Inside the hollow where gravity had once reversed itself, Erah stood—not being pulled, not falling, but anchored, as though he had become the eye of a storm that defied all known laws.

The world around him was still broken, still wrong.
But now, it orbited him.

I am no longer what is affected,
I am what distorts.

And yet… he didn’t understand why.

His mind flashed back to the hourglass. When he touched it, memories had poured out of him—too easily, as if they were never tightly held in the first place. He had not gotten them back. They were still missing.

But something inside him was awakening.

A low sound echoed—not loud, not violent, but deep. It didn’t pass through the air. It passed through bone.

A hum.
A vibration that felt like recognition.

Then… words.

Not spoken. Not written.
Felt.

“You were not shaped by time, space, or gravity.”
“You were the splinter they could not absorb.”

Erah turned slowly.

A silhouette stood before him—tall, imperfect, flickering between forms like a faulty memory. Sometimes it looked human. Sometimes it looked… unfinished. Its presence bent the broken land around it like metal around a magnet.

Its face held no features. But he knew it.

“You are the error,” it said.
“The variable that survived the collapse.”

Erah said nothing.

He could feel his thoughts bending—like the world was trying to rewrite itself around him. His name felt distant again, and the center of his chest burned—not with fire, but with remembrance.

Then the figure raised its hand, and from the air, seven thin lines of light stretched outward—threads that connected everything floating in this shattered dimension.

Erah recognized them.
He didn’t know how, but he knew what they were.

The threads of the Seven Constants.

The figure whispered again:

“They have begun to decay.
You are their echo.
And when the echo remembers its voice…”

The threads trembled.

“…the world will unravel from the inside out.”

Erah clenched his fists.

He didn’t know what he was.
But he wasn't just broken.

He was a splinter, yes.
But even splinters can pierce the skin of gods.