The moment Vaelor stepped forward, the world shattered.
It did not break like glass, nor did it fold like paper. It came apart in strands, dissolving into golden filaments that unraveled around him. Reality itself was fraying, and for the first time, Vaelor understood why the Divine Council had rewritten history rather than merely destroying it.
To erase something completely, one had to first unmake its past.
The air twisted, bending into a corridor of shifting light and void. Every step pulled him deeper into the unknown, his body weightless, his mind adrift between the echoes of what was and the whispers of what could be. The Unshackled Codex burned in his hands, its pages flickering through time, as if sensing the threshold he had crossed.
Then, suddenly—
A voice.
Not the voice of the figure from before. Not the whispers of the book. Something else. Something vast.
"Who dares unravel the first thread?"
The corridor collapsed around him.
Vaelor hit the ground hard, breath knocking from his lungs. The scent of dust and parchment filled his senses. He was no longer in the ruins of Velmora. No longer in the timeless corridor.
He was somewhere else entirely.
A grand chamber loomed before him, stretching endlessly in all directions. Towering stone monoliths stood in a perfect circle, each etched with symbols older than written language itself. The air thrummed with power, resonating with unseen forces. The shadows cast by the monoliths did not move with the flickering torchlight. Instead, they bent unnaturally, as though resisting the rules of reality.
At the heart of the chamber—
A throne.
But not a throne of gold, nor iron. It was built of shifting words, sentences unraveling and reforming, rewriting themselves in endless succession. The very concept of authority made manifest.
And upon it sat a being draped in shadowed regalia, their face obscured beneath a crown of ink-black filigree. Their presence was absolute. A weight upon the fabric of existence itself.
Vaelor did not need an introduction.
This was no Warden of Fate.
This was the Arbiter of Unmaking.
The one who had first wielded the power to erase history.
"You have broken the first seal," the Arbiter spoke, their voice layered with centuries of judgment, as though every sentence ever decreed was carried within their words. "You stand upon the precipice of forbidden knowledge, mortal."
Vaelor forced himself to stand. His legs felt weak beneath him, but he would not kneel. Not here.
"You speak as if I have already lost," he said, steadying himself.
The Arbiter exhaled, and the chamber trembled. The shifting throne behind them flickered, its form distorting as words bled into one another.
"You have yet to understand what you have begun," they said. "The Council does not fear defiance. They fear what comes after."
The Unshackled Codex pulsed in his grasp, reacting to the presence of the Arbiter.
Vaelor narrowed his gaze. "You mean choice. Free will."
The Arbiter's form flickered, as if the very concept of their existence resisted the words.
"Free will is an illusion," they said. "Every action is dictated by what came before it. History is not a river—it is a decree. That is why the Divine Council exists. To shape the flow, to ensure the story does not fracture into chaos."
Vaelor felt the weight of those words press against him.
If history was not a river, but a decree—then everything, every event, every moment had been written before it occurred. The war that had shaped his homeland. The fall of entire kingdoms. Even his decision to steal the Codex.
He clenched his jaw.
"And yet, Velmora existed once. Until you erased it."
The Arbiter did not move.
"Velmora defied its place in the decree," they said. "It sought to write its own history, to unshackle the world from fate. And so, the Council corrected it."
"Corrected it?" Vaelor snapped. "You mean erased it. Wiped it from memory, from time itself."
The Arbiter inclined their head.
"As we will do to you."
The monoliths around them shuddered. The words upon the throne burned, shifting into new sentences, new commands.
The Writ of Unmaking had begun.
Vaelor's grip tightened around the Codex.
If they erased him here, there would be no escape. He would not merely die—he would be unwritten. The choices he had made would vanish. The resistance he had sparked would never have existed.
And yet—
Something stirred within the Codex.
A word.
A fragment of something ancient, something older than even the Arbiter's decree.
The First Name.
Vaelor did not know how he knew it, only that it had been waiting for him. Hidden within the stolen Codex. A truth that had been buried beyond memory.
His lips parted, the word rising unbidden—
"I name you."
The Arbiter's form seized. The monoliths cracked. The air itself recoiled.
Vaelor did not hesitate.
"You who sit upon the throne of unmaking. You who decree the loss of history. I name you."
The Codex pulsed.
And then—
He spoke the name.
The Arbiter staggered. The words upon the throne convulsed, unraveling in waves of golden light. For the first time, their presence faltered.
Vaelor felt the shift in the air, the weight of something vast and forbidden peeling away.
To name something was to define it.
To define something was to make it part of history.
And history could not be unmade if it had already been written.
The Arbiter's voice fractured, distorted with raw power.
"You dare—"
Vaelor did not let them finish.
He spoke the name again.
The chamber ruptured. The monoliths fractured, their inscriptions vanishing into empty voids. The throne of words collapsed, its authority unraveling into dust.
The Arbiter's form flickered wildly, caught between existence and nothingness. Their power, their decree, their very presence—
Undone.
Vaelor stood at the heart of the storm, watching as the great Writ of Unmaking—
collapsed upon itself.
And then—
Darkness.
A moment of absolute silence.
And a whisper.
Not from the Arbiter. Not from the Codex.
From something beyond.
"You have done what should not be done. The Second Seal has been broken."
Vaelor's pulse thundered in his ears.
He had won.
And yet, something told him—
The true battle had only just begun.