Karos hadn't expected the world to feel different.
The breach had closed. The Rift Reapers were gone. The marketplace, though scarred and shaken, was still standing. People had begun to emerge from hiding, cautiously stepping into the silence with eyes wide, questions hanging in the air, but their lips were sealed tighter than locked vaults.
But Karos felt it.
Something inside him had shifted—like a clock wound too tightly. His breath came in strange rhythms, his thoughts fluttering between past and present like leaves in a storm. And the pendant—the Anchor—still pulsed faintly against his chest, reminding him that time no longer flowed the way it once did.
Lysaria led him away from the ruined square without a word, her cloak billowing behind her as if even the wind recognized her authority.
They passed the broken remains of a statue—a hero of old, name lost to time—and Karos saw its eyes flicker. Once. Just for a moment. He blinked and it was stone again.
"You see it now," Lysaria said quietly, without turning.
Karos nodded. "Things that shouldn't be."
"Things that used to be. Things that might still be. That's the weight of the Anchor."
They crossed a narrow bridge spanning one of Veldrith's ancient canals, Lysaria leading him down a winding path into the undercity—forgotten streets and hollowed ruins buried beneath the capital.
At the end of a long corridor lit by flickering rune-lamps, they came to a sealed iron door carved with intricate sigils. She pressed her palm to the center, and the door shuddered, then opened with a sigh.
Inside was a chamber humming with soft energy. Maps lined the walls—maps of time itself, not of geographies, but of different eras. Threads of fate and convergences of potential. A massive hourglass floated in the center, its sands running upward.
This was a sanctuary. A war room. A reliquary of broken years.
Karos stepped in, overwhelmed. "What… is this place?"
Lysaria looked around, a flicker of memory touching her expression. "The Echohold. One of the last strongholds of the Keepers. Built where the Ley lines cross and time runs weakest."
Karos moved to the center. The hourglass pulsed as he approached. The sand inside shifted color—from gold to crimson to silver—and for a second, he saw his own face reflected in the glass. But not as he was. As he would be.
Older. Hardened. A scar over one eye. A swirling darkness in his palm.
"I don't want this," he whispered.
"No one ever does," Lysaria said gently. "But time doesn't ask permission."
She approached him, a solemnness in her voice. "The Rift Reapers came through because something—someone—is accelerating the decay of the Veil. The fractures aren't random anymore. They're targeted. Coordinated. And every breach brings us closer to the Great Collapse."
Karos turned to her. "You said I was just a witness. Why me? Why would the Veil choose me?"
She hesitated. "Because you're not just anchoring time… you're connected to it. The past echoes through you. The future bends around you. And there's something else…"
She moved to a pedestal and retrieved a small, blackened scroll sealed with ancient wax. Carefully, she broke it open, revealing a message written in fading silver ink.
Karos read the first line aloud.
"When the final breach opens, the Voidwalkers shall rise, and the Broken God shall stir."
He looked up at her. "What does that mean?"
Lysaria met his gaze, the weight of centuries echoing in her eyes, the only part of her that seemed effected by time. "We thought it was a myth. A prophecy long buried. But the signs are aligning."
Karos felt the Anchor pulse again. A cold heat spread from his chest down his arm, and for the first time, a darkness ignited in his open palm—soft, silver-black, and silent.
Lysaria stared. "Karos… you're not just the Anchor. You're a Voidwalker."
And far away, unseen by mortal eyes, something ancient and imprisoned turned its gaze toward him and smiled, a whisper caressing the edges of Karo's mind.
"We shall become acquainted soon."