The forest was too quiet.
Aarav's eyes darted from one tree to another, his chrono-band still dead on his wrist. The leaves shimmered with faint golden hues, and the sunlight filtering through the canopy felt... artificial. Not warm. Not real.
Isha stepped beside him, whispering, "This doesn't feel like Earth."
"No," Aarav replied. "It feels like a loop."
The children—versions of him—stood silently among the trees. Each one wore the same expressionless face, but their eyes sparkled differently. One seemed tired, another alert, another hollow as though he had seen too much. And then there was the girl—she looked like Isha, but younger, with strands of her hair braided in a pattern neither of them recognized.
"We are the remnant," the girl said again, her voice firm. "We are what's left after the Rift cracked."
"The Rift?" Isha asked, narrowing her eyes.
The girl stepped forward. "The Architect was not the only one who could manipulate time. When you activated the command, Aarav, you didn't destroy the Forge. You broke the central tether holding all timelines apart. They've begun... folding. Merging."
Aarav swallowed. "So this place?"
"It's a temporal spill zone," the girl said. "Reality here loops and bends. Some of us... were caught in between."
"Are we stuck here?" Isha asked.
The girl turned her gaze to the sky. "You're not stuck. You're chosen."
They followed the children through winding paths of twisted bark and glimmering ferns. The landscape shifted subtly as they walked—sometimes it seemed like evening, other times early dawn. Colors warped slightly with every step.
Eventually, they reached a clearing. In its center stood a monolith—tall, metallic, humming faintly with pulses of red.
"The Rift Marker," the girl explained. "It's one of many scattered across the fractured multiverse. Each is a convergence point, a stabilizer. You're here because something in your timeline is... critical."
Aarav stepped toward the monolith. "What happens if it's destroyed?"
The girl hesitated. "Then the barrier between timelines breaks completely. Everything becomes everything. Every version of every person... merges."
Isha touched Aarav's shoulder. "That includes the versions of you who worked for the Dominion."
"And the ones who never survived," Aarav added. "It would be chaos."
"Worse," the girl said. "It would be oblivion."
They spent the night under a violet sky. One of the children—the observant Aarav with soot on his cheeks—sat beside the fire and told stories of other markers, other versions of them.
"In one timeline," he said, "you were a soldier who gave your life to destroy the Nexus Chamber. In another, you led the Dominion. But in none of them... did you make it this far."
Aarav looked up. "Why me?"
The boy tilted his head. "Because you were never meant to exist. You were an anomaly created when the Dominion first began tampering with time. Your very presence throws off their calculations. You're the variable they couldn't account for."
Aarav stood. "Then it's time to do what anomalies do best—disrupt."
They returned to the monolith the next morning. The girl stood by it, waiting. "The Marker's core can be accessed now. It responds only to anomaly signatures. It will let you in, Aarav."
"And then?"
"You'll see what's coming. You'll have a choice."
Aarav stepped forward. The surface of the monolith rippled at his touch, and a doorway opened—liquid and light. He glanced back at Isha.
"I'm going with you," she said without hesitation.
They stepped through.
Inside was not a room, but a void. A projection of threads, glowing and infinite, stretching into every direction. Moments in time suspended in crystal-like fragments around them. One thread pulsed brighter than the others—it was his timeline.
Hovering beside it were two others. One glowed white. The other flickered between red and black.
A voice—neither male nor female—echoed around them.
"You may choose," it said. "Restore the original flow. Or merge the threads and begin a new timeline."
Aarav stared at the glowing threads. "What's the difference?"
"To restore the original is to return everything to how it was. The Forge, the Dominion, the resistance—all as before. You may continue to fight, to win or lose.
"To merge the threads... is to overwrite them. To accept every past, every future, and shape something new. But it comes at a cost."
"What cost?" Isha asked.
"Memory. Identity. You may not remain yourselves."
Aarav looked at Isha. "Would you still know me?"
She gave a bittersweet smile. "I'd like to think so."
Aarav reached out and touched the white thread.
Immediately, the space around them swirled. The voice returned, softer now.
"Very well. You have chosen continuity. One last chance remains. Return. Prepare."
They stepped out of the monolith. The forest was gone.
Now, they stood on a battlefield.
Clones—Dominion agents—swarmed in every direction. Above them, massive ships hung in the sky. It was a version of the resistance's last stand.
But this time, Aarav was ready.
"Give me a band," he said to the child Aarav beside him. "I need to rejoin the stream."
The boy handed him one.
As Aarav slipped the chrono-band back onto his wrist, the threads of time reattached to him. Memories sharpened. A surge of energy rushed through him.
Isha activated her own weapon, now humming with Rift energy.
"This is it," she said. "The final breach."
Aarav nodded. "And this time, we know who we are."
They turned toward the fight.
Behind them, the monolith began to pulse.