The Archive's corridors felt heavier than before—as if the entire structure had absorbed the chaos of the rift. Ethan moved slowly through its glowing passageways, the silence pressing in with questions too big for words.
He couldn't shake Marcus's final words—spoken through a body no longer truly his. "You don't understand… what comes next." What had Marcus seen? What darkness lingered just beyond their knowledge?
Cael was already scanning for any lingering echo imprints from their excursion. The Harmonizer Sphere, cracked from the battle, rested in a containment case, quietly resonating with a low hum. Lily stood by one of the observation alcoves, watching memory-threads pulse faintly across the walls. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Ethan joined her, eyes scanning the same threads.
"The core held," he finally said. "Variance collapsed with the tower."
Lily nodded slowly. "But he wasn't lying about seeing something else. Something coming."
He leaned against the archway. "I know."
"Then we need to look," she said. "Deeper than the Archive allows. Into the echoes we've ignored. The ones we sealed because they scared us."
Ethan turned to her. "You're proposing we open the Blind Vaults?"
"They hold suppressed echoes. Ones that bent too far or broke entirely. If there's anything that could explain what Marcus saw... it's in there."
Cael approached, having overheard. "If we open those vaults, the Accord will panic. They're sealed for a reason."
"Then we open one," Ethan said. "And we do it ourselves. Quietly."
The Blind Vaults were buried beneath the Archive, carved deep into the chrono-bedrock, isolated by layers of stabilizing fields. Only the Prime Steward—Ethan—could access them.
As the door opened, the air turned cold. Ancient echoes whispered through the chamber, faint voices brushing the edges of perception.
They approached Vault Theta-7—a containment unit holding an echo designated "Event Horizon." Its file was redacted in nearly every field, save for a timestamp dating back to the early days of the Accord's formation.
Ethan unlocked it manually.
The vault hissed open, and a pulse of inverted light spilled out. A sphere floated within—smaller than expected, but pulsing with unstable time.
Images hit them instantly. Cities crumbling into sand. Skies bleeding stars. Something—an entity or force—unfolding across time, eating it. Not with malice, but with inevitability.
Cael fell to his knees, holding his head. "It's... entropy incarnate."
Lily activated a dampening field. The vision dulled, but its impact remained. They had seen a future where time itself gave up.
And something waited within it.
Back above, Ethan sat alone in the Hall of Mirrors. One of the Archive's oldest chambers, it reflected not appearance, but choices.
He saw himself refusing to build the time engine. He saw himself following Marcus down the path of power. He saw himself never returning from the Wild Echoes.
But the mirror in front of him showed nothing. A void.
A future yet unwritten.
He stood, resolute.
"Prepare the Concord Council," he told the hallway, knowing Lily and Cael would hear through the intercoms. "We're not done yet. We've only seen the edge."
He turned back to the void.
"And I want to know what lies beyond it."