Darius stood in the center of a dying city.
But there was no fire.
No blood.
No battle.
Solmaria did not fall in fmes.
It fell in silence.
The people did not scream.
Because they no longer remembered how.
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The Vanishing of the Streets
Darius moved through the streets, his steps too loud in the unnatural quiet.
The air was heavy. Thick with the weight of something that should not exist.
Shops stood open, their wares untouched.
Carriages y abandoned in the streets, their horses staring bnkly ahead.
Knights in shining armor stood motionless, their hands gripping weapons they no longer knew how to use.
The city was not empty.
And yet, it was already gone.
Because no one inside it remembered what it was.
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Darius approached a man standing in the marketpce.
An elderly merchant.
His hands trembled over the scales on his stall, his lips parting and closing as if trying to speak.
Darius slowed his steps. "Sir." The merchant turned his gaze toward him. His eyes were unfocused. Wrong. Like a man trying to hold onto something slipping through his fingers. Darius tried again. "Sir, what is your name?" The merchant blinked. His breathing hitched. And then—his expression shattered. He grasped his own throat. His knees buckled.
And his mouth opened in a soundless wail.
Darius reached for him—but the moment his fingers brushed against the man's shoulder—
He was gone. Not vanished. Not taken.
Gone.
And the space where he had stood no longer existed. Darius staggered backward. The marketpce felt smaller. Not because something had been removed. But because it had never been.
Darius turned sharply toward the royal district. The pace still stood. He could see it. He could remember it. But his heart pounded in his chest. Because his mind screamed at him— It was already gone. He ran.
Through the city streets. Past the frozen knights, the silent merchants, the carriages that had never moved. He ran toward something that was not there. And as he reached the gates of the pace— They vanished. One moment, he was sprinting toward the entrance. The next— He was somewhere else. The pace was gone. Not destroyed. Not erased. Just... no longer part of history.
Darius fell to his knees.
He grasped at his own skull, gasping, trying—desperately trying—to remember what it had looked like. But the harder he tried, the more it slipped away. Like sand through his fingers. Like a dream upon waking. Like it had never existed. And in the back of his mind— A whisper.
"This city has already fallen."
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Above him, the Rift pulsed.
The wound in the heavens widened, spreading like cracks in shattered gss.
Darius lifted his head, his breath uneven.
And the sky bled.
Not with blood.
Not with darkness.
But with something that should not have been seen.
A color that was not a color. A shape that was not a shape. A wound that was not a wound. And deep within that abyss— Something was watching.
Darius felt the city vanishing around him.
The streets that had once been beneath him became nothing.
The people that had once filled them no longer mattered.
And the history of Solmaria was rewriting itself.
This had not been the greatest city of Celestara.
This had not been the holy capital of the gods.
This had not been a kingdom at all.
This pce had never existed.
And he was standing in the st remnants of a lie.
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The Last Words of Solmaria
Darius stood alone. The wind did not blow. The sun did not shine. The city had been erased. And as he turned to the sky, the Rift widened further. And then— He heard it. Not with his ears. Not with his mind. But with the very core of his being. A voice. Cold. Infinite. Absolute. "You will be next." And the st city of the gods ceased to be.
