Remi didn't move for a long time.
The staff in her hand flickered between real and imagined states, its core humming with power too raw to categorize. Behind her, the blank white canvas of broken reality stretched wider. It wasn't emptiness—it was correction. The fabric of forgotten stories, neglected arcs, discarded timelines—all returning, all seeking relevance.
Asher stepped forward, but cautiously.
"Are you still you?" he asked.
Remi tilted her head. "For the first time… I think so."
She turned toward him, her silhouette sharper now, more stable than even Julius at full chrono-state. The glitching stopped. Her body held its shape. Her voice had no echo. Her presence felt final. But not fixed.
Mutable. Like she could decide to rewrite herself again at any moment.
That scared him more than Spectra ever had.
"The Rule of Unmaking," he muttered.
"I didn't choose it," she said. "It chose me."
"You sure about that?"
Remi looked past him. Through him. As if she could see the thread of narrative that held him in place.
"I don't know anymore. But I do know this—it's not just me. This world… everything we're in… it's about to rewrite itself. From scratch."
He frowned. "That means every world that was stitched into the multiverse could—"
"—break off," she finished. "Or worse. Rewrite us."
The breach widened behind them. It pulsed like a second sun. Remi raised her hand, and with a subtle gesture, she closed the current portal. Not destroyed. Not sealed.
Just edited.
Asher's communicator blared.
Julius, crisp and calm: "Return. Now."
He nodded. "We're on our way."
"Good. The others are waiting. Kairos has something."
At the Archive Citadel, the atmosphere was razor-wired with tension.
Julius stood at the head of the round table—a new one, constructed from salvaged remnants of a hundred universes. It shimmered with code fragments and runic diagrams. Goku leaned against the wall with crossed arms, unusually silent. Madara sat like a blade waiting to be drawn. Kairos had an entire whiteboard filled with unreadable script and broken syntax from languages that had never been allowed to finish existing.
Asher and Remi stepped through the gateway into the war room.
All eyes turned.
Remi's presence changed the air. Not with pressure—but with possibility. She was a new kind of variable. A walking clause in a contract no one remembered signing.
"She's stable," Asher said, quickly. "But she triggered the Rule of Unmaking."
"She didn't just trigger it," Kairos said, eyes wide. "She became it."
Remi said nothing.
Julius nodded slowly. "That matches what we're seeing. The breach zones are evolving. Instead of chaotic rips, they're becoming narrative reclamation points. They're correcting themselves—but not according to their original scripts."
Asher frowned. "Whose, then?"
Goku stepped forward. "Someone—or something—is dictating the rebuild."
Madara's voice was low. "It's the fanbase."
Kairos clarified. "Or what's left of it. The voices from abandoned worlds, unfulfilled arcs, dropped stories—they're merging. Not as readers. Not as writers. As something else entirely."
Julius narrowed his gaze. "As Editors of Oblivion."
The term hit like a bell toll.
Remi flinched.
She didn't like it.
"They're trying to take control," she said quietly.
Julius nodded. "And they're doing it through you. You're the anchor. The vector. The singularity they're funneling through."
Remi stepped away from Asher, eyes wide. "No. No, I didn't mean for this. I only wanted to exist. I just wanted to matter again."
"You do," Goku said. "Too much."
Madara stood. "So what do we do?"
Julius looked around. "We respond in kind."
Kairos blinked. "What?"
"We gather the rest."
"You mean the fallen?"
"No. The unwritten."
The room stilled.
Asher whispered, "You're activating Project Lorecore."
Julius smiled grimly. "We don't have a choice anymore. The fanbase is rewriting the multiverse by willpower alone. Spectra was just the first manifestation. What's coming next isn't a villain—it's an ideology."
He turned to the central console.
"Project Lorecore is a directive to retrieve—and restore—all conceptual heroes that were planned but never used. The ones who never made it into canon. The might-have-beens."
Kairos was already typing furiously.
Madara looked intrigued. "Phantom characters."
"Exactly."
Remi's voice came soft. "You're going to counter forgotten stories… with unborn ones."
"Yes," Julius said. "Because they're still pure. Uninfluenced by expectation. They're potential in its cleanest form."
Asher nodded. "We'll need operatives."
"You'll each lead a team," Julius said. "Remi, you're not exempt."
She blinked. "You still trust me?"
Julius walked over, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"You're the problem," he said. "But you're also the solution."
She closed her eyes.
And nodded.
The multiverse was a strange place on a good day.
But now?
Now it was a quilt being torn from both ends.
Fandoms collided. Abandoned arcs spilled into stable ones. Forgotten heroes wandered aimlessly, confused, reappearing in places they had no memory of. Dead universes started twitching back to life. Genres collided. Sci-fi planets blinked into medieval kingdoms. Cultivation realms overlapped with superhero academies. Slice-of-life towns suddenly had system alerts hovering over school gates.
One realm cracked open to reveal a single throne room—gold, vast, and lined with mirrors. In each mirror stood a version of Madara Uchiha. Not clones. Not echoes. Variants.
The real Madara entered.
He stepped into the room like it was a battlefield.
And it was.
One version of him wielded a Zanpakuto. Another had a Titan's spinal fluid injection coiled around his wrist. A third shimmered with Nen. A fourth stood silent, cloaked in cursed energy. Each one had evolved. Been twisted by different fictions.
And all of them turned toward the original.
As if awaiting orders.
Madara raised his chin.
"You all serve one purpose."
Silence.
"To remind the multiverse… that forgetting a name does not erase a legacy."
He drew his fan.
"Now. We move."
Elsewhere, Julius had entered a frozen pocket of time where the unwritten waited.
The first figure he retrieved was a girl with silver eyes, dressed in a cloak of fragmented script. She blinked up at him. "Is it time?"
He nodded.
Behind him, more appeared.
Some looked like knights. Others like rebels. One bore no face, only a glowing question mark for a head.
They had never existed before.
And yet here they were.
"Welcome to Lorecore," Julius said. "Time to earn your canon."
Back in the Archive Citadel, Remi stood alone on the balcony, watching worlds collapse and reform in the space of seconds. Her hands trembled.
She could still feel it.
The pull.
The temptation.
To rewrite everything.
To fix it all.
To become the author.
Asher joined her quietly.
"You okay?"
"No."
He nodded. "Good."
"Good?"
"Means you're still fighting it."
Remi gave a sad laugh.
Then turned to him.
"What if I lose?"
Asher stared at her.
"Then we rewrite you back."