Beneath Detracta, in a chamber where time was said to pulse differently, Ari sat in silent communion with the Tome of Echoes. The words on the page no longer shimmered with dissonance. They whispered.
"You've reached the threshold," said Aven, standing behind him. "The moment where your will either becomes the anchor—or the storm."
The page bore no incantation, only a title:Spell 0: When the World Forgot ItselfMnemonic Class: UndefinedSpell Type: Meta-Causal InvocationRequirement: Originis Soulpath Restoration
Ari placed his hand over the glyph embedded in the Tome—a spiraling sigil that moved like it was alive. It didn't request mana. It requested memory.
And so Ari gave it everything.
He poured in flashes of his childhood, fragments of forgotten feelings, the fragmented vision of the young girl—the System's child—who had whispered to him in the threshold of death. He poured in his longing, his fury, his lineage. His truth.
The sigil pulsed.
And the world fractured.
The Echo Awakens
Reality warped.
Ari stood in a frozen mirror of the world, where everything moved in echoes. Trees rustled twice. Light flickered in two directions. Voices bled into their past and future.
It was not illusion.
It was remembrance—the world remembering its unwritten past.
A silhouette approached him through the mirrored realm. A tall woman in shimmering fractal robes, eyes filled with stars that refused to stay still.
"Welcome, Ari Originis," she said. "You cast the first Echo."
"Who are you?"
"A shard. A ghost. A will embedded in the Tome—a last ember of the world before the Rewrite. I carry knowledge your kind once wielded."
The scene shifted. Cities made of glyphs. Magic that shaped logic. Families that walked on light.
Then—a collapse. The birth of the System. The Six rewriting code. Locking away freedom. Splintering the Rootpath into Threads.
"What was Spell 0?"
"A mirror," she answered. "It doesn't reshape the world. It shows you what was erased. Only those who remember may reclaim."
Ari staggered. His mind burned with three million decades of stolen memory. His thoughts no longer fit within a single point of view.
And yet… he was still standing.
A Glimpse from Afar
Back in the real world, the chamber trembled. Glyphs appeared midair. Ancient ones—never documented, never taught. Even the Detractors who had watched the world shift many times fell to their knees.
"He cast it," whispered one. "Spell Zero…"
And in the skies above Detracta, an echo drifted outward—silent, invisible—but felt by every living being who carried magic.
Eluin clutched her chest.Cerys looked to the horizon, confused.The Princess stared out her window, blushing for no reason.Lysira shouted at a sparring partner she suddenly couldn't focus on.
The world had changed. But no one yet understood how.
Return & The Message
Ari returned from the mirrored realm gasping. The Tome of Echoes slammed shut on its own, the page now sealed.
But carved into the air above the book was a message in shimmering Pre-Signum glyphs:
"𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕿𝖗𝖚𝖊 𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖌𝖊 𝕴𝖘 𝕽𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌."
And Ari, standing amidst the trembling chamber, clenched his fists.
"Then I'll remember it all. And I'll make the world remember too."