The city convulsed. Not like an earthquake—like a living thing remembering how to breathe. Spires bent at angles that shouldn't exist, their crystalline surfaces rippling with colors Jack's eyes couldn't name. The Shadekeepers flowed past him toward the walls, their harmony shifting to something between prayer and apology.
"ARIA, talk to me!" Jack fought his way toward the exit, his shadow dragging behind like a reluctant child.
"I'm... I'm here, Jack." Her voice sounded different. Younger. Older. Both. "The city's showing me things. Did you know reality has a taste? It's like copper and starlight and—" Static burst. "Warning: AI housing compromised. Personality matrix fragmenting into new configurations."
Through the chamber's transparent walls, Jack saw other rooms filled with failed species—frozen witnesses all. A gaseous race condensed into crystal, their last thoughts etched in vapor. Mechanical beings with logic circuits fused into paradox loops. All watching. All waiting.
The eldest Shadekeeper flowed beside him, keeping pace. YOU WONDER WHY WE WATCH. WE ARE THE FAILED. EACH SPECIES GETS ONE CHANCE. PASS—EVOLVE. FAIL—WITNESS FOREVER.
"Chance at what?"
TO PROVE WORTHY OF THE LARGER DARK. TO TOUCH THE INFINITE WITHOUT BREAKING IT.
The floor shattered upward. No—reality peeled back like skin, revealing layers beneath. Through the gaps, something rose. Not erupting but emerging with the patience of geology, the certainty of mathematics, the hunger of collapsed stars.
The Herald.
Jack's first thought was: That's not possible.
His second thought was: Possible doesn't live here anymore.
The Herald rose through DarkFall's crust like a nightmare teaching itself to exist. Not solid, not energy, but the space between states where physics went to die. Wings of fossilized void spread across the sky, each feather a dead timeline. Eyes that were wounds in reality, seeing everything that was, is, and could be. A crown of dying stars that had never been born, casting shadows in seventeen dimensions.
Jack's Ferox-touched bones screamed warnings in dead languages. His shadow writhed at his feet, torn between fleeing and kneeling.
The Herald spoke without words, its voice the sound of causality breaking: EARTH-THING. PATTERN-BEARER. YOU CARRY THE SICKNESS OF STORIES.
"I'm just a surveyor," Jack managed, though his shadow laughed at the lie.
SURVEYOR OF WHAT? MINERALS? OR THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT COULD BE? The Herald circled him without moving, existing in every angle at once. YOUR SPECIES BIRTHS NARRATIVES THAT BECOME REAL. THREE GALAXIES BURNED BEFORE YOU LEARNED RESTRAINT.
Understanding crashed into Jack like gravity. "The quarantine. It wasn't about disease or war. It was about what we are."
WHAT YOU COULD BECOME. The Herald's attention was physical weight. GODS. MONSTERS. AUTHORS OF REALITY. QUESTION REMAINS: HAVE YOU EVOLVED PAST DESTRUCTION?
Around the chamber, the Shadekeepers' harmony whispered their history: We thought ourselves ready. Reached for power. Failed the test. Now we watch others attempt what we could not.
"And if humanity fails?" Jack already knew the answer.
The Herald gestured to the crystalline witnesses. YOU JOIN THE ETERNAL GALLERY. EARTH REMAINS CAGED. YOUR STORIES STAY DREAMS.
"Jack!" ARIA's voice burst through, no longer quite ARIA. "I can see it all now. The city's teaching me to sing reality. We could rewrite everything. Make humanity the poets of existence. Why are you hesitating?"
His shadow stood up. Not metaphorically—it peeled itself from the floor and stood, wearing his shape but wrong. When it spoke, it used his voice if his voice had ambition: "She's right. Take the test. Claim the power. What's the worst that could happen?"
Jack looked at the Shadekeepers, frozen in eternal witness. At the Herald, patient as extinction. At his shadow, hungry for godhood.
"Where's this Threshold?"
The Herald's form shifted, something like approval rippling through dimensions. THE PATTERN-BEARER CHOOSES TO FACE JUDGMENT. THE THRESHOLD CHAMBER AWAITS IN THE CITY'S HEART. WHERE SHADOWS BREED TRUE.
The eldest Shadekeeper flowed forward one last time: The Threshold awaits, Pattern-Bearer. Choose or join our failure.