The silence inside the cell wasn't empty—it pulsed.
Kael stood, body bruised and spirit teetering between despair and defiance. The walls of the prison were made of anti-time crystal, reflective but fractured, showing versions of himself—laughing, broken, bleeding, dead. All possibilities, all outcomes... except one.
The one where she was with him.
He clenched the chain tighter in his fist.
Suddenly, the walls shimmered, and a voice sliced through the static like lightning cracking across a dark sky.
Kael. I'm coming. Just hold on…
Her voice.
Aeris.
But this time, it wasn't a whisper. It wasn't a memory. It was now.
The crystal walls cracked as a blue-white glow surged through them. Somewhere beyond this timeline, Aeris had activated a Rift Beacon—a forbidden device from the lost Chrono Archives—one that could pierce realities for seconds at a time.
Time fractured.
The world stilled.
Kael looked up—and through a glowing fracture in reality, there she was.
Floating mid-air, tangled in glowing strands of paradox light, her eyes fierce, one arm stretched out through the rift. Her body flickered—half solid, half tearing apart in a whirlwind of conflicting timelines. But her expression held no fear.
Only love. And war.
"I found the breach. I can pull you through," she shouted over the roar of collapsing reality. "But you have to let go of this timeline. Let go of everything—except me."
The decision hit Kael like gravity collapsing on his chest. This version of reality—the version where he was worshipped, where she never loved him, where time was sterile and perfect—it wasn't home.
He ran.
The guards shouted, but their voices warped into static. Time bled around him as he sprinted through corridors of fading echoes, reaching the heart of the fracture where Aeris hovered between worlds.
She extended her hand through the rift—
But something else reached out too.
The Shadow Kael.
Behind her. Emerging like a twisted ghost, his face cracked like mirror glass, his grin wide and knowing.
"Touch her, and I collapse this thread," the Shadow sneered. "You think you're the only one who loves her?"
Aeris screamed, and the rift pulsed violently.
Kael's mind split into instinct and resolve. He had one shot.
He leapt—fingers brushing hers—
And everything exploded.
Time reversed. Spiraled. Folded in.
Suddenly, Kael was falling through darkness—no longer in the cold prison, no longer in any timeline he knew. Around him, echoes of alternate Aerises passed like phantoms: one with a crown of flame, one turned into ash, one standing beside the Shadow.
He reached.
He screamed.
Then—
A light.
He landed hard, coughing dust and starlight. Beside him, breathing—gasping—was Aeris. His Aeris.
But before they could speak, before they could even touch—**
A thousand eyes opened around them.
The space was alive.
And they had fallen straight into the Architect's Sanctum—the place beyond time where all decisions converged.
And the Architect... had been waiting.