They walked for an hour before anyone spoke.
The Weald had changed. Not in appearance—the trees were still ancient, the moss still thick, the light still falling in broken shards. But the quality of its attention had shifted. Less like a predator sizing up prey. More like a warden watching a prisoner who had somehow obtained keys.
Sai Ji felt it in the Thorn-Rose Mark. A constant low hum. Not warning. Not welcome. Acknowledgment.
The Sovereign Fragment burned in his palm.
Small. Unremarkable. The color of old bone. But every few minutes, it pulsed—a heartbeat that didn't match his own, didn't match the forest's, didn't match anything living.
Lura walked close. Closer than usual. She hadn't spoken since the arena, but she didn't need to. Her presence beside him was its own language: I'm here. I'm not disappearing again. I'm here.
Fern, however, had reached his limit.
He stopped mid-stride. His shield hit the moss with a thud that scattered nearby birds.
"Sai Ji."
Sai Ji kept walking.
"Sai Ji."
Still walking.
"SAI—"
"I heard you the first time."
Fern's jaw tightened. He moved fast for a tank—caught up, stepped in front, blocked the path. His eyes were hard. Not angry. Scared.
"That thing knelt to you."
Sai Ji met his gaze. Said nothing.
"Not attacked. Not retreated. Knelt. Like you were—" Fern stopped. Swallowed. "Like you were something it recognized."
Behind them, the others had stopped too. Nyx leaned against a moss-covered pillar, pretending disinterest. Aeliana's diagnostics flickered nervously around her gauntlets. Midnight Wolf's eyes were fixed on Sai Ji, unblinking.
Lura moved slightly. Not stepping forward. Just… positioning. Fern noticed.
"You too?" His voice cracked. "You were in that thing. You came back different. You're all—" He gestured vaguely at everything. "—acting like this is normal."
Sai Ji considered his options.
He could deflect. Change subject. Claim exhaustion, push forward, deal with this later.
But Fern had watched a god-kneel to his King. Had watched mist release memories it had been digesting for centuries. Had watched Sai Ji emerge from the arena with a fragment of something ancient burning in his palm.
Later wasn't an option.
"Nothing about this is normal," Sai Ji said. "You want answers. I don't have most of them. But I'll tell you what I know."
Fern's shoulders didn't relax. But he didn't interrupt.
They made camp in the forest.
Not because they needed rest—though they did. Because some conversations require sitting down. Require firelight. Require the ritual of survival to ground words that might otherwise float away into mist and memory.
Sai Ji sat with his back to a root-buttressed trunk. The fragment rested on his palm, visible to all.
"Before the First Reset," he said, "there were gods."
Aeliana's diagnostics flickered. "That's… not in any archive."
"Archives remember what the system wants them to remember." Sai Ji's voice was flat. "The system was built after the Reset. Built on top of what got erased. The gods aren't in the archives because the archives were designed to forget them."
Nyx leaned forward. "But you remember."
"I remember fragments." He touched the stone. "This one remembers more."
The fragment pulsed. Warm. Almost eager.
"Something happened before the Reset. A war. Not between gods and mortals—between gods and something else. Something that existed in negative space. The kind of enemy you can't fight because fighting implies presence, and this thing was absence."
Midnight Wolf's HUD flickered. "Negative space. You mean—"
"I mean a predator that eats existence. Not kills you. Unmakes you. So thoroughly that no one remembers you ever existed."
Silence.
Fern's voice was quiet. "And the gods lost."
"One of them did." Sai Ji's eyes met his. "A god with my face."
The stone blazed.
Not heat—light. White-gold, spilling from Sai Ji's palm, painting the camp in colors that didn't exist in the normal spectrum. The trees drew back. The moss dimmed. Even the fire seemed to pale in comparison.
And then—voice.
Not from the stone. From inside them. From the space behind their eyes, the place where memory lives.
"You carry my name."
Fern's hand went to his weapon. Nyx's swords materialized. Aeliana's diagnostics screamed interference. Only Lura remained still—not calm, but recognizing. She had been inside memory. She knew this feeling.
"You carry my death."
Sai Ji's claws extended. Not consciously. The Thorn-Rose Mark blazed in response—not pain, not warning. Dialogue.
"I carry fragments," he said. "I don't carry you."
"You are wrong."
The voice was old. Ancient. The sound of stone learning to speak.
"You are not my successor. You are not my heir. You are not my resurrection."
Pause.
"You are my echo. The sound I made when I fell. Still ringing. Still falling."
Lura's hand found Sai Ji's shoulder. He didn't shake it off.
"Then tell me what you want."
"Want?"
The voice almost laughed. Almost wept. Did both at once.
"I want the enemy that killed me to stay dead. I want the throne I abandoned to stay empty. I want my name to stay forgotten."
Another pause.
"But wants are for the living. I am not living. I am remembered. And remembrance has its own hungers."
The light intensified.
"Seven fragments. Seven deaths. Seven moments I cannot stop reliving. You carry one now. You will carry more. And when you carry all seven—"
"When I carry all seven, what?"
Silence.
The light withdrew.
The stone went dark.
And Sai Ji was left holding nothing but a piece of bone-colored rock that no longer pulsed, no longer spoke, no longer anything but stone.
No one spoke at the moment.
The fire crackled. The forest breathed. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called—then stopped, mid-note, as though remembering it shouldn't.
Fern broke first.
"Okay." His voice was too loud. Too controlled. "Okay. So you're—what? A god's ghost? A backup copy? A save file that got corrupted and started running again?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Fern stood. Paced. Stopped. "Sai Ji, that thing just said you're carrying its death. Its death. What does that even mean?"
Sai Ji looked at the stone.
It meant nothing. It meant everything. It meant that somewhere in his chest, beneath the Werewolf King's hunger and the survivor's caution and the party leader's responsibility, there was a space that had always felt empty.
A space shaped exactly like a falling god.
"It means," he said slowly, "that I'm not done falling."
Lura's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"You're not falling." Her voice was rough. "You're here. You pulled me out of a memory that was eating me alive. You made a god-kneel. That's not falling."
Sai Ji looked at her.
She had been seven years old in that white corridor. Waiting. Hoping. Believing that if she just waited long enough, the door would open.
It never had.
But she had stopped waiting.
"I pulled you out," he said. "But I didn't close the wound. The Guardian was right about that. I just… reopened it. Gave it air. Gave it light."
"That's what wounds need to heal."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you." Her eyes held his. "But I know that when I was in that corridor, waiting for a door that would never open, the only thing that changed was you showing up. Not the door. Not my mother. You."
She released his shoulder.
"That's not nothing."
They set night time watches that night.
Not because the Weald was immediately dangerous—though it was. Because no one could sleep. Because the weight of what they'd learned pressed against their chests like stones.
Fern took first watch. He sat at the edge of camp, shield across his knees, staring into darkness.
Nyx joined him after an hour.
"You're thinking too loud."
Fern didn't look at him. "He's my friend."
"I know."
"He's been my friend since before any of this. Since before the Resets started getting weird. Since before—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I don't know how to watch a friend become something I don't recognize."
Nyx was quiet for a long moment.
"You recognize him," he said finally. "You're just scared of what you're recognizing."
Fern turned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you've always known he was different. We all have. The way fights bend around him. The way the system glitches when he pushes too hard. The way he looks at things that should kill him and just… survives." Nyx shrugged. "You weren't scared of that before because it was useful. It kept us alive. Now it has a name, and names are scary."
Fern opened his mouth. Closed it.
"You're saying I'm a hypocrite."
"I'm saying you're human in nature." Nyx stood. "Difference is, Sai Ji might not be anymore."
He walked back toward camp, leaving Fern alone with the darkness and his thoughts.
Sai Ji didn't sleep.
He sat with his back to the root-trunk, the fragment cold in his palm, and listened.
The forest was talking.
Not in words. In shifts. In the way roots adjusted their grip on soil. In the way leaves brushed against each other—not wind, communication. In the way moss grew slightly faster where his gaze fell, as though encouraged by attention.
The Thorn-Rose Mark pulsed gently.
You hear it now, it seemed to say. You're listening.
He thought about the god with his face. About the enemy that existed in negative space. About a war so complete that the victors had erased all evidence of the battlefield.
Seven fragments.
Seven deaths.
Seven moments I cannot stop reliving.
The stone warmed slightly.
Not speaking. Not yet. But aware of him. Aware that he was holding it, thinking about it, carrying it.
"You wanted to be forgotten," Sai Ji whispered. "But you left pieces of yourself everywhere. That's not forgetting. That's hiding. And hiding implies you want to be found."
No response.
"Or maybe you just couldn't let go. Maybe falling felt like dying, but dying felt like disappearing, and disappearing felt worse."
The stone pulsed once. Brief. Almost involuntary.
"Or maybe I'm projecting." He almost smiled. "Wouldn't be the first time."
Behind him, soft footsteps.
Lura.
She sat beside him without asking. Without speaking. Just… present. The way she had been since the arena. The way she might always be now, after he'd seen her at seven, after she'd seen him carry a god's death in his palm.
"The others are scared," she said.
"I know."
"Fern most of all."
"I know."
She was quiet for a moment. "He'll get over it. He's Fern. He gets over everything by getting through it."
Sai Ji glanced at her. "And you?"
She considered the question.
"I've been scared since we entered this forest. Since before that. Since the first time the system glitched and you didn't notice. Since I realized you were becoming something that didn't fit in quest logs and party frames." She met his eyes. "But scared is just scared. It's not stopping."
"Even after the corridor?"
"Especially after the corridor." Her voice was steady. "You came in after me. You pulled me out. You didn't fix it—you said that yourself. But you came. No one came before."
Sai Ji looked at the fragment.
"I don't know what I'm becoming."
"Good." Lura leaned against his shoulder. "If you knew, you'd probably try to control it. And controlling things like this—" She gestured at the forest, the fragment, everything. "—that's how you break them."
They sat in silence.
The forest listened.
The fragment waited.
And somewhere in the depths, five more pieces of a fallen god dreamed of being found.
Dawn came slowly.
Not because the sun rose late—because the Weald filtered light through layers of canopy and memory, letting it fall in fragments that matched the fragment in Sai Ji's palm.
The party stirred.
Fern emerged first. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his shield was strapped tight. He nodded at Sai Ji. Not forgiveness. Not acceptance. Acknowledgment.
Nyx stretched like a cat. Aeliana's diagnostics hummed back to life. Midnight Wolf's HUD flickered through its startup sequence.
Lura stood beside Sai Ji.
"Same formation?" Fern asked.
Sai Ji considered. The Weald was deeper now. The trials wouldn't stop. The fragments wouldn't stop calling.
But his pack was still his pack. Scared, uncertain, watching him become something none of them understood—but still here.
"Same formation," he said.
They walked.
The forest watched.
And the weight of crowns—unclaimed, unwanted, unavoidable—pressed against Sai Ji's shoulders with every step.
Far ahead, beyond the Weald's deepest reaches, beyond the memory-cycles and the sentinels and the ancient ruins, something stirred.
Not the Guardian.
Something older.
Something that had been waiting since before the First Reset. Since before the gods fell. Since before the enemy that existed in negative space had been pushed back into the void between realities.
It waited in a chamber of white stone.
It waited on a throne of memory.
It waited with eyes the color of dying stars.
And in its palm, six fragments pulsed in unison—waiting for the seventh to draw close enough to complete.
"Sovereign Echo."
The voice was the same as the fragment's. But older. Weary in a way that transcended exhaustion.
"You carry my name. You carry my death."
A pause.
"Soon, you will carry my choice."
The chamber darkened.
The forest held its breath.
And Sai Ji walked toward a throne he had already burned once, not knowing that some fires cannot be lit twice..