Silence swallowed everything.
The Executioner was gone.
Erased.
Not a corpse. Not a ruin.
Just a hole—emptier than death.
The Threadgrave lay still, holding its breath as if afraid even the wind might remember what just happened.
But Elian?
He stood unmoving.
Griefblade lowered at his side.
Face calm.
Eyes sharp—but distant.
Too distant.
Like he was standing both here… and somewhere else entirely.
The girl crept closer, her voice brittle:
"It's over."
No answer.
She tried again, stepping closer, staring at him—at the blade still flickering faintly with inverted light.
"Elian. You won."
His gaze shifted down to her. Slow. Heavy.
But there was a crack in that gaze now.
Something missing.
"I didn't win," he said quietly.
"I just… removed the evidence."
[System Alert: Griefblade Residual Effect Active]
[User Status: Concept Drift Detected – 3%]
[Memory Integrity: Unstable]
[Warning: Identity Erosion in Progress]
Elian's fingers flexed around the blade's hilt.
His breathing was steady.
But deep inside, something shuddered.
Not pain.
Not weakness.
Absence.
It wasn't the Executioner who was bleeding out.
It was him.
Slowly. Invisibly.
A peeling of his own definition, one thin layer at a time.
He whispered under his breath:
"The price isn't blood."
"It's… self."
He reached up, brushing his fingers across his temple.
A flicker of cold passed through his skull.
A whisper—like the feeling of forgetting something familiar but important.
Not a memory.
A corner of his own shape.
The rotborne woman stepped in now, eyes slitted and sharp, her instincts prickling.
"Something's wrong with you," she growled.
Elian exhaled, slow and flat.
"Yes."
His gaze lifted toward the fractured sky—threadlines still twitching, rotlight bleeding from the cracks like dying nerves.
"Every time I cut them," he said, voice low, "the world flinches."
He turned his eyes back to them.
"And so do I."
[Griefblade Status: Active]
[Conceptual Bleed: Spreading]
[System Advisory: Immediate Severance Recommended]
[Response: Ignored]
The girl's voice trembled:
"What happens if you keep using it?"
Elian's smile was razor-sharp.
"I stop being 'Elian.'"
"And start becoming the thing they never wanted to exist."
A gust of rotwind cut across the basin, hissing through broken glyphs and dead pylons.
The rotborne woman's claws flexed unconsciously.
"How much can you lose before there's nothing left?"
Elian's answer was quiet. Certain.
"Enough to win."
He stared down at Griefblade—its blade humming softly, thin trails of black light peeling from its edge like smoke.
It wasn't a weapon anymore.
It was a question.
One he kept asking the world.
And one the world kept failing to answer.
He turned back toward the ruins in the distance, where the system's next move was already gathering weight.
"They'll send more," he said.
His voice was a promise.
The girl swallowed.
"They'll send stronger."
Elian's smile didn't fade.
"Good."
"I want to see what happens when a god realizes its best weapon… isn't enough."
[System Report:
Aberrant Concept Escalating.
Threadmaker "Soulfrail" Status: Infectious.]
[Containment Probability: 11%]
[Emergency Recalibration: In Progress.]
Far above, deep in the fractured sky, something ancient shifted.
Watching.
Waiting.
Whispering to itself:
"This one doesn't just resist."
"He… rewrites."