Outside the palace, the world was beginning to blur.
Cian stood at the base of the palace steps, clutching Vaelin's record book so hard his knuckles were white. He looked down at the page he had been writing—a detailed plan for the new trade routes—and watched in horror as the ink began to fade. The letters weren't just disappearing; they were being "Unwritten."
"Raven!" Cian shouted, looking at the shadow-girl beside him. "Do you remember the name of the girl we saved from the Steppes? The one who carried the rose?"
Raven opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes went vacant. She tilted her head, her brow furrowed in a sudden, terrifying confusion. "I... I remember a rose. But there was no girl. We went to the Steppes to... to survey the grass?"
Cian felt a cold sweat break across his forehead. The "Great Deletion" had begun. Because the Argentine Empire was built on a lie, the "Reset" was removing every event that had been fueled by the Dragon God's stolen power. The civil war, the naval battle, the reclamation of the North—the world was losing its memory of the "Ghost."
"No," Cian whispered, biting his lip until it bled. "I will not forget. I am the Scribe. My soul is the ink."
He pulled a shard of the shattered Guardian's claymore from the dirt and used the sharp edge to carve a single word into his own forearm, deep enough to leave a permanent scar: LIVIUS.
The pain was sharp, grounding him in the present as the reality around him shifted. The palace was no longer a breathing monster; it was becoming a ruin of ancient, ivy-covered stone. The "Council of the People" were looking at each other, wondering why they were standing in front of a collapsed castle they didn't recognize.