The air is thick with unspoken truths.
Between us, the ruins of Ehwaz Hill loom, their shadows stretching beneath the moonlight. The old stone, worn and broken, feels witness to something it should not hear.
Edan stands before us, arms crossed, the light of a dying torch flickering across his sharp features.
His mind is spinning, I can see it—the way his gaze flickers, the way his weight shifts between his feet.
He is standing at the edge of understanding, the point where one must either step forward or turn away.
And yet—
"You're telling me just enough to keep me from walking away," he mutters. "But not enough to make me understand."
Elias exhales a slow breath. "You're not wrong."
I watch Edan's fists clench, his knuckles pale against the cold night air.
"You think I won't understand?" he snaps. "That I haven't spent my life chasing answers people said didn't exist? You think I haven't been called insane for believing history is a lie?"
I glance at Elias.
He doesn't smirk this time.
Because this is different.
Because Edan—unlike the others we've met—is not a man who will stop searching just because it's inconvenient.
And that makes him both an ally and a threat.
——
Elias shifts slightly, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Alright, let's test something then."
Edan glares. "What?"
Elias tilts his head, watching him carefully.
"Let's pretend we're having a normal discussion between a scholar and an anomaly. If I were to tell you that the world you're standing in—this world, your world—is just a fragment of something larger, what would you say?"
Edan stills.
It is a fraction of a moment, but I see it.
The flicker in his expression.
The second where his mind recognizes the shape of the thought before rejecting it.
He exhales sharply, running a hand over his face.
"That's insane."
Elias grins, but it's sharp, amused. "Is it?"
Edan scowls. "If you're implying that our world is some kind of—what? A false existence? A construct? That's ridiculous."
I speak for the first time.
"Why?"
Edan turns to me, startled.
I hold his gaze, searching his expression. "Why is it ridiculous?"
His lips part, but no words come.
Because there is no answer.
Because he does not know.
Because everything he has seen—everything he has studied, uncovered, doubted, lost sleep over—has already made him question the foundation of his reality.
And we have just given him a door he does not want to walk through.
——
Elias watches him for a long moment, then sighs. "Look, I get it. It's easier to think we're messing with you. That we're lying, or manipulating you, or that we just don't know what we're talking about."
He leans forward slightly, his voice lower now.
"But what if we aren't?"
Edan's breathing is steady, but I see the way his jaw tightens.
Elias tilts his head, watching him. "You said it yourself. There are ruins that don't match any known civilization. Artifacts that shouldn't exist. Theories that don't make sense no matter how you try to piece them together. And now, here we are."
A pause.
Then—
"What if we're proof that everything you've suspected is true?"
——
The night stretches between us.
Edan's shoulders tense, his fingers twitching slightly.
He wants to deny it.
To reject the implications.
Because if he accepts this—if he accepts that this world is not what it seems, that we are not what we seem—
Then everything he has ever believed is wrong.
Everything he has ever studied, pursued, uncovered—
A lie.
——
His voice is quiet when he finally speaks.
"Are you saying… that you don't belong here?"
Elias smiles, but it is tired.
"I'm saying that maybe the world itself doesn't belong here."
——
A shiver runs through me.
Because I feel it too.
The sense of wrongness in the air, the way things do not quite fit, the way the Black Spirits whisper things they should not know.
And Edan—
I see it in his eyes.
The moment he accepts it.
Not completely.
Not entirely.
But enough.
Enough to realise that he is standing before something far larger than he ever imagined.
And there is no turning back.