---
🌫️ After the Rite
The cathedral had shifted behind him — becoming mist, echo, and brass dust.
Kairen followed the girl in white through a silent, winding tunnel carved not from stone, but from polished bones.
The walls pulsed faintly — like a sleeping giant.
She hadn't spoken again.
She only drew.
Each time she stopped, she'd sketch — and the path ahead would twist to match the image.
---
🖼️ Her Chamber
They arrived in a high circular room.
The ceiling was an endless sky, full of stars that moved like clock hands.
Sketches covered the walls. Thousands. All drawn in charcoal.
A man made of smoke screaming into a mirror
A desert where children prayed to a skeleton
A boy touching a rusted crown
A woman made of glass crying over a book
And in the center… a single painting framed in rusted gold:
Kairen kneeling, holding a book of time, with gears exploding from his back like wings.
The girl finally spoke:
"They say I dream of what the gods forget to erase."
"But lately… I've been dreaming only of you."
Kairen's voice was calm. "Who are you?"
She smiled faintly.
"They call me Safaa. But the Watchmaker calls me First Mistake."
---
📖 The Dream That Wasn't a Dream
Safaa sat on the floor and opened her sketchbook.
"In my sleep, I see other timelines. Some never happened. Some never will. But they bleed into this one."
She handed him a torn sketch:
It showed Kairen as a child, being handed a book by a man with a clock embedded in his chest.
Beneath it:
"Al-Zaman Fragment III – The Grave of the Hourless"
She touched the page… and it burned into his palm.
---
📜 System Update
[Fragment III Acquired: "The Grave of the Hourless"]
🕯️ Ability Gained: "Stillbirth Memory"
→ Recall an event that never happened and use it as real knowledge once.
☠️ Cost: You will lose one timeline where you survive something fatal.
---
🪞 The Coming Vision
Suddenly, Safaa stopped.
She began violently sketching, her eyes glowing.
Her hand bled.
She turned the paper toward him.
It showed:
A city on fire.
A robed boy screaming "Ya Noorain!"
And a figure with a mirror for a face holding a Qur'an made of glass.
Safaa whispered:
"Someone has taken your absence and turned it into power."
"If he completes the Sixth Fragment... he can unmake your soul before you were born."
Kairen stared at the paper.
Silence.
Then he asked softly:
"Where is he?"
She looked up — terrified for the first time.
"He's coming… from the Thirteenth Dawn."
---
🕯️ To Be Continued...
Next: Chapter 7 – Reverse Baptism
Kairen must pass through a cursed ritual that rewrites his origin —
or lose the right to remember himself.
And a figure calling himself Al-Dawla arrives, claiming to be Noorain's twin… who never lived.