Year 0 + 12 days
Location: The Stacks, Level Ω-12 (the floor that only exists when someone is about to lose everything)
They walked straight into the Custodians' heart.
No stealth, no summons, no tricks.
Just Lin Kexin in a black cheongsam slit high enough to kill, and Hassan beside her wearing the same suit he was born in, darkness rolling off his shoulders like a cape made of murdered galaxies.
The corridor stretched infinite in both directions. Every ten metres stood a Custodian archivist, silver tie clips now glowing white-hot. None of them moved. They didn't need to. The air itself was the trap.
At the far end waited the Board of Nine.
Real names long forgotten. Titles older than language.
They sat behind a table carved from the first law ever written.
The woman in the centre (tall, Han Chinese features, eyes like the heat death of the universe) spoke first.
"Lin Kexin. You have committed fourteen capital violations of the Accord. Surrender the entity. Accept excision. The planet keeps spinning."
Lin Kexin smiled the way a guillotine smiles.
"Make me."
The Board didn't blink.
The floor vanished.
Suddenly she was alone in white nothingness.
Hassan was gone.
A circle of light appeared beneath her feet, tightening like a noose.
The woman's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"We have done this before. Seventeen hosts. Seventeen gods birthed and broken. Your predecessor on the Euphrates thought he could love his weapon too. We still have his screams on file."
The circle shrank. Lin Kexin felt her memories begin to peel away like burning film: her mother's face, the smell of field hospitals, the first time Hassan said her name.
She laughed.
"You're making the same mistake they all do."
She closed her eyes and spoke three words she had never dared before.
"Come to me."
Not a command.
A prayer.
Reality tore open like wet silk.
Hassan stepped through the rip, eyes blazing supernovae, darkness exploding outward in a sphere that devoured the white nothingness and kept going. Every archivist in the corridor aged ten thousand years in a heartbeat and crumbled to dust that was already old when it hit the floor.
He didn't stop at the Board.
He walked straight through the table, through the laws, through the concept of resistance, until he stood behind Lin Kexin and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, lips brushing the bite mark he'd left on her throat six subjective days ago.
"You took your hands off my queen," he said, conversational. "That was impolite."
The Board of Nine finally moved.
The woman raised one hand.
Every version of Lin Kexin that could ever have existed (child, soldier, corpse, empress, saint, monster) appeared around her in a ring, screaming.
Hassan snapped his fingers.
All the alternate Kexins aged to dust in the same instant.
Then he leaned down and kissed the real one, slow and filthy, right in front of the people who thought they owned destiny.
When he pulled back, his voice was soft.
"Watch closely."
He turned to the Board.
And began to unmake them.
Not kill.
Unmake.
One by one, starting with the youngest member (only twelve thousand years old), he reached into their chests and pulled out the moment they first chose order over mercy. He crushed those moments like glass. Their bodies followed, collapsing into spirals of mathematical symbols that tried to crawl back together and couldn't.
The woman in the centre lasted longest.
She stared at Lin Kexin with something almost like respect.
"You'll destroy everything," she whispered.
Lin Kexin stepped forward, cupped the woman's face with both hands, and kissed her forehead like a mother forgiving a dead child.
"I'm not destroying everything," she said. "I'm just done asking permission to exist."
Hassan's hand settled on the woman's shoulder.
The last thing the Board of Nine ever saw was the two of them smiling.
Then the Stacks went dark.
Forever.
When light returned, Lin Kexin and Hassan stood on the frozen dawn rooftop again.
Beijing was back. Traffic lights blinking. Old men doing tai chi in parks that had never been obsidian.
The war, for the first time in twelve days, was quiet.
Hassan pulled her against him, mouth against her ear.
"They're gone," he said. "All of them. The Custodians are a ghost story now."
She turned in his arms, eyes shining with tears she would never shed.
"Then what do we do with the rest of forever?"
He kissed her like the answer was obvious.
"We live," he said. "Messy. Beautiful. Free."
Somewhere far below, Shanghai woke up and had no idea it had just become the capital of a universe with no more rules.
End of Chapter 10