The story spread like wildfire.
Not spoken in markets. Not shouted in crowds. Just written—coded in etched stones, flickers in the Weave, strange patterns in the air that only Learners could read.
A Bearer had broken a divine envoy.
A Myth-tier Talent had walked away from her house.
A godless ruin had awakened after centuries of sleep.
It was a fracture in the world.
And the cracks were spreading.
---
Back at Drellem's Gate, Kael stood atop the sanctuary's tower. He'd reconstructed the outer Weave barrier, not as a wall—but as a lens, bending and filtering divine energy to give him a better understanding of its limits.
He had no sword. No armor.
Just a slate, a stylus, and a mind burning like a forge.
Below, Lyssa sparred with an automaton he'd reactivated—a centuries-old training machine that adapted its form to the opponent's fighting style. She danced through the air, her blade flashing faster with every strike, sweat glowing along her skin from the excess Weave coursing through her.
But she wasn't reckless.
She was controlled.
Focused.
And terrifyingly elegant.
Kael watched her, then turned back to his slate, continuing the formula he'd started the night before.
A question was forming.
One that had haunted him since the envoy fled.
> If gods can be rewritten… what were they before they became divine?
He didn't have the answer yet.
But he would.
---
Miles away, at the capital's highest tower, House Virelen sat in cold fury.
Lyssa's mother, High Matron Velra Virelen, stared at the broken seal that once bonded Lyssa to her lineage. Her fingers were draped in rings etched with flame runes, her crown of glass glowing dimly from reduced Weave flow.
"Find her," she said.
"Shall we alert the God-Summoners?" her steward asked.
"No," Velra said sharply. "If the gods aren't speaking, we force them to listen."
She turned toward the burning mural at the far wall—a depiction of their family's ascension by divine decree. It shimmered with living Weave.
"She's not acting alone. She's following someone."
Her eyes narrowed.
"And I want his name."
---
Back in Drellem's Gate, Kael activated the Archive again.
This time, it didn't show images.
It showed records.
Each one a profile. Of Learners. Of Talents who defected. Of weapons never completed. Of logic-based constructs that could rival divine beings in specialized domains.
And at the center—an unfinished project.
Labeled only: "SILENCE BREAKER."
Kael touched the glyph.
The stone beneath his feet sank, revealing a staircase.
Lyssa appeared beside him before he could descend alone.
"You weren't going to wait for me?"
"I didn't think you'd want to come."
"You're wrong," she said simply.
So they went together.
Below, they found something that shouldn't exist.
A machine the size of a cathedral organ, suspended by gravity-wells and crystal spires. At its core: a heart-like node, pulsing with fragmented code and quantum fragments of Essence.
It wasn't designed to kill.
It was designed to question.
A signal that pierced through divine compression fields.
A logic wave that asked gods: What are you afraid of?
Kael touched it.
And the node responded.
> WARNING: Completion will initiate unfiltered broadcast across divine strata. Risk: existential. Gain: unknown. Proceed?
Kael didn't hesitate.
"Yes."
Lyssa's voice was barely a whisper. "What have you just done?"
He looked up at her.
"I just rang the bell they hoped we'd never find."
---
Far above, in a realm beyond time, something turned its eye.
The gods had not spoken in decades.
But now, a question had reached them.
A signal they could not ignore.
And deep beneath Drellem's Gate, the Silence Breaker began to hum.