The world did not mourn.
It adjusted.
Grass reclaimed scorched ground. Rivers resumed their courses. The sky remembered how to hold color without fracturing. To anyone who had not stood at the edge of erasure, the catastrophe faded quickly into rumor, then into silence.
Nyxara remained.
She knelt where Aerys had vanished long after the ground cooled beneath her palms.
Her hands shook, not from exhaustion, but from restraint.
If she screamed, the world would not answer.
If she begged, no system would calculate mercy.
Seris stood a few steps away, unmoving, sword planted into the earth as if anchoring herself to something solid.
"He chose it," Seris said quietly.
Nyxara did not look up. "That does not make it easier."
Silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken grief.
Around them, survivors gathered slowly. Some whispered prayers to gods who had not intervened. Others stared at Nyxara with a mixture of fear and reverence, as if proximity to loss had elevated her into something sacred.
She hated it.
"Do not look at me like that," Nyxara snapped when one of them knelt. "I did not save him."
The man flinched. "You saved us."
Nyxara laughed, sharp and broken. "No. He did."
And he was gone.
The realization hit her in waves. Each one deeper than the last.
Aerys would never argue with her again.Never challenge her logic.Never look at her with that infuriating calm when the world demanded obedience.
She pressed her forehead to the ground.
"I told you not to choose wrong," she whispered.
The air did not stir.
Seris approached slowly, kneeling beside her. "Nyxara. If you break now—"
"I am already broken," Nyxara said flatly. "I was made to be."
She rose unsteadily to her feet.
The survivors watched her closely.
"Listen to me," Nyxara said, voice carrying despite the tremor beneath it. "The Architects will return."
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"They will not come as hunters," she continued. "They will come as architects of necessity. They will reshape. They will replace. They will tell you it is for balance."
She met their gazes one by one.
"Do not believe them."
Seris frowned. "What do we do?"
Nyxara clenched her fists. "We endure."
A bitter word.
"And if they erase us?" someone cried.
Nyxara's eyes hardened. "Then we make it costly."
The words surprised even her.
She felt it then. A shift.
Not power.
Resolve.
Aerys had removed himself to become unpredictable.
Nyxara would remain to become immovable.
Beyond reality, Aerys did not fall.
There was no sensation of descent. No darkness. No pain.
There was only absence.
Not emptiness.
Absence of distinction.
He could not tell where he ended and where anything else began because there was no anything else. No space. No time. No observer.
And yet, he was aware.
That alone felt wrong.
He tried to breathe and discovered breath was optional.
Thought arrived slowly, each one detached from urgency.
I chose wrong.
The idea surfaced without regret.
That too felt wrong.
Another thought followed.
Or did I choose correctly?
There was no system to answer.
No god to contradict.
No Nyxara to argue.
The loneliness struck then, sudden and vicious.
Not because he was alone.
But because solitude no longer pushed back.
In the world, loneliness had always been defined by contrast. Here, there was nothing to contrast against.
He did not know how long passed before something changed.
A line appeared.
Not light.
Not shape.
A division.
Something on one side of him decided to become separate.
Aerys focused on it instinctively.
The line wavered.
You persist.
The voice did not echo. It simply existed.
Aerys did not answer.
Define persistence.
"I am still thinking," Aerys replied finally. "That seems inefficient."
The voice paused.
You should not retain cohesion.
"Yet I do."
Silence.
Then curiosity.
You are unaccounted for.
Aerys laughed softly. The sound had no texture. "I made that effort."
What are you?
Aerys considered the question.
"I was a king," he said slowly. "Then a threat. Then a variable. Then a precedent."
The line shifted.
And now?
Aerys felt something stir.
Choice.
"I am unfinished," he said.
The voice reacted.
That is not permitted.
Aerys smiled, though there was no face to shape it. "Neither was I."
The line fractured.
Fragments of structure bled through the absence, geometric attempts to contextualize him.
The Architects were not here.
This was deeper.
Older.
Aerys felt the pressure of observation without presence.
You are outside iteration.
"Yes."
You cannot remain.
"Then why am I still here?"
Silence stretched.
Then, reluctantly.
Because you were never meant to arrive.
Aerys felt a chill ripple through whatever passed for him now.
"Explain."
You were not designed to exit. You were designed to anchor.
"And instead I broke the door," Aerys said.
Correct.
Something shifted.
For the first time since his disappearance, Aerys felt something like danger.
Not annihilation.
Assimilation.
If he stayed here too long, he would lose distinction not because it was taken, but because it no longer mattered.
"I want to go back," Aerys said.
You cannot.
"I did not say return," he replied. "I said go back."
Clarify.
"To where consequence exists," Aerys said. "Where my choices hurt."
The presence hesitated.
Pain is inefficiency.
"So is fear," Aerys replied. "Yet you model around it."
Silence.
Then.
You are an error.
Aerys nodded. "I have been told."
Errors are corrected.
Aerys felt something tighten.
"Not all of them," he said quietly. "Some redefine the equation."
The absence trembled.
For the first time, Aerys sensed it.
Not hostility.
Interest.
Nyxara stood alone at the edge of a ruined city weeks later.
The survivors had begun rebuilding, clumsy and imperfect. Fires burned where homes would rise. Children laughed too loudly, as if daring the sky to intervene.
She had not slept.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the moment Aerys stepped forward.
Not the light.
Not the fracture.
His expression.
Acceptance without surrender.
Seris approached quietly. "Scouts report no Architect activity."
Nyxara nodded. "That will not last."
Seris hesitated. "Do you think he is dead?"
Nyxara stared at the horizon.
"No," she said. "If he were, the world would feel quieter."
Seris frowned. "It feels quiet enough."
Nyxara shook her head. "This is anticipation."
The air shifted.
Subtle.
Wrong.
Nyxara's breath caught.
She turned sharply.
For a fraction of a second, the world misaligned.
Not a vision.
Not a memory.
A presence brushed against her awareness, faint but unmistakable.
Nyxara staggered back.
Seris grabbed her arm. "What is it?"
Nyxara's voice trembled.
"He is not gone," she whispered.
The sky did not respond.
But somewhere beyond systems and erasure, something listened.
And for the first time since his disappearance, Aerys felt an anchor.
Not a pull.
An invitation.
Nyxara walked through the remains of what had once been a city. Broken stone streets curled like scars beneath her boots. Smoke lingered in the air, stubborn as a memory. She drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders, but the chill did not come from the wind. It came from absence. From him.
Seris followed silently, eyes scanning every shadow. "No Architect activity yet," she said. Her voice sounded uncertain even to herself.
Nyxara shook her head. "That does not mean they are gone. Just patient."
"Patient for what?" Seris asked.
"For us to forget him," Nyxara replied softly. Her voice was hollow, almost a whisper. "For us to stop waiting for the impossible."
Seris frowned. "You cannot give up hope."
Nyxara turned sharply. Her eyes were dark pools reflecting a city that no longer felt real. "Hope is expensive. I paid it in a currency I no longer have."
They stopped at the edge of a crumbled plaza. Rubble jutted from the ground in jagged shapes, and in the distance, survivors worked in disorganized clusters, trying to rebuild amidst ruins. Children laughed, too loud, as if daring the sky to intervene. Their laughter stabbed Nyxara more than any weapon.
"I do not know how to lead them," she admitted finally, voice low. "He was the anchor. Without him, the world will tip too easily. And I—" She swallowed, tasting the bitterness of her own failure. "I am not enough."
Seris stepped closer, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You are stronger than you realize."
Nyxara's laugh was brief, humorless. "Strength does not replace presence. It does not replace him. And he chose to vanish into nothing rather than let them remake him. Do you understand what that means?"
Seris's fingers tightened. "It means he made a choice you cannot undo."
Nyxara stared at the horizon. "It means he is alive somewhere that the world cannot touch. Somewhere I cannot reach. And that is worse than death."
A sudden shiver ran through the air. Nyxara's breath hitched. She turned, senses sharpening. The ground beneath them shifted subtly, as if reality itself hesitated.
Seris noticed. "What now?"
Nyxara's eyes widened. A presence brushed her awareness. Faint, intangible, yet undeniable. Not a vision, not memory. Something beyond calculation.
"He is here," she whispered.
Seris looked at her, confused. "Aerys?"
Nyxara did not answer. Her gaze fixed on a point just beyond the ruins. The feeling was a whisper against the edges of her consciousness, a pull she could not resist.
"Do you think it is real?" Seris asked cautiously.
Nyxara did not move. Her mind stretched across empty space, seeking what she could not name. "It is him," she said finally. "And he is waiting for me."
A quiet tension settled over them, heavier than any battle. The survivors below continued their work, oblivious to the presence beyond comprehension. The world went on. But for Nyxara, nothing moved forward.
"I cannot lose him again," she murmured. "Not now. Not like this."
The air shifted again, faint but insistent. Nyxara felt it pull, like a tether stretching thin but unbroken.
"He left a trace," she said, voice trembling. "A promise. Or a warning. I do not know which."
Seris exhaled sharply. "Then we follow it."
Nyxara nodded slowly, swallowing the lump in her throat. Her fingers brushed her lips as if tasting the echo of his presence. "Yes," she whispered. "We follow it. Even if it destroys everything else."
The wind carried a sound too faint for anyone else to hear. A whisper in a voice she knew better than her own heartbeat.
"Nyxara…"
Her eyes widened. Her heart raced. "He is calling," she said.
Seris glanced at her nervously. "Are you sure?"
Nyxara did not answer. She stepped forward, moving toward the trembling edge of the ruins, where the world seemed to bend and falter under the weight of absence. Her hand tightened on Seris's shoulder. "I do not know what waits for me," she said. "But I have to see it. Whatever it is, I cannot ignore him. Not now."
The ruins stretched around her, twisted and silent, yet alive with the memory of everything that had been destroyed and preserved. She stepped carefully, every instinct screaming caution, every fiber of her being pulled toward the faint, impossible presence.
Seris followed silently, alert to the world's faintest betrayal.
And for the first time in weeks, Nyxara felt the smallest flicker of hope.
Or the first twinge of terror.
She could not tell which.
And somewhere beyond the limits of the world, beyond systems, calculations, and even gods, Aerys waited.
And he was watching.
The ruins whispered, carrying her name.
"Nyxara."
Her heart stuttered.
She swallowed. "I am coming."
The wind stilled, as if the world itself held its breath.
And the space beyond comprehension pulsed in response.