The moment Orion bit into the fruit, the orchard surged—not with light, but with becoming. Every branch quivered. Every tree unfurled its roots into time and memory, threading through the broken seams of the multiverse.
And outside, the Nameless King screamed.
Not in pain.
In confusion.
It could not understand what was happening. For it had written all endings. Calculated all choices. It had scripted the fall of stars, the failure of heroes, the silence after all songs.
But it had never accounted for growth.
Not like this.
Kael gripped his head. "Do you feel that? Everything's shifting."
Lyra gasped. "It's not reality changing. We are."
Orion hovered above the ground now. His skin shimmered—not with power, but with memory made manifest. He could feel every thread of the paths they didn't take. Could touch the roots of every version of themselves that ever might have been. And all of them… were reaching.
Toward something beyond the god.
The orchard had become a network—a breathing, branching answer to the Nameless King's finality.
Caldrein smiled. "This is the multiverse rebelling."
"No," Orion whispered. "This is the multiverse remembering it was alive."
The Nameless King appeared at the edge of the orchard.
Colossal.
Unknowable.
Its eyes a storm of entropy. Its hands sculpting collapse.
"You will not survive me," it said.
Orion stepped forward. "We won't have to."
He raised a hand.
And from the orchard's heart, the memories bloomed—rising like blossoms of defiance. They wove around the Nameless King, not to destroy, but to teach. Each memory was a question. Each possibility a contradiction.
The god, bound by certainty, began to fracture.
"What is this?" it boomed.
"Everything you refused to become," Lyra said, stepping beside Orion. "Everything you tried to lock away."
"You are chaos!"
Kael laughed. "No. We're change."
The Nameless King's form shuddered.
And cracked.
And in its fall, a billion forgotten stories were freed.