It started with a whisper beneath the canvas.
Ren was still catching his breath. The floating pedestal hummed beneath his feet, the canvas now pulsing gently with the memory he'd painted. Around him, color danced like fireflies across shattered murals and flickering tapestries. Chroma Shard was… healing. Slowly. Unevenly. But undeniably.
Then the whisper came again.
Not a voice. A texture. A presence.
He turned—and the air behind him tore open with a sound like wet paper meeting a flame.
Out stepped a figure not born of this world. Not painted. Not even drawn.
It was eraser-gray.
No name.
No outline.
Just… absence given shape.
Ren stumbled back instinctively. Saph stood frozen.
"No," she breathed. "Not now."
The figure raised its hand. Its fingers ended in dull, chalk-like stubs. It pointed at the mural Ren had just painted.
And it began to erase.
One stroke.
Two.
The color screamed.
Ren surged forward, summoning Balladbrand—but the sword didn't hum with music this time. It groaned, dissonant. This wasn't something it was made to fight.
"Saph, what is that thing?" he hissed.
She didn't answer immediately. Her hands were trembling.
"That… is a Nullbrush," she said, voice cracking. "One of the unfinished."
"Unfinished?"
"Concepts the Creator started but abandoned. They weren't meant to survive. But sometimes, a world loses enough hope… and they crawl back in."
The Nullbrush was halfway through destroying Ren's memory painting now.
Saph hurled a beam of golden paint—but the gray creature swallowed it. It absorbed the hue like ink in a sponge. Her power had no effect.
Ren clenched his jaw.
This wasn't a fight of might.
It was a fight of meaning.
He ran straight at the mural.
And threw himself into his own memory.
◇
He was back in the memory's dreamspace. The scent of jam wafted on the breeze. Serein's ruins floated serenely behind him. Crimpet's laugh echoed in the distance.
But something was wrong.
The sky was turning gray.
The Nullbrush had followed him into the memory.
Its form corrupted the dream. Crimpet dissolved into paint splatter. The sky cracked like old porcelain. The joy Ren had painted now melted like butter under a heatless sun.
No sword could stop this.
So Ren did the only thing he could.
He repainted it.
With his bare hands, he smeared the memory back together. He shouted over the wind, shouted into the unraveling world:
"I was there! I lived this! You don't get to take it from me!"
The memory responded. The wind pulsed. New colors bloomed—colors the Nullbrush had never seen.
Because they weren't born of paint or magic.
They were born of truth.
The Nullbrush recoiled.
It hissed—not a sound, but a rejection. Its chalk form started to flake, losing cohesion in the face of memory fortified by emotion. It lunged for Ren one last time—
And Balladbrand struck.
The blade, useless moments ago, now sang again. Because Ren wasn't wielding it to fight darkness.
He was wielding it to protect joy.
The blow shattered the Nullbrush into dust.
◇
Ren collapsed backward out of the dreamspace.
He hit the pedestal hard, heart pounding.
Saph caught him before he slid off the edge.
"I…" Ren panted. "I didn't know I could do that."
"You couldn't," she said. "Not until now."
A pause.
"You understand the rules of Miralune more than most. This realm doesn't run on logic. Or strength. Or even Essentia. It runs on meaning."
She stood up and pointed toward the gate in the sky.
It was glowing brighter now.
"More unfinished will come," she said. "And next time, they'll be worse. This was just a scratch on the frame."
Ren wiped gray dust off his coat.
Then smiled.
"Good. I hate easy adventures."
◇
Far away, in a gallery of blank frames and ruined tales, the inverse figure from before dipped his null brush into a well of inverted ink.
This time, he didn't whisper.
He laughed.
And painted a door.
Straight into Ren's next world.