The dawn that followed was not like any before it.
No sun rose.
Instead, light filtered across the horizon like the breath of a newborn cosmos—soft, uncertain, and pure. Like the world was holding its breath, relearning how to exist. This wasn't just the aftermath of a battle—it was the birth of something unknown.
The recursion had shattered.
Time no longer ticked by the rules of the Architects. The system that had controlled fate like a puppet master had been slain. And Valerian… he stood alone at the heart of the Veil, breathing in the silence.
His body still pulsed with the echoes of the Godless—the weight of his alternate selves, the lives they had lived, the deaths they had endured, the regrets they carried. All of them had bled into him. Once, they would have crushed him beneath their burden.
Now? They were no longer chains. They were foundation.
Behind him, the others began to stir.
