She vanished.
No storm.No struggle.No scream.
Just absence.
The stream where Nori had once stood now flowed quietly, as if her feet had never touched its surface. The breeze still moved through the trees, but it carried no trace of her scent. No imprint. No echo.
Even the silence she left behind felt unnatural. Not mourning. Erasure.
Caelum stood at the river's edge long after the water stopped remembering her. His eye did not blink. His breath did not break.
And then—he moved.
He tore through the veils between realms like a storm without shape.
He crossed planes held together only by forgotten belief. He whispered the true names of gods buried beneath time, names that scraped at his throat and bled from his skin when spoken.
He gazed into mirrors that did not reflect form, but essence. In one, he saw himself screaming in a tongue he'd never learned. In another, he saw Nori reaching for him with hands made of light—and chains.
He shattered the sky over three lesser worlds.
He made suns stutter.
And still, she did not return.
Until he found Liri.
The Twentieth.
Youngest of the pantheon. Gentle in ways the divine were not meant to be.
He stood alone in the ruined wing of the Celestial Observatory. The ceiling above him had collapsed, and shards of time still drifted through the air like slow snow. His shoulders were hunched. His face hollow. His eyes—red, rimmed, resigned.
Caelum did not ask.
He didn't have to.
"She's not gone," Liri whispered."She's been sealed."
Caelum froze.
"By the others," Liri continued, voice breaking. "Drazel. Vireon. Seren… she didn't stop it. Aelor watched it happen."
Each name fell like a hammer. Not one blow. A sequence. Breaking something inside him that had long forgotten how to scream.
"They said she was too close. That you were changing. That love made you… unpredictable."
Caelum said nothing.
He didn't weep.
He didn't speak.
He simply vanished.
The prison was hidden behind a mirror of thought—a construct of layered time and sealed will. It was not a place. Not in the way mortals understood place.
It was a moment, folded and folded again until it could no longer move.
And in the center of that stillness—Nori.
She floated in silence.
Suspended in a cradle of light so fine it looked like mist, yet it held her as if the laws of gravity and grace had conspired to trap her.
Her hair drifted gently. Her lips were parted. Her body did not fall or rise.
Frozen.
Locked in the breath before a word.A single thought away from existence.A pause made eternal.
Not dead.Not even asleep.Just held—by fear. By power. By the cruelty of divine judgment.
Caelum dropped to his knees.
He reached out, and the seal recoiled.
It pulsed, rejecting him—not with force, but with finality. As if to say: You are too late. You always were.
He whispered her name.Once.
"Nori."
And she did not answer.
Not because she wouldn't.
Because she couldn't.
The Null Realm shook.
Not from impact.
Not from violence.
From sound—but not the kind the ear could hold.
A scream.
Low. Endless. Woven from things older than rage.
Not grief.Not vengeance.Violation.
A scream that carried through stone and void alike.
The halls cracked.The stars dimmed.Time flinched.
Vireon stood and raised the laws of order like a shield.
Aelor bent time into knots trying to undo the fracture.
Seren knelt, her hands to her ears, her tears a hymn of regret.
And Drazel?
Drazel watched the sky bleed light…
…and smiled.