Wang Chuan stood before the "Scroll of All That Is," a chill of dread creeping slowly up his spine. It was not a coldness of temperature, but the tremor of existence being negated. The script describing the "Primordial Divinity" continued to fade upon the page, like ink dissolving in water, and he, the master of the universe's memory, was powerless to stop it.
"This is not an attack," he murmured, his voice echoing in the vast, empty library. "It is a... recession. As if the universe itself is losing its long-term memory."
Meanwhile, Wang You attempted to channel his authority to forge an unprecedented artifact—a device capable of measuring the very density of "Meaning." Divine power surged within his grasp, yet at the very moment he sought to give it form, it shattered against an invisible wall, dissolving into nothingness.
He stared at his empty hands, a profound confusion giving way to a colder, more solid understanding. The rules had not changed. The framework held. But the raw, boundless potential from which all creation sprang was... diminishing. It was like a well, once thought bottomless, now revealing its bedrock.
"They are connected," Wang You's voice, tight with revelation, resonated directly in Wang Chuan's consciousness, bypassing physical space. "The fading of the memory and the hardening of reality. We were looking for an enemy, a flaw in the system. There is none."
A long silence stretched between them, a chasm of dawning horror.
Wang Chuan finally replied, his mental voice barely a whisper. "Then what are we facing?"
"The consequence," Wang You's thought returned, sharp and clear as a shard of ice. "The consequence of a debt we did not know we carried. We balanced the cosmic ledgers, but we failed to account for the interest. The interest on the silence we left in our wake."
In the void between stars, a forgotten constellation winked out of existence. Not with an explosion, but with a sigh. No one noticed. No one remembered it had ever been there.
The Beginning of Forgetting had commenced.