The Unwritten Realm pulsed around them, its formless expanse stirring as if listening. The Keeper remained motionless, their shadowed form a stark contrast against the shifting nothingness.
Orion clenched his fists. His entire body thrummed with the strange silver energy—an echo of something vast and unknowable buried within him.
A choice.
A path that could not be undone.
He exhaled slowly. "I accept."
The moment the words left his lips, the world shuddered.
Lyra tensed, her fingers brushing against her weapon. The Vault Keeper, who had remained silent until now, let out a deep breath. "So it begins," he murmured.
The Keeper's form flickered, shifting between states of being and non-being. Their outstretched hand glowed with a strange luminescence, tendrils of dark light twisting around it like ink dispersing in water.
"Then let the seal be broken."
A flash of cold fire erupted from their palm, and Orion felt something inside him give way.
Pain lanced through his skull—not physical, but something deeper, something that dug into the fabric of his existence.
Visions flooded his mind.
A great spiral of collapsing stars, devouring themselves into oblivion.
A being of shifting form, watching with eyes that burned without light.
A whisper that was not a voice, speaking from the edges of time.
"Awaken."
Orion gasped, his body seizing as the power uncoiled within him. He fell to his knees, the Unwritten Realm pulsing beneath him like a living thing. His veins burned silver. His breath came in ragged bursts.
And then—
The pain stopped.
Orion looked up.
The Keeper was still there, but the realm around them had changed. The formless expanse now crackled with energy, threads of light weaving through the void like the strands of a tapestry.
"You are bound now," the Keeper intoned. "The Unwritten will recognize you as its own."
Orion staggered to his feet. The silver glow beneath his skin had settled, no longer wild but contained. Controlled.
He could feel it now.
Not just a force within him, but a presence. A part of something far greater than himself.
Lyra stepped closer, concern flickering in her gaze. "Are you alright?"
Orion swallowed, nodding. "Yeah. I think so."
The Vault Keeper studied him for a long moment. "Then the path forward has changed."
The Keeper turned, their form beginning to fade into the shifting void. "You will come to understand in time. But beware—"
The space around them began to collapse inward, reality folding upon itself.
"The Unwritten does not grant gifts without a cost."
And with that, the Keeper was gone.
Orion felt the world lurch beneath his feet, and before he could react—
The realm shattered.
A rush of light and shadow engulfed them.
And the next thing he knew—
They were falling.