The god did not walk.
He manifested—as thought, as wind, as voice without mouth.
He had many names once: the Scribe-King, the Forgotten Flame, He Who Sealed the End.
Now, he called himself Rhaelor.
He came to Serelith not in a temple, but in a dream carved by stars and old memory. She stood on a cliff of shattered glass, overlooking a world of endless scrolls and ink that bled across the sky.
> "You are late," Rhaelor said.
> "You sealed the Codex," she answered. "Why?"
He turned, face made of shifting fragments—echoes of other lives, of kings, of scholars, of monsters.
> "Because the world was not ready."
> "And now it is?"
> "No. But you are."
---
He showed her images—not visions, but memories from long before her time.
The first wielder of the Codex: a queen named Aserah, who had tried to rewrite the laws of death.
The first breaking: when gods turned against each other and the Hollow Court was born from the ashes.
> "The Hollow Queen was once a sister of light," Rhaelor said, "but she looked too deeply into the Codex, and it devoured her."
Serelith's hands shook.
> "Will it devour me too?"
> "If you fight it," Rhaelor said. "But if you accept it... you become something else."
---
She awoke beneath the weeping tree, Faelan watching her with unease.
"I saw a god," she murmured.
"Was it him?" he asked.
She nodded. "Rhaelor. The one who sealed the Codex."
Faelan knelt before her—not in reverence, but in solidarity.
> "What did he say?"
> "That I'm no longer just Serelith."
Faelan met her eyes. "You'll always be Serelith to me."
A silence passed.
Then she added, "And that the Hollow Queen wasn't always our enemy."
He blinked. "That's not possible."
"Maybe it has to be."
---
The next day, the Codex revealed a hidden chamber beneath Elraen—a vault untouched since the Veil was first woven.
Inside, they found a mural carved in moon-glass.
It showed three figures:
A woman of light with shadowed eyes—The Hollow Queen before the fall.
A golden warrior with a bleeding heart—Rhaelor, sealing the Codex.
And a third figure, face veiled, hands open, standing between them.
Serelith.
Not her, but the image of her.
> "She was foretold," Tyren whispered. "Not to destroy. But to bridge."
Faelan took Serelith's hand.
> "Then we walk forward."
> "Together," she said.
> "Always."
---
Far beyond, in the Hollow Queen's citadel, Vorthen crawled before her throne, bleeding ichor and failure.
> "She awakened the Codex," he rasped. "And the god spoke to her."
The Queen said nothing for a time.
Then, rising from her throne, voice colder than winter:
> "Then she must die before she learns why."
And the Hollow Queen began to prepare her war.