The castle had no clocks. No sun. No nightfall. Only turning pages and the breath of old wood.
Aoto had stopped counting how long he'd been inside.
Books lay open on tables, floors, stairwells. Scrolls pinned between branches. Maps carved into bone. Journals rotting with inked madness. He read them all.
He did not eat much. He did not sleep.
Only moved from one tome to another, tracing the logic of broken gods and sunkillers, of looping systems and deathless echoes.
"Mogrel: Unnamed Class. Appears at edge-of-system failsafes. Anti-structure. Not to be defined. Not to be watched. Avoid."
Aoto read deeper.
"When Mogrel runs, it reorders causality. When it watches, time bends. It leaves glassed biomes and inverted thermals. Survivors don't remain whole."
He copied diagrams onto walls with sap-ink.
"I saw it once," he whispered. "It looked at me."
He didn't know who he was speaking to. Himself, maybe. Or the books.
The Queen found him hours—days— later, kneeling before a diagram made of hundreds of ripped pages, arranged in a spiral. Notes filled every margin. Equations in ink.
She stood in her full form, elegant and ageless.
"Enough."
He didn't turn.
"You've read the castle dry. You've bent your body beyond what it can hold. If this was a test, you've passed it."
"Walk away now. Walk away human."
No answer.
"I gave you silence, Aoto. I gave you freedom. Don't step past this. Don't chase gods."
Still silence.
She stepped forward, trying to meet his eyes.
"Why Mogrel? Why that?"
"You think knowledge makes you a match for a sun?"
Aoto stood up.
No anger.
No drama.
Just a motion like gravity had changed.
He raised his hand.
Light flared.
Green veins lit the air.
The Queen gasped—her body convulsing mid-sentence, twisting downward into a coil of fur and motion.
She landed softly. Four paws. Tail flicking.
Eyes now the same—emerald and furious.
"You didn't."
"You actually—"
Aoto crouched. Tied his bag shut.
"You talk less this way."
"Also, you won't be able to run."
The gates of the castle opened without a command. Vines pulled away from rotted hinges. The air beyond was jagged—tinted gold and red, stained with heat and memory.
Aoto stepped forward.
The cat padded after him, reluctant but bound.
Outside, the sky cracked open in five places.
The horizon glowed like a furnace buried in sand.
Ash swirled in air currents too still to feel.
The Queen leapt onto his shoulder and dug her claws in, hissing.
"Where are we going?"
Aoto adjusted the strap of the obsidian blade on his back.
Then he answered—flat, clear, final:
"I'm going to kill Mogrel."
"The Sun Beast."
Silence fell.
Even the wind paused.
The Queen stared at him, wide-eyed. Her ears lowered slightly. Her pupils were huge and full of memory.
"…You're serious."
"You're actually serious."
He stepped out into the biome.
Glass cracked beneath his boots. The air thickened. Far in the distance, thunder curled around something running.
The System did not chime.
It was watching.
And waiting.