Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
"You," he said. "Did you set this up?"
Convergence tilted his head as though he was considering whether the question deserved a serious answer.
Then he smiled.
"No."
That was all.
He turned away from Lucien, walked back to the vendor, and bought another ice cream as if they were standing in an ordinary market on an ordinary afternoon and not at the center of an inevitable eting that had been tightening around the world for days.
When he turned back, he was already licking it.
Lucien watched him in silence.
It was absurd.
This was not what he had imagined.
No oppressive aura pressed down on the city. No killing intent spilled from the man’s body. No imdiate violence sharpened the air.
Convergence looked too casual, too relaxed, and too human. He looked like a man who had stopped by on the way to sowhere else and found the weather pleasant enough to linger.
That made him worse.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
"Then why are we both here," he asked, "if you didn’t arrange it?"
Convergence laughed.
Amused, as if Lucien had just asked why rain fell from clouds.
"Arrange?" he said. "I only arrange things I can’t fully control. For the rest, I just wait. So things don’t need help. They close on their own."
He lifted the ice cream slightly and gave a tiny shrug.
"This eting was one of those."
Then he glanced around the market and added, in that sa maddeningly casual tone, "Also, the ice cream here is genuinely good."
Lucien stared at him.
Convergence smiled wider.
"I’m serious," he said. "You noticed this place stayed standing, right? This city took less damage than it should have. You can thank for that."
Lucien’s face darkened.
"You expect to believe that."
"I don’t really care whether you do," Convergence replied. "This body has weird cravings. Sweet stuff, especially. Ice cream is apparently a favorite. I tried it. Turns out the shell has good taste."
Lucien’s eyes tightened.
There was no falsehood in the words.
That was the problem.
He could not feel a lie.
Convergence was too casual, too comfortable, and too willing to treat this mont like a conversation between neighbors.
And that made the dread sink deeper.
Because if he was this calm, then he had never been worried about Lucien escaping the eting at all.
He had arrived already knowing escape no longer mattered.
Lucien swallowed once.
Then his gaze shifted past Convergence.
Morveth and Aerolith were approaching from the side of the market.
Aerolith was happily licking her own ice cream, looking entirely too pleased with the world. Morveth walked beside her with the steady patience of an uncle resigned to supervising nonsense.
Lucien moved quickly toward them.
But then—
They kept walking.
Straight past him.
As if they don’t know him.
Lucien stopped.
His breath caught.
"Uncle. Aerolith."
That made them pause.
They turned, looked at him, and Lucien felt sothing in himself go cold.
There was no recognition in their eyes.
Only caution. Mild confusion. The ordinary guardedness one gave a stranger who had called out too familiarly.
Aerolith frowned first.
"Brother?" she said. She glanced up at Morveth, then looked back at Lucien. "Who are you? Why do you know my na?"
Lucien froze.
Morveth’s eyes remained calm, unreadable.
"We should return to the base," he told Aerolith. "There is nothing more for us here."
Then they turned away.
And left him there.
"..."
Lucien did not move.
For a brief, impossible instant, it felt as though sothing had been cut out of reality itself and left only the shape of where it used to be.
Convergence finally stepped closer.
He was still eating.
"Interesting," he said. "Friends with two Void creatures. That alone would’ve made you worth studying."
Lucien did not answer.
Convergence kept going, as though musing out loud.
"And the Lunarians. I did not expect that. That eclipse was beautiful, by the way. Best thing I’ve seen in a very long ti."
Lucien’s jaw tightened.
Convergence looked at him and finally asked, "So how does it feel?"
A pause followed.
"To be forgotten."
Lucien ignored the question.
He was still staring in the direction Morveth and Aerolith had gone.
His voice ca out rougher than he intended.
"Did you... do this?"
Convergence laughed under his breath, shook his head, and took another slow lick.
"No."
Then he lifted one hand and pointed lazily past Lucien’s shoulder.
"It was him."
Lucien turned.
At that exact instant, Alanthuriel’s voice exploded through his mind.
[No. Move now.]
But—
He was too late.
Lucien did not even finish turning his head... when darkness swallowed him.
There was no impact.
No strike he could perceive.
No pain.
There was only the sudden, impossible certainty that sothing had touched him and that touch had the authority to end him before his instincts could even recognize danger.
Then Lucien died.
...
Just then—
Light slamd back into him.
His body convulsed.
A life-link talisman tore itself apart in brilliant shards, and sowhere, one of the sli plushies bound to his fallback lives collapsed into ash.
Lucien hit the ground hard, lungs dragging in air that felt too sharp to breathe.
His heart was racing wildly.
He stared downward for a mont, not understanding what had happened, because understanding it would an accepting the sheer absurdity of it.
He had died.
Just like that.
No chance to react.
His instincts had not failed so much as they had never been allowed to enter the conversation. Death had taken him before reaction had beco relevant.
His vision slowly cleared.
He realized he was on one knee in the street.
Then he looked up.
Convergence was no longer smiling.
He looked annoyed.
Actually annoyed.
"You," he said sharply, staring past Lucien. "What are you doing?"
A voice answered him.
It was deep and old. Wrong in the way only things older than natural fear could sound.
"That is not your concern."
Lucien’s gaze shifted.
Sothing stood there.
Not a creature in any ordinary sense.
A black formlessness that kept almost becoming a shape and then denying itself one. A presence like a hole torn into mory. A shadow given intention but not body. Looking at it made the mind slip across it, as though the eye could find where it stood but thought could not keep hold of it.
Even hearing it felt dangerous.
Convergence’s irritation sharpened.
"You do not attack here," he said. "Not in this place."
"You do not command ," the thing replied. "I move where necessity leads. I take what must be removed."
The market around them had gone strangely still.
As if so deeper law had decided that ordinary life no longer belonged in this conversation.
Lucien felt very small.
That was the simplest truth in the mont.
Convergence and the black formless presence did not feel like enemies in the way powerful beings usually did.
They felt like categories of danger.
Things that sat above ordinary conflict and only occasionally descended into it when sothing mattered enough.
Convergence’s expression hardened.
He did not argue again.
Instead, his domain expanded in a flash of authority, and Lucien was wrenched out of the market before he fully understood what was happening.
Space folded.
The city vanished.
They reappeared far outside the settlent.
Lucien caught himself with one hand.
Then Alanthuriel’s voice ca again, quieter now but no less urgent.
[Take out.]
A beat passed.
[In the end, I have been found.]
Lucien swallowed and spoke inwardly at once.
[Senior, what in the absurd hell is that thing?]
His eyes remained locked on Convergence and the formless presence.
Alanthuriel answered without hesitation.
[One of the Abyss.]
Then, after the briefest pause...
[Oblivion. The Arch-Lord of Abyssal Oblivion.]
Lucien’s breath stalled.
Alanthuriel continued.
[You have already been marked by it. Not with a curse in the common sense. But with absence.]
Lucien listened in horrified silence.
[You have been forgotten by the world, little one. At this mont, all who knew you will have had your existence erased from their minds.]
Everything suddenly aligned with terrible clarity.
Morveth. Aerolith. Their calm dismissal. The impossible emptiness that had hit him when they walked away.
Lucien stared ahead, unable for a mont to form any proper thought at all.
Forgotten.
The word was too clean for what it ant.
How did one fight that?
How did one stand in a world that no longer rembered standing beside him?
How many people would look at him and see only a stranger?
How many promises, friendships, loyalties, histories had just been cut loose from him as if they had never existed?
His stomach turned.
His hands tightened in the dirt.
There was anger in him. Confusion. A bizarre, rising panic that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with erasure.
The formless black presence seed to notice him again.
Its voice reached him.
"Curious," it said. "To survive being struck by this one."
Lucien clenched his jaw.
The thing spoke again.
"I expected sothing else to erge. I did not co for you. Take Nihility out."
That made Alanthuriel go still in a way Lucien could feel.
Then the old presence inside him beca impatient for the first ti since Lucien had known him.
[Little one, I owe you an apology.]
The words were quiet and heavy.
[I brought this upon you.]
Lucien breathed in once, hard, trying to steady the chaos inside his chest.
Then Alanthuriel said...
[Do not fear. Bring out now.]
And strangely—
That helped.
Lucien shut his eyes for half a heartbeat, steadied himself, and opened them again.
Then he reached inward.
And summoned Alanthuriel into the Big World.
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