The sky lit up with the beginning of the end.

First came a pale shimmer, bending shadows across the temple floor. Then the light thickened—molten, bruising the horizon with violet and blood-orange. A low sound followed, like the sky tearing itself open.

Stone cracked—sharp and dry, like bone under strain.
The Guardian, still until now, tilted its head as if listening. Flakes of stone slid from its shoulders, glowing briefly before dulling into dust. This was not lifeless crumbling—it was deliberate, like a creature shedding old skin.

The man stumbled back, breath ragged.
“What’s happening? What is this?” His voice echoed, swallowed by trembling air.

The girl didn’t answer. She didn’t blink. Her wide eyes mirrored the fire spreading across the world. Her hand, tied to the thread, trembled—but not from fear.

The Guardian’s chest cracked open along a seam. Dust streamed out like smoke, catching the light as tiny sparks. A deep vibration rolled through the floor, resonant and ancient.

When it spoke, the sound came from everywhere.
“Stay.”

The man flinched. “What is that thing? Why—why is it moving?”

“Witness.” The voice was low, layered like echoes through stone. “This is not your ending. It is theirs. But it must be remembered.”

The girl tilted her head.
“What… ends?” she whispered.

The Guardian’s cracked face turned toward the horizon, and the sky answered.
A flash, bright enough to burn the edges of sight, tore across the heavens. A breathless pause followed, as though the world had forgotten how to move.

Then came the shock.
The flash bleached the horizon white. Air buckled. A pressure wave ripped through the jungle below, snapping trees, rolling fire and dust in a wall of ruin. When it struck the temple, the world rang like a struck bell.

The bubble flared. The air rippled, colours pooling like oil on water.
Sound pressed into his ribs—shaking everything loose—
and the man fell to his knees, hands clamped to his head as the force trembled through his bones.

“We are inside the breath of time,” the Guardian murmured, its stone chest shedding another plate of dust. “What ends outside passes around us. We are here to see, not to fall.”

The girl stepped forward, her thread brushing the floor like gold ink.
“It’s… all gone,” she whispered.

“Not gone,” said the Guardian. “Remembered. The memory will live because you will carry it.”

Then the sound arrived.
A rolling roar from every direction at once.
The bubble trembled, but held.

The sky itself howled, and for a heartbeat, the man thought the air was humming—with the raw force of things breaking, colliding, ending.

The roar passed slowly, like thunder crawling across the sky.
The man dropped to one knee, his breath coming fast and ragged, as though he had just outrun a storm.

“We can’t just stand here!” he shouted. “Can’t you feel it tearing apart? There must be somewhere safe left to run!”

“Safe?” The Guardian’s voice was soft, but it carried like a weight. “There is no safe place when an age ends. There is only remembering, or forgetting.”

The girl turned toward it, pale but calm, as though part of the silence between sounds.
“Remembering?” she asked.

The Guardian’s head tilted, stone falling in brittle layers from its neck. Beneath the cracks, a strange glimmer pulsed—neither flesh nor metal, but something that shimmered like the thread.

“A world dies twice,” it said. “Once when its body breaks, and again when its story fades. You are here because threads do not allow the second death. Someone must see. Someone must hold the truth of it.”

The man shook his head violently. “You want us to just—watch this? While the world burns?”
His eyes darted to the horizon, where pillars of smoke twisted into the light. The sky looked bruised, swollen with fire.

“You do not watch,” the Guardian replied, its voice slower now, each word carrying centuries. “You witness. There is a difference.”

The girl’s fingers curled tighter around the thread, her grip trembling with resolve as if she understood something she couldn’t yet name.
“I can feel it,” she whispered. “It’s as if I’m part of it now.”

The Guardian’s gaze shifted to her, and for a moment its cracking face seemed almost human.
“Yes. You feel because you are becoming part of it. You will carry it forward, as we have carried all endings. This is the way the threads endure.”

A deep rumble rolled through the air, shaking loose dust from the temple arches.
The man stumbled toward the girl, gripping her shoulder.
“We have to leave…”

The Guardian’s voice deepened, dust rising around its feet.
“You cannot leave. This is not a place to escape. It is a place to remember.”

The light sharpened, tearing at the sky, and the girl squinted but didn’t look away.
The man drew closer, clutching her arm.
“Look at it—this isn’t just fire, it’s everything falling apart!”

The Guardian tilted its head, a low hum rising from its chest. It stepped forward, deliberate, sending small clouds of dust spilling from its seams.
“Everything falls apart, and everything leaves a trace. What matters is that someone remembers the shape of what was lost.”

The ground shuddered as another impact hit far on the horizon.
From their high perch, they saw the shockwave flattening the jungle. Birds scattered, vanishing into the blinding light before the distant thunder reached them.

The bubble shimmered like a mirage, trembling but firm.
The girl pressed a hand to the invisible barrier, feeling its vibration like a heartbeat.
“What is this place?” she asked quietly.

The Guardian’s eyes—if they could be called eyes—shifted to her.
“A place between moments. A pause held by memory. We guard not the world, but its story.”

The man shook his head, pointing at the fire-streaked sky.
“You call this a story? This—this is the world dying!”

“No,” the Guardian said, its voice steady and deep. “This is the world being written. What is gone will live in you. That is why the threads brought you here. They do not save, they preserve.”

The girl’s gaze softened.
“I… don’t understand,” she whispered. The thread pulsed faintly in her hand. “Am I different now because I witnessed it?”

The Guardian inclined its head.
“Yes. You are becoming its witness. Without you, this moment will vanish. Without memory, even fire dies as if it never burned.”

The man turned on the Guardian, anger flashing in his eyes.
“Witness? You talk like this means something. It doesn’t! It’s just fire and death and—”

The girl tightened her grip on the thread.
“No,” she said softly, cutting through his words like a blade. “It’s… not just that. Look at it.”

The man froze, stunned by her tone.
She had never spoken with such strange, still certainty.

The Guardian moved again, another layer of stone falling away. The fragments cracked but didn’t turn to dust; they gleamed faintly, as if holding tiny sparks of memory.
“The child sees,” the Guardian said. “The fire is not just an ending. It is a mark, carved into the skin of time. Without marks, nothing remains.”

The man swallowed hard. His breathing slowed, but his hands trembled.
“And what happens to us? When this… this all ends?”

“You carry it,” the Guardian replied. “That is enough.”

“Will it hurt?” she whispered.
The Guardian’s head tilted slightly.
“Not if you see it clearly.”

The words settled into silence.
And then the end came.

The final firestorm ignited across the horizon, brighter and hotter than anything before. The sky fractured into molten rivers of light—red, gold, and white-hot—spilling through clouds that shredded like paper. The sound was beyond sound—more pressure than noise—filling their chests, pressing into their bones.

The bubble trembled, threads glowing sharp and silver at the edges as though being burned from the outside. For a heartbeat, the man thought it would break—that the fire would pour in and take them too.

But the Guardian stood unmoving, its cracks glowing like embers.
“See,” it whispered.

And they did.
They saw everything.
The world collapsing into ash and memory, the forests burning to black lace, the rivers boiling away until only scorched paths remained. The sky itself folded inward, a closing hand of fire and dust.

Then—silence.
Not relief. Just… the absence of everything.

The girl stood frozen, as if afraid the silence would break if she breathed.
The man swallowed, his eyes wide—hollow—like he wasn’t sure they’d survived at all.
Ash fell soundlessly beyond the bubble, drifting like ghost snow, and the air still tasted of smoke—sharp, bitter, like something burned out of time but clinging to their lungs.

The heat outside faded—slowly, reluctantly.
The firestorm slowed to embers, then to smoke, then to stillness.
When the light dimmed, the horizon was nothing but shadow and glass.

The Guardian stepped back. Its stone body was already hardening, dust sealing cracks where gold had once burned. Its voice sank low, like the last echo of a bell:
“Your part in this is done. Carry it forward. Let the thread guide you.”

Time stopped.
Not paused—stopped. Every sound flattened into silence, every breath caught like dust in amber. Even the fire froze mid-motion, its light hanging in the air like shattered glass.

Then the world twisted.
The sky peeled open, light unspooling backward, colors bleeding in reverse—white to ash, ash to violet, violet to the deep blue of a world still waiting to be named. The horizon cracked and curled like paper burning inward, and what was ruined began to unhappen.

The temple held its breath as the jungle regrew in whispers—trees rising from scorched earth, leaves leaning close as if they knew the shape of beginnings. The wind stirred gently, tasting of rain before it falls.

Time surged forward, skipping over the silence of ages, until the world settled into something new—something made from both ending and origin.

The thread shimmered in the air again, no longer gold but silver—quiet, patient, waiting. It brushed against the man’s hand like a reminder that this place was not where they began, nor where they had just left. It was new.

The sky above was violet, soft and alive. Birds called in the distance. Life moved again.
The air felt strange—warmer, but alive in a way that made their skin prickle, as if the world itself was waiting.

The girl stood very still. The thread hummed faintly in her hand.
“It’s… different,” she murmured.

The man nodded, though his eyes were distant. A new thread shimmered in the air—thin, pale, like breath caught in sunlight. It brushed against his hand. He flinched at the weight it carried.

Behind them, the Guardian no longer moved. Stone reclaimed every trace of gold, every whisper of life, until it was nothing but a statue of silence.

The man looked back once. The girl didn’t. She was already stepping forward, eyes fixed on the horizon.

He followed.

The thread stretched ahead, soft and glowing. Waiting.

They walked on together, quiet as a breath between endings. Carrying memory. Carrying weight.

Because nothing truly ends as long as it is remembered.

---

❂ Just as one thread ends, another waits.

Below, it begins anew.