There were no crows, no wind, not even the whisper of trees. Only a heavy void, as if the world were holding its breath.
We had crossed the boundaries of Eclipsia's known domains. And yet, what we felt was familiar… too familiar. The air tasted like déjà vu.
"Do you feel that?" Sera asked, her voice softer than usual.
"I don't feel it. I remember it," I replied.
What stretched out before us wasn't a physical place. It was a fold, a wrinkle in the world's narrative. The landscape seemed fractured: houses floating over inverted roots, lanterns that cried liquid light, faceless statues pointing to the sky. A space the system had never finished writing.
"This is where it started to unravel," I murmured. "This is where I rewrote something I shouldn't have."
Sera looked at me, a mix of fear and understanding in her eyes.
"What did you change?"
"I was supposed to die in Chapter 12. I knew it. I saw it. That cave… that collapse. Everything pointed to it. But I survived. Because you healed me. Because I chose to live."
"You think that created the Shadowless Man?"
"I don't just think it. I remember it."
The shadows trembled. Not because something approached, but because something had always been there. Watching. Waiting.
---
A voice emerged, soft and ancient. It had no echo. It didn't need one.
"You are rebellious fiction."
Sera raised her spells, but there was no target. The Shadowless Man had no shape. Only a broken outline blinking between narrative lines like something that lived in the margins.
"It's not a monster. It's an error with awareness," I said, more to myself than to her.
The voice spoke again.
"When you changed the script, I was born. I am what was omitted. The price of divergence. The residue that could not be erased."
"What do you want?" Sera asked, still on guard.
"I want the world to go on as written. I want you to die… as you were meant to."
---
The ground opened beneath us. Not with fire, but with scenes: fragments rising like broken mirrors. The first time Sera cried. The first lie I told. The first time I killed without remorse.
Each distorted memory crawled forward like it demanded judgment.
But I didn't kneel.
"And if we don't?" I challenged. "What happens if we keep fixing what was badly written?"
The outline trembled. For a second, it looked more human. Almost… hurt.
"Then I will cease to be. And the world will too."
---
And in that moment, I understood something terrifying.
The Shadowless Man wasn't a villain.
He was the seal preventing the world from collapsing under its own contradictions.
Killing him… might save us. Or destroy what's left.
And it was no longer easy to tell which was which.