The moment the Seed of the First Code embedded itself into the monument, the Hall of Roots changed.

  The vines recoiled in reverence.The ancient glyphs along the walls lit like veins awakening in a sleeping god.

  The Listener stood motionless at the edge of it all, her eyes no longer closed in stillness—but wide, reflecting all timelines splintering at once.

  Darius staggered back from the monument.

  The seed was not just growing.

  It was writing.

  Lines of reality began to form out of nothing, sketching new memories into the bones of existence.

  Ais turned sharply toward the entrance.

  “It’s coming.”

  Darius didn’t ask how she knew. He could feel it too.

  The Thanatarchy had felt the seed take root. It had registered the anomaly. And now, for the first time in any version of history—it was responding not to a person…but to an act of creation.

  The Listener turned toward them, her yered voice suddenly somber.

  “They’ve begun the Protocol of Absolute Regression.”

  Ais frowned. “That sounds like the worst protocol ever.”

  “It is,” the Listener replied. “They won’t rewrite you. They’ll erase every reality that might allow you to exist.”

  Darius’ voice was low. “A clean reboot.”

  She nodded. “They’ve initiated the First Rewrite War.”

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

  The earth above trembled.

  Not a quake.

  A systemic purging.

  Reality around Veidros was already unraveling. The sky was being peeled back like a page being turned in reverse.

  And through that tear in the sky—they descended.

  Not Inquisitors. Not Watchers. Not Recimers.

  Script-Bearers.

  Entities made of living text and void—beings that carried entire sections of rewritten memory on their backs, mouths stitched with commands.

  Each one a walking w, a cuse in the Thanatarchy’s original structure.

  Ais took a step back. “We’re not fighting those.”

  The Listener tilted her head. “You don’t have to. You already wrote something they can’t read.”

  Darius looked down at his hands.

  The cube pulsed in sync with the monument.

  The Seed had infected the logic stream.

  It had given him something the Thanatarchy couldn’t predict.

  He looked at the monument—and for the first time, understood how to write into the world.

  “I need time,” he said.

  Ais unsheathed her bdes. “Then buy it.”

  The Script-Bearers descended into the Hall.

  One of them spoke, and its voice caused the stone to bleed history.

  "ILLOGIC DETECTED."

  "CORRECTION IMMINENT."

  Ais charged first, intercepting with a flurry of bde and fury.

  The moment she touched the Script-Bearer, her dagger burned white—engraved with forgotten syntax.

  It staggered.

  She grinned. “Guess you didn’t write me into this version, huh?”

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

  Behind her, Darius knelt before the monument.

  He wrote.

  Not with words. Not with glyphs. But with memory.

  He thought of Vaelmoor.Of the woman who remembered her own erasure.Of Lioren.Of Alden.Of Elya.

  Each one a name the Thanatarchy had tried to delete.

  Each one a reality he remembered.

  He pnted them into the monument with his will.

  And the rewrite began to shake.

  Not colpse—shake.

  Like a script discovering it had been overwritten.

  The Script-Bearers screamed.

  Not from pain— but from recursive conflict.

  Reality was now holding two truths.

  And that was something the Thanatarchy’s foundation had never been built to contain.

  The Listener smiled.

  “This is the first battle. But it won’t be the st.”