For the first time in all of creation, the Hollow Deep did not tremble from fear. It trembled from uncertainty.
Tyrnex stirred—not with rage or hunger but with disorientation.
The obsidian chains that once pulsed with hatred now glowed with a pale, bluish light. They did not hold him in punishment, but in balance. His monstrous form—shifting and without end—had begun to stabilize.
He was… changing.
Above the shifting depths of his prison, Kael appeared in a beam of soft gold and silver light, the Thread of Origin still glowing faintly around his wrist like a tether to cosmic law.
Lyra and Valen arrived seconds later, materializing behind him, weapons ready—though even they could feel the difference in the air.
The malice was gone.
But so was the silence.
The enormous, flickering eyes of Tyrnex blinked open, now a shade of twilight blue rather than void black. His voice, when it came, was not the growl of madness—it was clarity wrapped in awe.
"What have you done to me, Starborn?"
Kael hovered above the Hollow King, his expression steady.
"I didn't destroy you," he said. "I redefined you. You were erosion incarnate, destruction without reason. Now, you're structure. You hold the ends of threads together, instead of tearing them apart."
Tyrnex flexed one clawed hand—now half-corporeal, half-light. His form no longer devoured, but wove. The chaotic mass of his body condensed into something almost humanoid—a towering being of shifting armor and coalesced cosmic strands.
"You... changed my purpose," Tyrnex said slowly, in disbelief. "That should be impossible."
Kael descended, standing at the edge of the abyss.
"I touched the Thread of Origin," he said. "I reached the truth beyond truth. You weren't created to destroy. You were made to end things when their time had truly come. But your thread was tangled, corrupted. Now, you're no longer a threat."
Tyrnex stared at him, voice quieter now.
"Then what am I?"
Kael held out his hand.
"A guardian. A watcher at the end of time. A force of mercy, not malice."
The Hollow King hesitated.
Then, slowly—he took Kael's hand.
For the first time since the dawn of reality, Tyrnex bowed.
"I accept this new role."
Light surged from the Hollow Deep, illuminating the entire continent. The mountains no longer groaned, the skies no longer dimmed. Tyrnex—once the greatest threat the universe had ever known—was now a keeper of fate, bound to guide instead of consume.
Valen let out a long breath. "You… actually did it."
Kael nodded. "For now. But we're not done."
Lyra stepped beside him. "What could possibly come after rewriting a cosmic god?"
Kael's gaze turned upward—to a rift forming silently in the sky. Faint, almost imperceptible… but growing.
"Something noticed the change."
Tyrnex's voice rumbled beside them.
"Yes. You've altered the weave. And now... the Weavers will come."
Kael's eyes narrowed.
"Then let them come."
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