Chapter 11: Chapter 10: The Erasure That Follows
The world collapsed.
Not in an explosion. Not in a surge of divine power.
But in a way that was wrong.
One moment, Klein and Yeaia were running through the alley. The next—there was no alley.
There was no street. No city. No sky.
There was only absence.
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"The Shape of the Missing"
Klein acted on instinct.
The Gray Fog rippled.
He seized Yeaia's wrist and forced their existence to remain.
For a moment, it worked.
They stood on something that was not quite ground. Air that was not quite air pressed against their skin. The remnants of a world that should have been shivered around them.
Then Klein saw it.
The Spiral had taken shape.
Not as a creature. Not as a god.
But as a void in the shape of a person.
A silhouette—identical to Yeaia.
It had no face.
But Klein knew it was watching.
It did not hate. It did not kill.
It only corrected.
And right now, it was correcting Yeaia's existence.
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"What Happens If It Reaches You?"
Klein's voice was steady. Cold. But inside, his thoughts raced.
Yeaia, surprisingly, still managed a half-laugh.
"If it touches me?" They tilted their head. "I guess I find out if I was ever real to begin with."
The Spiral took a step forward.
Klein felt the universe shift.
This was different from anything he had encountered before. It was not a distortion of reality like Amon's tricks. It was not divine power like an Outer God's gaze.
It was erasure.
A fundamental undoing.
And the worst part?
Even as a god, he didn't know if he could stop it.
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A Fool's Gamble
Yeaia exhaled. Their red-highlighted hair flickered like an afterimage, as if they were already beginning to fade.
"Klein."
They said his name so casually.
As if they weren't standing before the end of their existence.
"You ever think that maybe…" They smiled faintly. "I was supposed to disappear a long time ago?"
Klein's expression darkened.
"No."
He lifted his hand.
And for the first time—
He reached into the Spiral.
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The Fool That Defies
The moment his power touched it, Klein understood.
The Spiral wasn't just erasing Yeaia.
It was rewriting time itself.
If it succeeded, Yeaia would not simply be dead.
They would have never existed at all.
No one would remember them. No records would remain.
Even Klein himself—who stood above the Gray Fog, who had witnessed countless impossibilities—
Would eventually forget.
And that was unacceptable.
Klein forced the world to remember.
The Gray Fog descended.
The weight of an Outer Deity slammed into the Spiral's form—a collision of concepts that should never have touched.
For a moment, the world reeled.
The Spiral flickered.
Yeaia's fading form solidified.
But Klein felt it.
The Spiral had not stopped.
It had only turned its attention toward him.
---
"Oh."
Yeaia blinked.
"Oh."
They exhaled, rubbing the back of their head.
"So now it thinks you need to be corrected too, huh?"
Klein's golden eyes met Yeaia's mismatched ones.
And despite the danger, despite the overwhelming certainty that they were facing a force more terrifying than any god—
He smiled.
"Then I guess it made a mistake."
Yeaia snorted. "That's a first."
And as the Spiral lurched forward—
They ran.
Not away.
But forward.
Straight into the unknown.
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End of Chapter 10
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