The Snap That Shook Heaven

✦ Prologue — A Whisper in the Pulse ✦

The banquet still roared somewhere above, full of laughter and politics. I slipped out before the first toast ended.

No guards followed. No one noticed. Just one heir and his shadow walking down a corridor that smelled like starlight and dust.

Heaven looked different at night. The marble lost its gold; the gardens lost their choir.

Only the pulse of Ryvane lamps remained — steady, patient, almost human.

The palace was quiet when it happened. Too quiet.

Not peaceful quiet. The kind of silence where the world is waiting.

The ember in my chest pulsed in triple rhythm — not one heart. Not two.

Three distinct beats, overlapping like worlds trying to sync.

My pulse slipped out of sync; Ryvane threads sparked wild in my veins.

I froze.

“...No. Not again.”

The Ryvane lamps around me glitched — their golden light breaking into violet pixels.

Something was coming.

Something inside me.

✦ The Ripple Moment ✦

I stepped into the abandoned mirror hall — a place angels used for training posture and diplomacy.

Tonight, it reflected something… wrong.

My reflection flickered behind me half a frame late like it wasn’t following the same rules as my body.

I walked.

It lagged.

I exhaled.

It inhaled.

My throat tightened.

“Great. Even mirrors hate me.”

Fine. If the world wanted to glitch on me, I might as well check if the glitch was in my veins.

I dropped my cloak, loosened my sleeves.

My pulse still hadn’t slowed since the court hearing.
Every heartbeat sounded… doubled.

Like an echo living a fraction behind the real one.

“Alright,” I muttered, “just you and me, miracle-defective prototype.”

I raised one hand. Fire — a clean spiral in my palm. The heat coiled neatly, no flare, no chaos.

Good.

Then water — ribbons forming and vanishing before they dripped.
Wind — silent, sharp, enough to bend the grass.
Earth — cracks sealed as soon as they formed.

Each element obeyed like muscle memory.
No chants. No gestures. Just thought.

✦ The Second Heartbeat ✦

I drew Ryvane deeper, guiding it through my veins like the instructors taught — slow, centered, deliberate. The glow spread beneath my skin, golden-white at first.
Then — for one impossible instant — violet.

A pulse.
Then another.

The air trembled, faint but real, like a second rhythm overlapping mine.

My breath caught.

“What was that?”

The light flickered out. Only moonlight remained.

My heart hammered once, late, like it had forgotten how to keep time.

✦ The Question ✦

I pressed my palm to my chest. Nothing hurt. Nothing burned. Just that echo, faint and patient, somewhere deeper than flesh.

Maybe fatigue. Maybe overdraw. Maybe… something else.

The Ryvane around me hummed softly, as if listening.
For a moment, I felt watched — not by eyes, but by the world itself.

I laughed under my breath. “Great. Now I’m hallucinating the atmosphere.”

Still, my fingers shook.

Then the air slowed.

Every movement around me thickened — a droplet of dew hung mid-fall, the petal beside it twisting lazily in the air.

My own breath echoed back at me, half a beat late — Chrono-Flicker.

I blinked — and the world fractured.

The ember leaked through the cracks in my rhythm—just enough for my senses to tear open.

Lines of Ryvane lit up through every surface: currents under stone, veins through leaves, threads running inside the clouds above.

Reality wasn’t solid anymore — it was alive, shifting pixels of light and dust, every atom humming like a note in some unseen orchestra.

I whispered, half-terrified, half-entranced, “What… is this?”

My vision burned gold-violet. Patterns unfolded in my irises — concentric sigils spinning, focusing, adapting.
Not eyes anymore. Windows.

For the first time, I saw Heaven’s Code — the flow of Ryvane itself, looping through everything like rivers of starlight.

“Is this… my Authority?” I breathed. “Or am I seeing something I was never meant to?”

The pulse in my chest surged.
Instinct — not thought — told me to move.

I put my hand to the glass—

The mirror hissed.
Reality rippled.
And the world fractured down the middle.

Not a crack.

A storyline tearing.

Like the universe was editing itself.

✦ The Spark That Remembers ✦

The ember flared violet-gold.

This wasn’t Ryvane.
This wasn’t divine power.
This wasn’t even Heaven.

This was something ELSE.

Images flashed before my eyes—

my human childhood
Ray’s laugh
the rain
the coffin

Then—

EVERYTHING STOPPED.

Motion froze.
Sound died.
Time flickered like a paused video.

My breath crystallized in front of me.

The ember whispered:

“The Chronicle awaits.”

My eyes widened.

“The… what?”

No answer.

Just that pulse, vibrating behind my ribs like a trapped star.

✦ The First Snap ✦

Haise’s first awakening of Mechanism 1

I lifted my hand. Fingers trembling.

I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how.

But something inside me whispered the motion.

A tiny, simple gesture.

A snap.

My thumb pressed to my middle finger — then my fingers moved on their own, like the spark had been waiting years for this single motion. —

—and reality leaned toward it.

Like the universe itself held its breath.

I swallowed.

“This is stupid,” I whispered. “A tiny sound can’t possibly—”

I snapped.

Click.

✦ The Universe Opens ✦

The SOUND was tiny.

The EFFECT was infinite.

The SNAP hadn’t even finished echoing when the world bent.

Light didn’t crack.

It folded—

as if Heaven’s air was a sheet of divine paper turning itself inside-out.

A chamber materialized around me.

Not a cube.

Not a room.

Not anything that obeyed geometry.

A higher-dimensional shape forced into the world—

its edges glitching, its corners refusing to meet, its surfaces rippling like mirrors full of galaxies.

From outside?
No one would see anything but a faint shimmer.

Inside—
The Reality Fold Chamber awakened.

Panels flickered into existence around me:

[ THREAD DIAGNOSTIC — v0.1 ]
[ CALIBRATING… ]
[ ERROR: UNDEFINED RESONANCE SOURCE DETECTED ]

Probability equations melted and rewrote themselves.
Collapsed, reorganized—
like the universe was recalculating my existence.

Heaven lagged behind me:

light buffering
sound stuttering
reality struggling to catch up to my heartbeat.

My chest pounded.

Then a panel slid forward:

THREAD IDENTIFIED: HAISE TENJIN
AUTHOR ACCESS: GRANTED
MECHANISM I — SNAP: ONLINE

My throat tightened.

Another diagnostic opened:

[ SUBJECT: HAISE TENJIN ]
— THREAD INTEGRITY: FRACTURED (minor)
— RESONANCE SYNC: 78%
— EMOTIONAL LOAD: CRITICAL
— CAUSALITY DRIFT: ACTIVE
— TEMPORAL OUTPUT: 42%
— VEIN STRESS LEVEL: MODERATE → RISING

I whispered, barely breathing:

“…What is this?”

The panel flickered—

[ This is not a system. ]
[ This is your reflection. ]

The chamber shimmered—waiting for me.

Waiting for the SNAP.

✦ The Rewrite ✦

The walls of the chamber rippled outward—

the universe flattening, folding, rewriting—

the hall around me dissolving into cosmic ink,
glass spiraling into fractal patterns,
marble folding like pages in a book the gods forgot to write.

The Reality Fold Chamber pulsed:

THREAD REWRITE INITIATED
COSMIC ACCESS RANGE: LOCKED
LOCAL THREAD: OPEN

Whispers bled through the chamber:

“chapter rewritten—”
“probability adjusted—”
“thread divergence—”
“author recognized—”

My breath collapsed.

“What—what is this!?”

A final panel appeared:

ANSWER: YOUR OWN THREAD.

The chamber collapsed inward—
a silent implosion of starlight rushing into my chest—

and the physical hall rebuilt around me.

Tile by tile.
Beam by beam.
Light by light.

But it rebuilt wrong.

The crack in the mirror? Gone.
The missing pillar? Restored.
The fallen lamp? Upright.

I hadn’t healed it.
I hadn’t reversed it.

I had rewritten the story.

✦ The Fear ✦

My knees buckled.

“This isn’t… normal divine power…”

I stared at my hand.

Even my vision lagged by a frame, as if my eyes remembered an older version of reality.

Faint violet-gold ink swirled around my fingertips, like I had dipped them in the margins of creation.

I whispered:

“What am I?”

For the first time, I wasn’t afraid of the power —
I was afraid of myself.

The Chronicle didn’t answer.

But the ember pulsed—

warm.
Certain.
Alive.

Like it had been waiting YEARS for me to snap.

✦ The Consequence ✦

The Chronicle flickered out like a dying star, and the backlash slammed into me.

Suddenly— my body lurched.

Time caught up like a slingshot.

I hit the floor, gasping.
Blood trickled from my nose.
My vision split into pixel lines.

The price.
★ Every edit burns the ember a little; the ledger answers with pain.

Rewriting reality had a cost.

And I’d only snapped once.

My breath raspy, I forced myself up.

Then—

footsteps.

The hall settled, but the world still felt one beat behind me.

Lyra.

Her footsteps arrived before she did, sound reaching me a moment out of sync.

She appeared at the end of the hall, eyes wide.

“Haise—!? What happened? The lamps were glitching and—your aura just—vanished.”

Her hand trembled with an almost-imperceptible static — as if Heaven itself shivered where her fingers nearly touched me.

I stared at her.

I couldn’t speak.

She stepped closer, panic rising.

“Haise…? You’re shaking.”

I swallowed hard.

“Lyra… don’t touch me.”

Her hand stopped midair.

She understood something was wrong.
Deeply wrong.
Not divine wrong.
Not Ryvane wrong.

Cosmic wrong.

She whispered:

“…Haise. What did you do?”

I looked at the mirror.

The crack that used to be there was gone.

Reality bent to my snap.

And I whispered— half fear, half awe:

“I think… I broke the story.”

The ember pulsed once—quietly pleased, like a writer admiring its first edit.

The world tilted.
The hall pixelated, my knees buckled—

—and everything went black.

When I woke, I was in my chamber, breath sharp, sheets cold with sweat.

The ember throbbed once, slow and smug.

“…What was that?”

No answer.

Only the pulse, too calm for what it had just done.

✦ The Mask vs. The Spark ✦

That night, I stood alone on a balcony high above Heaven.

Behind me, the feast still roared.
Below me, towers of light pierced the night.
Silver rivers carved the city.
Sky-carriages streaked fire across the clouds.

I leaned on the railing and exhaled like I’d been holding my breath all day.

The mask slipped.
The perfect smile cracked.
My shoulders sagged.

I pressed my palm to my chest.

There it was.

The ember.
Violet-gold.
Alive.
A heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

The world thought I carried most affinities and divine light.
And a Soul-Born Gift.

The miracle heir.

But the truth?
That was only half.

The cosmic spark throbbed inside me, wild and waiting.

I laughed bitterly, tilting my head back.
“Chosen… or just really bad at dying?”

The ember pulsed, rattling my ribs.

“Not funny,” I whispered, smirking anyway. “You’re not going to stay quiet forever, are you?”

It didn’t answer.
But I felt it — patient. Watching.

Each pulse sounded like a name the universe forgot to teach me.

Tomorrow I’d wear the mask again.
The perfect heir.
The miracle.

But tonight, under Heaven’s sky, I admitted it:

I didn’t know if this was salvation… or a curse wrapped in gold.

For once, I wished the stars would answer — even with a lie.

✦ The Witness ✦

Silence ruled the empty arena.

The Divine Tree stood alone, golden bark whispering faint light, leaves rustling like they remembered what no one else had seen.

All of its colors still shimmered faintly in its canopy.

Then — one leaf stirred.

But violet-black.
Fractals of starlight shimmered through its veins.

If color could sin, that hue just had.

The glow lasted only a heartbeat.

Like the Tree itself couldn’t decide if the color was allowed to exist.

Then it faded.

And someone saw.

A figure lingered in the arena’s shadow — a hooded shape with an obsidian glove that reflected violet-gold sparks. Still. Watching.

The world believed the heir carried seven blessings.

But this witness — whoever they were — suspected the truth.

The heir carried more.