The Return of the Unremembered

The Rift was quiet.

Too quiet.

Kael stood at the edge of the Celestial Scar, a tear in time sealed long ago—so long that most had forgotten it existed. Yet tonight, under a sky lit with three unfamiliar moons and stars whispering like voices across dimensions, it began to pulse again.

Aeris stood beside him, fingers entwined with his. Her breath misted despite the warmth, and her eyes flicked toward the sky. "Do you hear that?"

He nodded slowly.It wasn't a sound, exactly.It was a memory returning.

Back at the Sanctum of Living Tomorrows, Dray was unspooling layers of time-thread, reading echoes like a composer reading notes from fire. He had been different since Kael's split. Quieter. More reverent. As if he now understood how fragile even the strongest souls could be.

Then, suddenly, he froze.

His hand hovered over a glyph pulsing crimson and gold.

A voice—ragged, desperate—broke through the stillness:

"...this is Lyra. If anyone hears this—he's still alive. Null never died. He's becoming something worse. Please. Don't trust the light."

Dray's breath hitched. "Lyra...?"

A name no one had spoken in four books.

A name the universe had forgotten on purpose.

Lyra.She had been a ripple in Book 1, a faint echo in Kael's visions. A time-shifter who vanished before Null's rise, erased by a force older than paradox. Her fate had been sealed when she chose to trap herself between seconds—too dangerous, too powerful, too knowing.

Everyone assumed she was gone.

But the message was less than a day old.

Kael and Aeris returned as Dray replayed the final fragment.

"The Aeon Mirror was only one half. The other is waking. He's calling himself Eidolon now. He doesn't just rewrite fate—he devours meaning."

"He'll wear the face of someone you trust. Someone who died. And if he speaks your name—you'll forget who you are."

"Don't let him reach The Hushed Library. That's where the Word of Undoing sleeps. If he finds it... not even love will survive him."

The glyph burst into flames.

Silence held the room.

Then Aeris murmured, "She was always outside the script… even the timelines feared her."

Dray turned to them, his eyes hollow with realization."Eidolon… he's not just another villain. He is the story."

Kael's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Dray stepped back and revealed a hidden chamber beneath the Sanctum—walls etched with script that rewrote itself as they looked.

"This is not just a continuation," Dray whispered."This is a rewrite war."

Suddenly, the room chilled. The flames in the lamps dimmed. One by one, the shadows on the walls began to stand.

Kael drew his blade. Aeris summoned her inner light. But it wasn't an enemy who stepped through the portal that opened midair—

—it was Vaelen.

Still masked. Still impossible. Still… dead.

But his presence didn't radiate malice this time.It radiated warning.

He removed his mask.

And beneath it… was Kael.

But older.

Grayer.

And crying.

"Eidolon is me," he said.

"But from a timeline where you chose wrong. Where you lost Aeris. Where you tried to rewrite her. That version of you… it found the Word of Undoing."

Aeris stumbled back.Kael stared in stunned silence.

"And now," said the older Kael—Vaelen no more—"he's coming. And if we don't stop him…"

He looked to Aeris.

"He'll overwrite you."

Outside, the stars began to blink out, one by one.

And the sky whispered a name Aeris had sworn no one else would ever know—

"Aeylith."

Her true name.

The one she burned from the timeline to be free.