose higher. Its spine was visible, formed from fractured letters and broken narrative logic. The moment it opened what passed for a mouth, the walls withered.
Selena shouted, "He must bind it now or we all become footnotes."
Kiran stepped into the ink.
The ritual was already encoded inside him, etched in the glyphs that had begun curling up his throat. His fingers moved unconsciously, forming runes in the air. The shadow paused.
He looked at it and saw not a monster, but everything he had ever denied: his origin, his lost name, the truth he was never given.
"I see you."
The shadow tilted its head.
"And I allow you."
The ink exploded outward, wrapping around him like a storm of wings and regret. He didn't scream. He didn't fall. He merged.
Selena's voice cut through the dark.
"Now bind it to meaning. Speak its name."
Kiran opened his mouth.
And gave it the name he had buried.
The shadows collapsed into his chest, the glyphs sealing themselves with a hiss. The obelisk shattered behind him, raining shards of fossilized ink.
Then silence.
And breath.
He stood alone in the center of a ruined ritual circle, the others pushed to the edges. Aria clutched her shoulder, blood leaking from her nose. Leon stared, wordless. The woman from the Null Order hissed a curse.
Selena materialized beside him, her image flickering and pale.
"You've done it. But you've cursed yourself in the same breath."
Kiran wiped black fluid from his jaw. "What is it now?"
"Not a Beast. Not yet. But it's bonded. It feeds on your existence now. And anything near you is... susceptible."
He looked at the others.
The plants near him were dying, their colors drained. Metal rusted faster in his presence. One of the Null Order agents touched the wall—and screamed as his hand withered to bone.
Selena looked away.
"The bond demands a cost. Until it stabilizes, it will take life where it can."
Aria stared at him, half in awe, half in dread. "So what do we do with you now?"
The woman with the Beast-scar growled, aiming her gun again. "We kill him. Before he turns the world into ink."
Leon stepped between them. "He is the rewrite. We protect him. Or we die in the same damn chapter we've always died in."
Kiran said nothing. The shadow behind his eyes pulsed once, and he could feel it smiling. Not malicious.
Just hungry.
Selena turned to him. "There's another way to stabilize it. But it's forbidden. It involves a sacrifice."
He asked, "What kind?"
Her silence was answer enough.
Before anyone could speak further, the room shifted.
The walls groaned. The ceiling split.
And from the broken sky above—an Editor descended.
No face. No voice. Just a quill of raw intent and a body made of erasure.
The Null Order scattered. Aria screamed.
And Kiran's shadow... woke up.