The air shuddered.

  A ripple of wrongness, stretching through the silence.

  Ais tensed, fingers twitching toward the dagger at her hip. Darius' grip tightened on his sword, every instinct screaming at him to move.

  Something was stepping through. Not from the streets. Not from the woods. From nowhere. And suddenly—it was there. Not a man. Not a creature. A figure. It had no face. No color. No features that the mind could hold onto.

  But it stood at the edge of the ntern light, the space around it colpsing inward.

  Darius did not breathe.

  The weight of its presence pressed against his skull. It was looking at him. Not with eyes. Not with thought. With something older. Something that did not recognize him as real. And then, it spoke. Not with sound. Not with voice.

  With understanding.

  "You are an error."

  Darius moved.

  He lunged forward, bde slicing through the air— And passed through nothing. The figure was already behind him.

  Ais barely dodged in time, twisting away as the thing's presence scraped against her reality.

  Darius hit the ground, rolling back to his feet, his breath ragged.

  This thing—it was not moving like a living being. It did not step. It did not shift. It simply was. And wherever it chose to be, it became. His pulse thundered. This wasn't a fight. This was a judgment. Ais gritted her teeth. "We need to go." Darius didn't argue. Because he knew.

  This thing was not here to kill them.

  It was here to erase them.

  They ran. Through the streets of the town that should not exist. Through alleys and pathways that had been written into history only days ago. The people did not look at them. Did not react. Because they did not see the hunt. To them, this was nothing. Darius pushed forward, the unnatural silence pressing against his ears.

  But even as he ran, he knew—they were not escaping.

  Because there was nowhere to run.

  Ais led him through a narrow passage, breath uneven.

  "We can't fight it," she muttered. Darius clenched his jaw. "Then what do we do?" She didn't answer. Because she didn't know. And the figure was already waiting ahead of them.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  They skidded to a stop.

  The thing stood in the center of the alley, the air around it distorted.

  Ais swore under her breath.

  Darius lifted his sword again, knowing it was useless. The figure stepped forward. It did not rush. It did not attack. Because it had already won. It raised a single hand. And reality began to bend. The air rippled, folding inward. The ground beneath them shuddered. And Darius felt it—his name. Unraveling.

  Breaking.

  The Thanatarchy was not removing him. It was rewriting the world so that he had never existed.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Ais took a step back, clutching her head, shaking. "No. No, not yet—" Her voice fractured. Her presence flickered. The world was rejecting them. And the figure whispered—

  "You were never here."