The fracture lines were spreading.
He could feel them—hairline cracks not in the ground, but in the very concept of reality. Something pressed in from beyond, not with force, but with denial. As if the world itself was being told it had never existed.
It started in the sky.
One by one, the stars blinked out—not dimmed, not collapsed, but unwritten.
Aiden exhaled.
They were here again.
The Outer Gods.
And this time, they did not descend as monsters or minds. They came as undoing—a chorus of negation echoing through space and time.
Aiden clenched his fist.
He had faced the Thought That Never Was.
He had touched the Before-God.
But this… this was different.
These invaders weren't trying to kill him.
They were trying to erase the possibility that he could have ever been born.
The sky screamed.
Reality folded in on itself, rippling like a memory misremembered.
Aiden moved.
