The silence inside that protected room felt like a refuge, but also a glass prison. Outside, the purple mist swirled relentlessly, as if the world itself were trying to erase everything.
Kharos closed the door with a sharp thud and looked at me, his eyes sunken and his expression grave.
—You need to understand what it means to break a thread, he said, his voice almost a whisper. Every time you use your Authority to change something, you alter not only the present but also the very fabric of time and reality.
I opened the book and observed the pages, which had once seemed infinite, but now had a marked limit: invisible lines that fractured and reformed with every word written.
—If a thread breaks, he continued, the reality it supports can collapse. Small changes can cause catastrophes.
—Catastrophes? I asked, my heart racing. What kind?
Kharos turned toward a window overlooking the city beneath the purple dome. There, the lights in one section began to flicker erratically, and a faint tremor shook the streets.
—Like this, he said. That flicker is a continuity error. A broken thread.
The clock in my book showed that the remaining thread time had decreased significantly since the encounter with the Reaper.
—How do I fix it? I asked, desperate. Can I rewrite the part that failed?
—It's not that simple, he replied. Not all lines can be restored. Some can only be replaced… or erased forever.
Suddenly, an alarm resonated through the room, a low, continuous hum.
—That means there's another rupture, and this time… closer to here.
Kharos led me toward the door. Before stepping out, he took a dagger that looked ancient, its runes glowing with a cold light.
—We'll have to see what's happening, he said. If we don't act quickly, reality will begin to unravel here as well.
As we walked toward the source of the alarm, I felt how every word I had written, every minute spent, brought me closer to an unknown and terrifying fate.
The truth was that in this world, which seemed a mix of nightmare and memory, the line between creating and destroying was thinner than a thread.
And I was beginning to learn just how fragile that thread really was…