It began with a sentence that never belonged.
Not a lie. Not quite.
Just… a word out of place. A name turned slightly wrong. A sigh that sounded like a scream when read from the wrong angle.
Darius stood at the edge of a memory that wasn't his. His hand brushed the Codex's pages—no longer skin, but something like burning vellum laced with phonemes that bled when touched.
The page read:
> "Celestia was never loyal."
And then the Codex spasmed.
Not in pain, but confusion.
Reality around him shuddered with misremembered fidelity—fractal echo-loops of events he'd lived now returning incorrectly.
He remembered holding Celestia's oath beneath the Starlight Sepulcher. He remembered the tremble of her fingers as she said his name, naked and glowing with soulfire.
But the Codex now showed her kneeling before another.
Not him.
Not even a man.
Just a figure wreathed in static, a false god with no face, holding her chains made of scripture and shame.
