Elias gasped.

  The void shattered around him, reality snapping back into place with the force of something slamming shut.

  His body lurched forward, knees buckling as his hands pressed against the cold, hard floor beneath him. Solid. Real. Something that shouldn’t have felt reassuring—but did.

  The sensation of falling lingered in his bones, in his breath, in the way his pulse hammered against his ribs like it was trying to escape.

  How long had he been gone?

  Seconds? Centuries?

  Did it even matter?

  A sharp inhale.

  A familiar presence.

  Elias' head snapped up.

  Valen stood over him, his expression unreadable.

  Sera was farther back, arms crossed, her fingers tense against her sleeves, her stance too still.

  They had been waiting.

  Watching.

  But neither of them had followed him into that space.

  Elias swallowed hard. His throat was dry. His voice, when it came, felt too far away.

  “What,” he rasped, “the hell was that?”

  —

  Valen exhaled, slow and deliberate, slipping his hands into his coat pockets. “That,” he mused, “was something even I had never seen before.”

  Elias’ breath caught.

  Sera’s gaze snapped toward Valen, her eyes sharp. “You didn’t know?”

  Valen smirked, but it was thin. Hollow. “Not entirely.”

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  Sera’s jaw tightened. “You’re lying.”

  Valen chuckled. “Always.”

  Elias pushed himself up, legs unsteady, his mind still reeling from everything he had seen. “No,” he murmured, voice rough. “That wasn’t just a record, was it?”

  Valen tilted his head. “It was a record.”

  Elias clenched his fists. “But not mine.”

  Valen’s gaze flickered.

  And in that moment—

  Elias knew.

  —

  The Lie Seller had dug it up. Had searched, had waited for something to bring him closer to the answer he had been chasing for God-knows-how-long.

  And yet—

  Even he hadn’t been able to open it.

  Because it was beyond him.

  Something older, or just as old as the Pawn Shops themselves.

  And Elias—Elias, who was never meant to exist, who should not have been here, who was a paradox itself—

  He was the key.

  The realization left his stomach twisted.

  And it left Valen—

  Wary.

  Not amused. Not detached. Not playing his usual game.

  This was something he had been waiting for.

  —

  Elias swallowed hard. “You had no idea what was inside that record.”

  Valen didn’t blink. “Correct.”

  Elias’ fingers twitched. “Then why give it to me?”

  Valen smiled.

  This time, it was genuine.

  “To see if you could open it.”

  Elias’ breath hitched.

  Sera tensed. “You—”

  Valen exhaled, stepping forward just enough that his presence loomed, a weight that settled into the room, stretching into the very fabric of the space itself.

  “You are something different, Elias,” he murmured. “And I do not like unknowns.”

  —

  Elias’ mind raced.

  He had always felt something was wrong. And that feeling had only grown stronger since he first slipped through the cracks of the Pawn Shops.

  The cycles.

  His existence.

  The way he persisted when everything should have erased him.

  And now—

  Now, he knew.

  He was not real in the way that others were.

  But that wasn’t what terrified him.

  He could laugh that off, call himself the protagonist of some grand novel.

  What truly terrified him—

  Was that even Valen, with memories of past Lie Sellers, and Sera, with all her knowledge,

  Did not know what he was either.

  And that meant—

  Something had gone wrong.

  Because if he had truly been created by the first Lie Seller to escape the cycle—if he had been nothing more than a loophole, a flaw, a thing that was meant to unravel and free its creator—

  Then why was the cycle still here?

  Why was Valen still standing in front of him?

  Why had none of it ended?

  Why didn’t Valen even know who he was?

  —

  Elias inhaled sharply.

  His voice was quieter this time.

  Almost dangerous.

  “What happened to the first one?”

  —

  Valen didn’t speak immediately.

  His smirk lingered, but there was something guarded beneath it now, something Elias wouldn’t have noticed before but could see now.

  He was stalling.

  Elias’ stomach twisted. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Valen chuckled. “Does it matter?”

  Elias' pulse pounded. “It does if he’s not dead.”

  Sera stilled.

  The air felt colder.

  And for the first time—

  Valen’s smirk faded.

  Because he had never considered that possibility.

  And now, he couldn’t ignore it.

  —

  Sera moved first.

  Her voice was sharp, cutting through the weight that had settled between them. “That record wasn’t meant to be found.”

  Valen glanced at her, something flickering across his face. “No, it wasn’t.”

  Elias' breathing was unsteady. “Then who hid it?”

  Valen hummed. “Now that—” He exhaled, shaking his head. “That is an excellent question.”

  And suddenly—

  Elias understood what Valen might have been searching for all along.

  The Lie Seller had not just been maintaining his rule.

  He had been looking for something.

  Something to set him free.

  Something to give him more control.

  Something the Pawn Shops and their rules had kept hidden even from him.

  And now—

  Now he had a lead.

  And that lead was Elias.

  —

  The weight of realization pressed into Elias’ chest, but before he could speak—

  The room shuddered.

  A pulse.

  A shift.

  Something moved.

  Not physically.

  Not in space.

  Within the Pawn Shops themselves.

  A ripple of change.

  It reacted.

  Sera inhaled sharply. “That’s—”

  Valen exhaled, his smirk returning, but this time—

  It was hungry.

  “Looks like someone didn’t want us finding that record.”

  —

  Elias turned sharply.

  And for the first time in forever—

  Even Valen felt watched.