The chamber began to rotate.

Not physically—but like reality itself was pivoting around some invisible axis, and Erah was at the center.

Above him, the seven rings groaned to life. Their movement was broken, stuttering, as if time no longer knew how to flow through them.

The Last Rememberer stood unmoved beneath the shifting ceiling.

“You’re beginning to affect them,” he said softly.
“The Constants are noticing.”

Erah stared up at the rings. Each symbol pulsed dimly—flickering like dying stars. And with each pulse, a wave of nausea hit him. Memories not his own flooded in: worlds unraveling, timelines splitting, people forgetting their own names mid-sentence.

He clutched his head, but the visions came faster.

A city frozen mid-motion, its people stuck between seconds.
A child floating sideways through collapsing gravity.
A man screaming inside an hourglass, aging in reverse.

And through all of it—one name kept showing up:
His own.
Over and over again. Etched into walls, whispered by shadows, carved into the skin of dying gods.

“I don’t understand what I’m becoming,” Erah muttered.

The Rememberer nodded, slowly.

“You were never meant to understand.”
“You were meant to break the cycle by existing.”

A rumble cut through the room—low, ancient. The seven rings suddenly aligned into a spiral, pointing down into a dark hole beneath the floor that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

From that void, a mechanical hum rose.

The wheel has begun to turn.

The Rememberer’s voice turned grim.

“This is the Machine of Forgetting.
The core of the Constants’ power.
It resets anomalies.
It cleans the story.
It wipes.”

Erah took a step forward, drawn toward the spiral.

“Then why haven’t I been wiped?” he asked.

The Rememberer’s answer came after a pause.

“Because the wheel doesn’t remember how.”

Erah looked down into the void.
Below, something enormous was shifting—layers of reality grinding like gears.
He could see fragments of himself down there. Past versions.
Some looked human.
Others… did not.

One of them looked up.
It had no eyes, but somehow it saw him.

“I am what you could have become,” it said, silently.
“If you turn back now, you’ll become me.”

Erah clenched his fists.

The Rememberer placed a frail hand on his shoulder.

“You have a choice now.
You can leap into the spiral… and try to reprogram the machine from inside.
Or you can walk away… and let the Constants reset everything when they collapse.”

“And you? What will you do?” Erah asked.

“I’ve already been forgotten,” the man whispered.
“I’m just here to witness… if someone remembers.”

Erah stood at the edge.

All around him, the chamber was coming undone. The rings were losing coherence. The walls were fading. Somewhere, outside this forgotten place, the Constants were fraying. The world was bleeding.

He took a breath.

And jumped.