They didn't walk into the dreamgap.
It folded around them — the sky splitting a second time, not through color or sound, but thought. One moment, Hina stood on cracked ground, feeling the hum of the Codex inside her chest.
The next—
Silence.
No sound.
No light.
Just the shape of her own breath making space real.
She blinked.
The world resolved like an unfinished painting.
She stood in a forest, except the trees had no bark — just paper-flesh, each trunk covered in sketches.
Her sketches.
Drawings she'd done since she was eleven — sigils she couldn't explain, eyes, spirals, memories of glyphs she thought were dreams.
"This… is my archive."
Footsteps behind her.
Soft.
Measured.
She turned.
There she was.
Hina.
But not her.
Same face. Same age. But calmer. Unscathed.
Dressed in white. No Codex glow. No glyph traces on her arms. No tension in the jaw. No memory of recursion, rebellion, or Veyrun—no—Xal.
Just peace.
"You're not me," Hina whispered.
The other Hina smiled faintly.
"I'm the version of you who never touched the black book."
"Then you're not real."
"No. I'm more real than you."
"I'm what you were supposed to become."
Hina stepped back.
Her hands sparked — not with magic, but memory.
The Codex wasn't here.
Her link to it severed inside this plane.
She couldn't call Xal.
She was alone with a self she could no longer claim.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"To ask if it was worth it."
"What?"
"The fight. The memory overload. The rewriting of children's lives. The virus in the books."
"You call it a virus?"
"What would you call it?"
"Waking up to a world that doesn't want you to think?"
"Freedom."
"Are you free?"
"You don't sleep. You can't stop drawing. You flinch every time someone says 'chant.' You're not free. You're consumed."
Hina clenched her fists.
"At least I'm not passive."
The other Hina tilted her head.
"I'm not passive. I'm untouched."
"You're empty."
"Or maybe I just kept the peace."
"Not every war needs a prophet."
The forest shifted around them.
Pages peeled from the trees.
Each one hovered in the air — frozen scenes from different timelines.
One showed Kivar — standing tall in gold armor, bowing before the Tree, untouched by recursion.
Another showed Brago smiling — his book glowing white, not black.
Another… showed Hina.
But as an architect.
Designing spellbooks for children.
Peaceful ones.
"You could've been this," the white-cloaked Hina said.
"But none of it's real."
"Yet you dreamed it. That means it was."
"Then why show me?"
The other Hina stepped forward.
Touched her hand.
"Because this is the last time you'll have the choice."
"Choice to what?"
"To leave the Codex behind."
The word hit her like cold iron.
"Leave it?"
"You're not just carrying it. You're becoming it."
"Every time you cast, the Codex grows less like a book and more like a memory being rewritten to survive deletion."
"That's the point."
"No. The point was to wake up the world, not to become its god."
Silence.
Then—
A voice from the treeline.
Sharp. Fragmented. Familiar.
"She's lying."
Hina turned.
Xal.
But he looked… unbound.
Clothes tattered. Skin flickering with ancient glyphs. Hair longer. Eyes fractured into rings of white, gold, and shadow.
"You found her," he said.
"How are you here?"
"Because this place remembers me too."
"She says I'm becoming the Codex."
Xal stared at the white-cloaked Hina.
"She's right."
Hina's breath caught.
"Then why haven't you warned me?"
"Because you were strong enough to bear it."
"That's not a reason."
"It's the only reason the system gives."
The other Hina stepped between them.
"She could walk away now. She could wake up and forget the Codex. It would survive in Xal. The sky would rest."
"The system would reset," Xal said.
"Kings would rise. Spellbooks would burn."
"Or maybe… we'd dream again," the other Hina said.
Hina looked at them both.
Her.
And him.
Her past.
And her possible future.
"Why me?" she asked them both.
"Why not someone stronger? Why not someone who knew how to fight?"
Xal lowered his eyes.
"Because you saw."
The other Hina nodded slowly.
"You refused the chant before anyone told you to."
The paper forest peeled back.
Revealing a cliff.
Below it — a storm of glyphlight.
Reality folding in on itself.
A sky split in two directions.
"One side leads back to now," the other Hina said.
"And the other?" Hina asked.
"To a version of you that remembers everything… but can never go back."
Hina stepped forward.
The cliff crackled beneath her.
"What happens if I jump?"
"You become the memory seed," Xal said.
"Not a person. A node."
"And if I stay?"
"You dream of a peaceful life, and someone else inherits the Codex."
The world shuddered.
Time was choosing.
She looked back at the other Hina.
Peaceful.
Soft.
Alive.
Then to Xal.
Fractured.
Burning.
Free.
"I'm not ready to forget," Hina whispered.
"Then jump," said Xal.
She stepped off the cliff.
Not falling.
Rising.
As she ascended into the fold between dimensions, the Codex reformed around her.
Not as a book.
As language.
Lines of glyphs wrapped around her arms, her neck, her ribs, her memory.
She was the page now.
And her next word…
Would be spell seven.