The Repository of Rejects was like a colossal artistic slaughterhouse. Gigantic barrels rumbled around Sol, filled with raw ink extracted from the souls of sketches that had been erased. In the center, the Forgotten Colossus rose—a massive conglomeration of mismatched drawn limbs, faces from different eras screaming atop a body built from layers of hardened oil paint.
"Sol… run…" whispered Sir Garrett, his silver armor losing its shine, fading into dull gray—a sign that the repository was beginning to absorb its metallic essence.
But Sol did not retreat. He gripped his diamond-tipped brush, feeling the pulse of Eternal Pigment in his right eye intensify, to the point that he could see the wireframes forming the Colossus's body.
"I will not let anyone become ink for their clouds," Sol said, his voice calm but echoing powerfully across the warehouse.
The Colossus roared and charged, its massive hand—composed of hundreds of tiny arms—slamming toward Sol, intent on crushing him against the paper floor. But Sol did not jump away. Instead, he activated a new skill: Layer Manipulation.
In his mind, Sol imagined the floor beneath him as Layer One, and the Colossus as Layer Two. With a swift stroke of his brush, he hid Layer Two for a moment.
The Colossus's hand passed through the space where Sol should have been, like a ghost, because at that moment Sol was not present in the same visual layer. As soon as the hand passed, Sol made himself visible again, stabbing the Colossus's wrist with his diamond brush and infusing it with Paint Thinner.
The Colossus screamed, a sound like tearing an enormous canvas. Its wrist began to melt, the colors within it turning into shapeless black liquid.
"Constantine! Garrett! Hold on!" Sol shouted, pushing forward toward the magnetic frames.
There was no time to manually unlock the restraints. Sol focused his blue eye on the frames and saw that they were drawn with a logical lock. Raising his brush, he drew the Erasure Symbol directly over them. He did not merely erase the locks; he erased the concept of imprisonment in that space. The restraints exploded, dissolving into ordinary ink splotches.
Garrett and Constantine collapsed to the floor. Constantine trembled, his magnifying lenses cracked. Garrett's armor was so transparent that one could see the void within, stark and terrifying.
"Sol… you've become… extremely skilled," Constantine said, trying to stand. "But the Colossus will repair itself… the repository feeds it every drop of ink lost here."
Sure enough, the inked tendrils sprouted from the barrels, reconnecting to the Colossus's body and reconstructing its melted wrist within seconds. The Colossus grew larger, its features becoming more monstrous.
"We must escape to the Grey Zone," Constantine shouted. "There, the visual laws have not yet been written, and the Purifiers cannot follow us."
"How do we reach it?" Garrett asked, slowly regaining control of his Void Sword.
"We must break the repository's frame," Constantine replied, pointing to the distant horizon, where the walls ended and a stark white edge began. "But breaking the frame requires the energy of the First Drawing."
Sol glanced at his brush, then at his companions, then at the Colossus, preparing its crushing strike. He realized that his power was not just a weapon—it was the responsibility of reshaping the world.
"I'll hold it," Garrett said, stepping forward with his semi-transparent armor. "I'll be the Forgotten Shield one last time. Sol, do what must be done!"
Garrett charged the Colossus, forming a bridge of faint silver light to protect his friends. Sol focused every particle of his energy into his diamond-tipped brush. He no longer drew ordinary lines; he began sketching a Plot Hole.
The air trembled. A massive rift appeared in the warehouse air—a tear that led not to a place, but outside the canvas of reality. Gray light seeped from it, distant from the chaos of colors and visual wars.
"Garrett! Constantine! Now!" Sol shouted.
Struggling, Constantine leapt into the rift, followed by Garrett, barely holding himself together. Sol lingered at the edge, turning to see the Forgotten Colossus frozen in place—the repository itself beginning to peel away.
"I am not Sketch Number Zero," Sol whispered, gazing at his glowing brush. "I am the truth you forgot to draw."
He jumped into the gray rift. The frame closed behind him, leaving the repository, the Purifiers, and the Philosopher in a world losing its colors at terrifying speed.
They found themselves in an infinite gray space, without gravity or direction. It was like a blank sheet of paper before the pencil touched it. Here, in the Grey Zone, Sol's body began to stabilize, and Garrett and Constantine regained some of their density.
But silence did not last long. In the middle of the gray void, Sol saw an old wooden chair, and sitting upon it was an old man, raggedly dressed, holding a broken pencil in his hand.
"You are late," the old man said without looking up from the paper in his lap. "I have already begun drawing the Ending."