Livius began to descend the floating glass stairs. Every step he took, the chains of the Dragon God rattled, sending shockwaves of raw mana through the Zenith.
"You've come," a voice echoed through the void. It wasn't the voice of Aurelius. it was the voice of the world itself. "The Ghost who found the truth. Are you here to claim the god's power? Or are you here to break the cage?"
Livius reached the bottom of the vortex. He stood before the bound deity, feeling the immense, ancient sorrow radiating from its eyes. He saw the black-iron chains—they weren't made of metal, but of "Stolen Memories." They were the lives of the Silver Dragons, the blood of the harvested heirs, and the greed of a thousand years of Argentine rule.
"I am here to end the cycle," Livius said, his golden-silver eyes reflecting the suffering of the prisoner. "I didn't come to be a King. I came to be the last one."
He reached out and touched the first chain. In an instant, his mind was flooded with a million lives—the history of the continent before the first fire was stolen. He saw the era when magic was free, not hoarded in thrones and machines. He felt the weight of the "Reset."
To break the chains, he had to "Absorb" the memories. He had to take the thousand years of pain into his own vessel and then... delete it.
"If you do this, Livius," the voice warned, "you will no longer be a Prince. You will no longer be a Ghost. You will become a 'Blank Page.' The world will forget the Argentine name, but it will also forget you."
Livius looked back toward the surface, toward the memory of Cian's ink-stained fingers and Raven's silent loyalty. He thought of the Silver survivors and the name he had just reclaimed: Elaine.
"A page that is blank is a page that can be written on," Livius said.
He grabbed the first chain with both hands. The Golden fire and Silver frost within him surged, creating a third, colorless power—the Mana of the Beginning.
With a roar that shattered the glass stairs, Livius pulled. The black iron cracked. The palace above shrieked as its "Heart" began to fail. And in the depths of the Shattered Zenith, the Dragon God opened its eyes for the first time in a millennium and saw a human who wasn't hungry.