Smoke still hung in the air like a living thing. The earth was carved open in canyons where the Outer God's presence had grazed reality itself. Even the sky bled light in unnatural colors, flickering like a dying lantern.
Lucien forced his eyes open. His body screamed against him, bones cracked, muscles torn—but worse than pain was the silence. Kairo wasn't laughing. Ashveil's arrogant remarks were gone. The mirrored six, who only two days ago teased each other like lifelong friends, lay scattered in broken heaps across the ruined field.
And the Outer God wasn't even trying.
It stood tall, a silhouette of impossible geometry, every movement rewriting the space around it. Its voice echoed in thoughts rather than ears:
"Twelve fragments of defiance. Shards of a failed design. You should not exist."
Lucien staggered forward, cape dragging through ash, his steps uneven but stubborn. His mind screamed that he was finished. His body was already at the limit. But the Void inside him stirred—not wild, not desperate, but curious, as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.
He lifted his hand, ready to burn what little he had left…
And then the voice struck deeper, sharper, like a blade of truth:
"Lucien… Son of the Betrayer. He who defied me, who severed his own thread. Do you even know what you are? You are not the Sole Exception. You are the Error."
The ground shook. Everyone conscious froze.
Lucien's breath caught. The words wrapped around him like a noose. Not chosen. Not special. An Error.
The Outer God spread one hand, and reality peeled back like cloth, revealing flashes of another world—familiar faces, a different timeline, distorted echoes of the revenants and their mirrored counterparts… versions of them who had already died.
"Every cycle, I erase you," the god whispered into their minds. "Every cycle, you crawl back. Why? Because one mistake in my design remains unresolved. You. The white that births you is not a gift. It is my infection, leaking through the wound of eternity."
Lucien's knees nearly buckled. For a heartbeat, the weight of it felt heavier than the void itself. The revelation wasn't about triumph. It was about inevitability.
And then—
The god raised its hand again, and this time it didn't aim for them. It reached into Lucien. His body convulsed, void energy erupting violently, tearing at his skin. Kairo screamed his name, but it was drowned out by the sound of reality itself collapsing.
The final words before everything went black were chilling, almost mocking:
"If you are the Error… then perhaps the only way forward is to correct you—by becoming you."
The Outer God began to take Lucien's form.