Cipher came to with a taste of metal on his tongue.
The ground beneath him was no longer shifting—no bone, no black sand, no screaming horizons. It was still. Silent. Dead in a way that didn't feel empty but waiting.
He pushed himself upright, the motion grinding through muscles that had long since ceased obeying him. His right arm was sluggish; every tendon burned with fatigue. The scythe felt heavier than it ever had, the runes etched into its shaft now a faint ember glow.
Auto hovered low beside him, a single blue eye flickering. "System restart… eighty-seven percent complete. Cipher… your vitals are unstable."
"Feels about right," Cipher rasped. His breath misted faintly, though there was no temperature here—only the illusion of cold.
The air had texture. Thick, syrupy, heavy with ash that never touched the ground. The fog had lost its movement; it hung in place as if afraid to breathe.
Ahead stretched a wide field of pale stone, scarred by fractures that glowed dimly from within. Beyond that—perhaps a mile or a century away—rose a colossal shape.
A gate.
Formed from ribs of ivory and slabs of obsidian, the arch loomed like the bones of a forgotten god. Fragments of broken mirrors clung to its frame, catching what little light remained and scattering it in distorted reflections.
"The exit," Cipher murmured. "It has to be."
Auto's lens rotated, scanning. "Energy readings consistent with boundary thresholds. But there's… interference."
"Of course there is," Cipher said dryly. He took a step forward—and the fog moved.
It recoiled first, then convulsed inward, folding around the gate like a tide rushing to hide something beneath. The fractures in the ground pulsed brighter, veins of molten story-light crawling outward in spiderwebs.
Then the world screamed.
It wasn't sound—it was the violent collapse of silence itself.
From the center of the gate, something began to form.
Not rise, not emerge—assemble.
Glass shards clicked together, rearranging like puzzle pieces. Torn parchment unfurled midair, sentences bleeding off its edges and dripping ink into the fog. Bone splintered, joining with rusted metal and forgotten runes, building a shape both immense and unstable. Wings of spine and wire unfurled, brittle yet impossibly vast.
When the fog cleared, Cipher stood before the Warden of Broken Endings.
It was not a creature. It was a conclusion given form—a graveyard's last will, bound in flesh and ruin. Its head was a fractured mask of mirrored bone, and within the cracks flickered countless dying eyes—each one reflecting a story that had once been.
Auto's voice was a whisper. "Cipher. Its structure is amalgamated. Strength unknown. But… it bears the resonance of a thousand failed narratives."
Cipher lifted his scythe. "Then it's used to endings. Let's give it another one."
The Warden didn't roar. It moved.
One instant, it was still—next, it was there, covering the space between them in a single impossible step. The ground caved under its weight, stone shattering outward in concentric ripples.
Cipher barely rolled aside as one of its arms—a mass of interlocking blades and text—came down where he'd stood. The impact shattered the field, sending debris and black dust skyward.
He slashed upward, a crescent of silver cutting across its torso. The blade struck—but instead of tearing, the wound rearranged itself, pages fluttering, bones reforming. The creature didn't bleed; it rewrote the damage.
Auto's voice crackled through the chaos. "Its body—self-editing. You cannot destroy what refuses to remain broken!"
Cipher gritted his teeth. "Then I'll wear it down until it runs out of words!"
He lunged again, scythe singing through the air. The Warden countered with its wings, the sharp edges slicing at him in arcs of bone. Each movement collapsed the ground further, reducing the once-flat field into a canyon of shattered stone.
Cipher fought through it, ducking and weaving, his reflexes fueled by exhaustion and fury more than precision. Every impact echoed through his body like a drumbeat—he felt ribs strain, blood hot in his mouth. Still, he struck again and again.
The Warden's chest opened.
A chorus of voices—hundreds, overlapping—poured from the cavity where its heart should've been. Fragments of broken sentences spilled into the air:"Once upon a—""—the hero fell—""—and there was no more light—""—The End—"
The words hit like shrapnel. Each phrase carried weight, slicing into Cipher's skin as if made of glass. His coat tore in a dozen places. Blood trickled down his arm.
He fell to one knee, panting. The scythe trembled in his grip.
Auto flickered nearby, emitting warning tones. "Cipher—this is unsustainable. You cannot outlast—"
"I'm not planning to outlast." Cipher's voice was low, steady despite the pain. "I'm planning to endure."
He drew on his resonance again—what little remained. Silver light flared from his weapon, sputtering but fierce. The runes along its shaft pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
The Warden responded in kind. It drew itself up, wings spreading wide. The fractured mirrors in its mask glowed, each one reflecting Cipher's form—dozens of him, each in a slightly different motion, as if showing all possible defeats at once.
Then the Warden charged.
Cipher met it head-on.
The impact shook the plain.
He ducked beneath a clawed swing, driving the scythe into the Warden's knee joint. The blow bit deep; the creature buckled, but its limb melted and reformed. Cipher wrenched the blade free, twisting into a low sweep that cut through one wing. It disintegrated into paper and dust—then reassembled instantly.
"Persistent bastard," he hissed.
Auto's voice crackled through the static. "It's feeding on narrative inertia—every time you damage it, you confirm its purpose: to defend the ending. You must change the pattern."
Cipher blinked sweat and blood from his eyes. "Change the pattern… right."
He feinted left, then threw the scythe.
The Warden raised its arm to block—but the blade curved midair, splitting into phantom copies that circled back like boomerangs of light. They struck from behind, shearing off the creature's upper spine.
The Warden convulsed around the embedded blade, glass and bone grinding like teeth. Its fractured halo flickered—pages burning to ash in unseen wind. Cipher held the scythe deep in its core, breath ragged, vision tunneling. He could feel the thing's pulse beneath his palms—a slow, deliberate rhythm that didn't belong to any living creature.
Then the sound changed. The scraping of its wings folded into silence. The world itself seemed to still.
The Warden straightened, impaled yet unbroken. Its hollow voice rippled through the fog."Teacher of endings… breaker of denial…"
It leaned closer, its skull splitting open like a cracked bell."You have not escaped. You have only earned the right to move deeper."
Before Cipher could respond, the ground collapsed beneath them—stone and bone peeling away like the turning of a page. The world inverted.
He fell through silence and landed hard upon something cold and shifting.
The Warden's glow receded above him, fading into a distant sunless storm.
Auto's voice flickered to life beside him, dim and distorted."...Cipher... system—reset—environmental shift detected—"
The fog was thinner here, but the air heavier. The ground beneath him was no longer solid earth, but a mosaic of fragments—story shards, broken structures, bones. Pieces of forgotten worlds drifting in slow orbit around a hollow core.
Cipher rose unsteadily, wiping blood from his mouth. He looked up.Above, the Warden's shape dissolved into the mist. Its final words lingered on the air, echoing through every broken ruin around him.
"The Graveyard remembers all who dare to leave."
In the distance, static figures stood atop floating debris—watching, faint and unmoving. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Their hollow eyes glimmered faintly in the dim light. They made no sound, no movement—only watched as Cipher and Auto left. When he blinked, they were gone, leaving only their outlines burned into the haze.
Auto floated closer, its lenses flickering weakly."Cipher… are we free?"
He stared toward a jagged horizon where the land seemed to end and curl upward into the sky. The fog there pulsed, breathing, as if alive.
"…No," he murmured, gripping the scythe's haft tighter. "We're somewhere between endings."
Behind him, the air shuddered with faint, rhythmic static—footsteps that didn't belong to either of them.
Cipher turned slowly, but the mist had already swallowed the sound.
The Graveyard shifted again, reassembling itself in endless permutations, waiting for him to move.
He exhaled once, steadying his stance."Come on, Auto. Let's keep walking."
The fog parted only long enough to show them where not to step.Then the void closed again—leaving the Teacher and his machine alone within the Shattered Fringe.