The Nexus howled.
Not with sound, but with pressure—space flexing under the weight of contradiction. As Kael led the rebels through collapsing corridors, the walls buckled with feedback. Every lie they shattered sent ripples through the foundation.
Kael could feel the threads fraying under his skin.
He was holding too much.
With every false room he bypassed, every identity he restored, the weight of the memories pressed harder against his mind. Not just his own.
Rin's.
Visions crept in between blinks—his hands inscribing glyphs onto a dying man's skin; Lira weeping in a chamber flooded with light; Selvere kneeling before a machine not yet built, whispering the first false story into its core.
Kael stumbled once.
Lira caught him. "You're burning through yourself."
He nodded. "I know."
But he didn't stop.
Behind them, the Curator's presence faltered—unable to rewrite faster than Kael could resist. Ahead, the corridors narrowed to a crystalline hall untouched by tampering. The air was still. Heavy.
At the end stood a door unlike any they'd seen.
Smooth. Opaque. It shimmered with colors that did not exist in language. No sigils marked its surface—just a pulse, like a heartbeat, waiting.
Lira stepped up beside him.
"That's it."
Kael said nothing.
His hands trembled, and not from exhaustion.
From knowing.
Everything behind that door would change him.
Everything behind it already had.
Corren stood at his side, silent for once.
The rebels waited.
Kael exhaled.
He stepped forward.
The door opened.