The next morning came without sunlight.
Only a dim glow through the cracks of the sky, like a dying bulb behind stained glass. Reigen had slept in a corner of Kael's half-built temple — if you could call it that. No walls. No roof. Just curved bones of reinforced metal reaching upward like arms in prayer.
Kael was already awake.
She sat at the edge of the structure again, feet swinging off into nothing, hands sketching patterns in the dirt — lines, circles, strange symbols that bent like rivers.
"You sketch blueprints in the mud?" Reigen asked, walking up.
"I draw what I dream," she replied. "But I don't remember what the dreams mean."
He knelt beside her, observing. "That's not just art. That's… geometric code. Ancient shaping language."
Kael didn't respond. Just kept drawing.
Reigen swallowed hard. "Where did you learn that?"
She looked up at him, eyes narrowing. "Same place you forgot it."
---
They began clearing the structure.
Reigen's hands bled on the rusted beams as he tore away the collapsed segments. Kael worked like someone possessed — precise, silent, unfazed by pain. She moved with an instinct Reigen recognized: the kind only real builders had.
"You said you're waiting for architects," Reigen finally said.
"I was told one would come," she answered. "Someone who remembers how to give shape to the formless."
"…Told by who?"
Kael's head tilted. "You ever hear of the Shapers?"
Reigen froze.
"Those are just myths. Builders who could bend stone, water, light — reshape the world at will. They're fairy tales told to apprentice masons."
Kael smiled.
"They weren't fairy tales. They were humans. Before the fracture."
He looked away.
"Why would you believe that? And why would they choose me?"
Kael stared straight ahead.
"Because you tried to build a stairway that reached beyond the sky. Even knowing the sky was broken."
---
Later, they climbed the floating ruins of a sunken cathedral — searching for salvage.
As they neared the top, Kael stopped.
"You hear that?" she whispered.
Reigen did.
A low clicking. Like glass tapping bone.
A Woken emerged — tall, skeletal, its skin a patchwork of stone and reflective water. Where a face should be, only a rotating mirror shimmered.
It spoke — not with words, but reflected memory.
"This was yours, Reigen. This failure. This fall. This flood."
Kael stepped forward, unfazed.
Reigen grabbed her arm. "We can't fight it!"
"We don't need to," she replied. "Just show it something it's never seen."
She held up the new blueprint they'd drawn that morning — not Reigen's old plan. A new one. Jagged, chaotic, unfinished… but alive.
The Woken stopped.
Its mirror flickered, twitching.
Then… it vanished.
Reigen stared, stunned. "What… just happened?"
Kael exhaled. "Woken are bound to memory. They hunt certainty. But show them hope — show them what's unfinished — and they glitch."
He looked at her differently now.
"…Who are you, really?"
Kael met his eyes.
"I'm not here to remember the world," she whispered. "I'm here to build what comes after it."