A low hum filled the air as they descended into the Spiral's root, their footsteps echoing against curved steel walls. The staircase spiraled endlessly downward, each step lit by veins of soft amber light that pulsed with a rhythm like breath. As they moved deeper, the metal beneath their feet began to shift—no longer solid iron, but a strange blend of crystal and circuitry that shimmered with fragmented reflections of their own faces, distorted as though glimpsed through broken time.
The tunnel opened into a massive chamber—a hollow sphere suspended in nothing. Floating bridges of light webbed out in all directions, suspended above an abyss of starlit blackness. Tylor stepped onto one bridge cautiously, watching the light ripple under his feet, responding to his weight. Every motion sent a cascade of gold sparks trailing into the void below.
At the chamber's center hovered an impossible structure—a mechanical bloom shaped like a flower made of spirals, each petal ticking like a clock's gear. Within its heart, frozen mid-motion, was Amaira—encased in a glass cocoon, asleep. Her hair floated around her face, and her fingers twitched slightly, as if solving a puzzle in her dreams. Gears and glowing wires fed into the cocoon from above and below, binding her to the bloom like she was part of it.
Kayla staggered back. "This isn't a machine. It's a memory engine."
Hovering symbols projected from the walls, turning as though alive—fractured time loops, overlapping timelines, a thousand possible versions of Amaira rendered in golden silhouettes. Some smiled. Some cried. One turned and looked directly at Tylor… and screamed.
Suddenly, the lights dimmed. A deep, mechanical hum roared across the chamber. The spiral-shaped flower retracted slightly. Behind them, the bridges shifted, transforming into jagged paths. Elias drew his weapon, but it sputtered out—nullified by the energy in the room.
From the shadows, a figure emerged. Cloaked in a robe made of shimmering, moving threads—each strand pulsing with images from different times—he carried no weapon, only a staff etched with rotating rings of light. His face was masked, but his voice was unmistakable.
"I am the Weaver," he said, standing where the spiral bridges met. "Guardian of the Unwritten. You trespass in the Echo Vault."
Tylor stepped forward, fury rising. "She's a child, not your tool."
The Weaver's head tilted. "She is more. A living constant. A puzzle piece reality refuses to erase."
The walls pulsed again. Scenes from their lives flickered across them—Lila's sacrifice, the Chronarch's fall, Clara's defeat—all woven together in threads flowing into Amaira's cocoon. Kayla reached out and touched one strand. Instantly, a memory surged into her mind—not hers, but an older Amaira's… one who had lived and died in a version of 2045 scorched by time.
"She's trapped in all her possible selves," Kayla gasped. "You're using them."
"She is anchoring time," the Weaver replied. "And if I release her, the Spiral collapses."
Elias looked around, jaw clenched. "Or maybe this Spiral isn't holding the world together… maybe it's the last cage left behind by the Collective."
Tylor approached the bloom. Amaira's eyes fluttered behind the glass.
He pressed the spiral gear into the panel at the base.
The entire chamber shuddered.
Lights blazed. The staff shattered. The Weaver screamed—not in pain, but in rage—as the Spiral began to unravel.
Amaira opened her eyes. And everything changed.