When Erah returned,
there was no sky.

Not shattered, not rewritten—
just... absence.

The world was not broken anymore.
It was waiting.

Mountains hung without weight.
Oceans floated as scattered droplets.
Forests stood frozen in growth, their leaves mid-fall,
held in suspense like unfinished thoughts.

He stood on no ground.
Yet he did not fall.
Gravity was no longer an order—
just a memory.

Erah was alone,
but not unwatched.

Around him, threads flickered—
remnants of timelines,
possibilities that had never fully become.

Each thread hummed faintly.
They were not dead.
Merely... waiting to be chosen.

One thread showed a version of the world where he had never carved any glyphs.
Another, a realm where he had become a god of endings.
A third—
one where he had ceased to exist,
but left a sky that healed itself.

“This is the in-between,”
a voice whispered.
It came from nowhere, yet from within him.

“You rewrote the glyph.
Now you must choose the story that follows.”

Erah’s breath shook.

He was no longer just a character within the world.
He had become its pen.
Its decision.
Its silence.

But each choice carried a weight even heavier than the glyphs:

If he chose the path of non-interference, the world would begin anew—unshaped, wild, pure.

If he chose the path of control, he could remake the order—but at the cost of freedom.

If he chose none, the world would remain in stasis, timeless, a monument to indecision.

His hand hovered.

No glyph was needed now.
Only intent.

Erah closed his eyes—
and for the first time,
did not think of saving.

He thought of letting go.