The light surged from Steven's chest as he was flung back into the waking world—back into the forest, where the trees had fallen silent. Atheron stood waiting, his cloak billowing, eyes fixed on the sky where cracks of pure black split the clouds.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Atheron asked, his voice quieter than before.
Steven nodded, his expression changed. He looked older—not in years, but in depth. "I'm not just casting magic anymore. I am magic now. Or… something beyond it."
Atheron stepped forward slowly, examining the glow still coursing through Steven's veins like golden lightning. "You've awakened as a Rewriter. The First Ones feared your kind. Even now, remnants of their judgment still echo in this realm."
Steven turned his gaze to the horizon, where thunder rolled over the mountains. "Let them echo. I'm not here to be feared. I'm here to end this."
Before Atheron could speak again, a high-pitched whine cracked through the air.
A rift opened mid-sky, unnatural and jagged. From it descended a massive creature—twisted like bone and smoke, its mouth stitched shut by runes. Around its neck hung fragments of broken universes. The sky bled where it walked.
"The second Harbinger," Atheron growled, unsheathing his blade. "The Mouthless One. A voice of the Absence given flesh."
Steven raised his staff. But as the Codex flared, he didn't speak an incantation. He wrote one.
Words formed in the air around him—runes that bent gravity, light, sound.
"Let reality remember," Steven whispered. "Let it obey me now."
The runes spun and sank into his staff.
He struck the ground.
A wave of golden-blue energy erupted like a quake, freezing time around the creature for a heartbeat.
But the Harbinger moved through it—breaking the spell as if it were smoke.
Atheron cursed. "It's adapted. The Absence is learning your magic."
Steven gritted his teeth. "Then let it learn pain."
He opened the Codex and for the first time—wrote his own spell.
He penned a command:
"Unmake the silence."
A symbol no being had ever seen before ignited mid-air.
The Mouthless One screeched—not with sound, but with the memory of sound—until its form fractured and collapsed into dust, scattered by the same wind that had once carried prophecy.
Atheron stood speechless.
Steven lowered his hand. "That was just me learning to write. Imagine when I rewrite."
Above them, the sky tore open again—this time revealing a thousand eyes watching from beyond.
The Absence wasn't retreating.
It was awakening.
---
To be continued