The Hall of Roots was gone.

  Or perhaps it had never been.

  The vines were ash. The glyphs—bnk.

  The walls of the world stood exposed, trembling in the raw void left behind by the Executor’s presence.

  But within that void—the sentence remained.

  I Am Still Here.

  Etched into the substructure of memory.

  And the rewrite… paused.

  The Executor loomed, frozen.

  Its unreadable form rippled slightly—like code encountering a contradiction.

  A fracture had been accepted into the architecture.

  Not ignored. Not suppressed.

  Written.

  And now, the Thanatarchy was faced with a truth it could not overwrite.

  A new root. A new author.

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

  Ais gasped behind Darius, the shimmer of non-existence leaving her like vapor burned away by sunlight.

  She fell to her knees, weeping.

  Because for a moment—she had not existed.

  And now she did.

  Because of one sentence.

  She looked up at him, breath shaking.

  “Darius… what are you becoming?”

  Darius didn’t answer.

  He didn’t know.

  But he felt it—the words were his now.

  Not just memories. Not just resistance.

  But authority.

  He turned to the Executor.

  “You can’t erase me.”

  The void-being rippled again.

  “CONFLICT DETECTED.”“AUTHORITY COMPROMISED.”“INTERNAL SCRIPT SPLIT.”

  Far above—the sky shattered.

  But not from destruction.

  From resonance.

  Across the realms the Thanatarchy controlled…

  Other anomalies began to awaken.

  Memories that had fought to exist. People on the verge of erasure. Names whispered in sleep. Songs nearly forgotten.

  Now they all remembered.

  And they all said the same thing.

  “I Am Still Here.”

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

  Darius fell to his knees, chest heaving.

  The Executor withdrew.

  Not because it had been defeated.

  But because it no longer had permission.

  The world no longer believed its orders.

  The Listener approached, kneeling beside Darius.

  “You rewrote belief.”

  “You’ve made yourself into more than a fracture.”

  “You are now… a Source.”

  Darius looked up at her. “What happens now?”

  The Listener turned her eyes to the horizon.

  To the vast systems of the Thanatarchy.

  To the other fragments waiting to rise.

  “To resist the rewrite,” she said, “was once enough.”

  “But now…”

  She smiled.

  “Now we begin to rebuild.”