Scene 1: The Rift Called Yorepass
Time was not linear in the Yorepass.
Ships that flew through its edge would emerge days before they entered—or decades after. It was a ribbon of folded spacetime, a chronal scar floating just outside the Veiled Belt. The smart ones avoided it. The foolish ones disappeared.
Kael Renn was neither.
"Are we actually doing this?" Cora asked, her voice wary. "Because I'm running out of funny ways to say 'bad idea.'"
"We don't have a choice," Kael muttered. "The coordinates from Scarn's logs pointed straight to this place. Whatever the Stone wants us to find is here."
The Emberwake hovered near the rift's shimmering edge. It looked like a tear in reality, with clocklike gears rotating in nothingness.
Kael took a breath and throttled forward.
Scene 2: The Maze Unfolds
The moment they entered, the ship twisted. Lights flickered. Time snapped.
Cora screamed as the nav systems scrambled. "We're losing grip! I'm detecting multiple timelines overlapping!"
Kael hit the stabilizers. The world outside the viewport broke into infinite versions of itself, looping and collapsing.
Then—stillness.
The ship had landed in a field of glass-like stone under a violet sky. Ahead stood an impossible structure: a labyrinth of golden walls, turning like gears.
The Clockwound Maze.
Kael stepped outside. The symbol of the Space Stone still glowed faintly under his skin, pulsing like a compass. Something was calling to him.
He walked forward.
Scene 3: The Allies Arrive
As Kael entered the Maze, others stepped through broken points in space-time, pulled by fate:
Dran Vox, a rebel warlord with plasma-forged fists.
Nyra Elune, a lunar psion who can read the echoes of history.
Jex Marrik, a rogue pilot who sees ten seconds into the future.
Talon Vyr, a quiet blade-dancer from the lost city of Chronalis.
Zeni Varn, a child genius with a broken hourglass embedded in her chest.
Captain Ardyn Sol, a former Time Corps commander disgraced for mutiny.
They had never met, yet each carried a piece of the prophecy.
Together, they followed the pull of the Maze.
Scene 4: The Girl from Before
Deep within the Maze, time fractured with every step.
Kael passed versions of himself—older, younger, confused. Echoes flickered through mirrors made of memory.
Then he saw her.
A girl stood in the heart of a swirling time-storm. She wore armor that shimmered like sand falling upward. Her hair was silver, braided into time-symbols.
"Kael Renn," she said. "I am Riven Vale. Guardian of Chrona's Tear."
She extended a hand. In it lay a glowing green gem, shaped like a droplet suspended forever mid-fall.
The Time Stone.
Scene 5: The Guardian's Test
"I'm not here to take it," Kael said. "I'm trying to understand it."
Riven narrowed her eyes. "Then survive it."
The Maze shifted. Suddenly, Kael and the new arrivals were thrown into fractured timelines:
Jex watched his own death a hundred times.
Zeni was forced to relive the day she built a machine that shattered her home.
Talon fought himself in ten different futures.
Kael stood in a burning city. A version of himself ran past, bloodied and desperate.
Then—a forest. A wedding. A child in his arms.
Then—a field of war, his allies dying around him.
Time broke, rebuilt, broke again.
Kael fell to his knees.
"Make it stop!"
Riven appeared beside him. "You cannot change what was. But you can choose what will be."
She placed the Time Stone in his hand.
"Remember: all futures break. But some can be rebuilt."
Scene 6: The Betrayer Unleashed
From the center of the Maze emerged a new threat: Wraith Quarn, a disciple of Veyr Maldrake. Clad in temporal armor, he wielded time like a weapon, bending seconds into blades.
"You were not meant to pass," Wraith snarled. "The Master needs no rivals."
The heroes fought. Kael slowed time; Talon danced through frozen echoes. Dran slammed him with brute force while Nyra blinded him with memory echoes.
But Wraith Quarn was relentless.
Then, a ripple tore through the air.
Veyr Maldrake appeared, cloaked in shadows and constellations.
"You disappoint me, Quarn."
Quarn gasped. "My Lord, I—"
A black beam lanced through his chest.
"I require loyalty, not failure."
Wraith Quarn disintegrated.
Veyr vanished just as quickly, his laughter echoing through the Maze.
Scene 7: The Chronophage Returns
The sky ruptured.
A worm-like entity descended—a creature of spiraled clocks and rusted limbs. The Chronophage.
Riven shouted, "It feeds on broken timelines!"
Kael channeled both Stones. The Space Stone warped the battlefield; the Time Stone froze moments into stillness.
He moved like lightning through slowed time, dodging the creature's limbs and striking at its core.
With help from the others, he tore open a portal beneath it.
The Chronophage screamed as it was sucked into an empty loop.
Scene 8: Truth in the Spiral
As the sky cleared, Kael turned to Riven.
"You knew I'd survive."
"No. I knew you'd choose to."
She began to fade.
"Time never gives answers, Kael. Only moments. Use them. The others are awakening."
Back aboard the Emberwake, Kael stared at the Time Stone now embedded beside the Space Stone in his chest. Two symbols, circling each other.
"Cora," he whispered. "We just changed everything."
In a dark realm far away, Veyr Maldrake smiled.
"Two stones awakened. Six threats converging. Good. Let them rise. Let them hope. Hope is the sweetest flavor before despair."
End of Chapter 2: The Clockwound Maze