The silence after the collapse of the ink-dome was vast.
Not empty—listening.
The memory wall had vanished, its loop ended. The false bridge had dissolved into a pool of curling script, dispersing like fog under sunlight. But something lingered in the air—an unfinished question.
Kaero stood still.
His hands hung loose at his sides, his eyes locked not on Aouli, but on the space where the memory had once replayed. He didn't speak.
His grief hadn't vanished.
But the grip of it had loosened.
Aouli stood beside him, his chest still faintly glowing from the sentence he had written in light. He felt different. Not drained. Not emboldened. Something quieter: a shift inside him, like a key turning in an old, rusted lock.
For the first time, he had shaped the Inklands.
Not by memory.
By mercy.
And it had worked.
Behind them, the still air folded back like a curtain, and Veriss stepped into view.
The Echo's long runed robe trailed across the ash without disturbing a single grain. His hands were folded. His face was unreadable beneath the shifting shadow of his cowl.
"You disobeyed the rules," Veriss said.
Aouli turned, meeting the Echo's gaze without flinching.
"I wrote the truth."
"Not yours."
A moment passed.
Aouli looked back at Kaero, who hadn't moved.
"No," he said quietly. "But I carried it long enough to tell it."
Veriss was silent for a long moment.
Then he approached slowly, the runes along his robe flickering.
"You used light to bind story. That is a dangerous transgression."
Aouli frowned. "Why? Because I didn't use ink?"
"Because ink remembers," Veriss said. "Light changes. Light burns, reshapes, overwrites."
"I wasn't rewriting Kaero's memory," Aouli said. "I was rescuing him from it."
Veriss paused a breath.
Then: "You believe the line between rescue and revision is so easily drawn?"
Aouli stepped forward.
"I don't care if I broke your rule. I won't let my story exist while his is buried beneath it."
Veriss's hands slowly unfolded.
The air grew heavier.
The black river surrounding them pulsed with agitation—swelling as if the ink itself bristled at Aouli's defiance.
"You are Gaia's seed-bearer," Veriss said, his voice now edged with iron. "You carry more than light. You carry legacy. Rewriting what is not yours may corrupt that purpose."
Aouli looked down at his hand.
The glow was gone now, but the warmth remained.
"Then maybe it's time her legacy changed."
Veriss tilted his head slightly.
And for the first time, the runes on his robes slowed.
The pulsing river calmed.
The Echo stepped forward.
He reached into the sleeve of his robe and withdrew a small object: a seed.
Black. Matte. Without shine.
It looked like obsidian carved into a teardrop.
Aouli's breath caught.
"This is not Gaia's," Veriss said. "This is the seed of Forgotten Things. Of stories abandoned. Of memories no longer grieved. Of truths no one was allowed to tell."
He placed it in Aouli's palm.
It was cold. Colder than anything Aouli had ever held. But it did not feel dead. It felt... waiting.
"What do I do with it?" Aouli asked.
"When you are ready," Veriss said, "plant it where truth has died."
Kaero, finally breaking his silence, stepped forward. His voice was raw.
"What happens if it grows?"
Veriss looked at him.
And—for the first time—his voice was not that of a keeper.
It was that of someone guilty.
"Then perhaps I may be forgiven."
A beat of stillness.
Then Veriss turned.
The ink river receded.
The ash no longer whispered.
The sky above them began to crack—not break, but peel, like ink drying on too-old parchment.
"The Inklands cannot host you longer," Veriss said. "You have rewritten a moment. The archive must realign."
The world began to fold in on itself.
Kaero stepped beside Aouli.
"Let's go."
Aouli looked at the black seed.
Then he looked at the tome.
Still unfinished.
He tucked both carefully into his satchel.
And followed Kaero into the unraveling edge of the Inklands.
Behind them, Veriss watched as the last sentence Aouli had written—etched in light, not ink—glimmered across the open sky:
This memory belongs to grief. But so does the future.