The sky was red.
Not burning—bleeding.
Across every skyline, from Nova to Helios, the atmosphere rippled like torn silk. The Rift hadn't reopened. But something worse had arrived.
The Riftborn were no longer hidden.
They marched openly now—beings of fractured time and shattered memory, some humanoid, some monstrous, some impossible. They came not to conquer but to replace. To overwrite.
"Just like Null," Ari said as she scanned the satellite feed.
"No," Reyka whispered. "Worse. Null wanted to rebuild. These things… they want to erase."
Jalen stood at the center of the Citadel war room, surrounded by faces—old allies, new ones, even former enemies. Gravemind had called in ex-merc squads. Nyx had found others like her—Eclipse rejects who'd mutated but survived.
And from far corners of the world, whispers came of "lightbearers"—people awakened by Jalen's shockwave at the Rift's sealing—who now rose to defend their cities.
The world had changed.
And war had returned.
---
The Battle for Nova
The Riftborn struck first—tearing through Sector Six in a spiral of gravity-folds. Buildings bent inward. Sound distorted. Civilians screamed as memories were ripped from them like threads.
Jalen, Ari, Nyx, and Pulse led the countercharge.
The Ember Core burned bright once more—though weaker. Each use came with pain now. Like the universe was charging him for every flame.
Still, he fought.
Each Riftborn had a different weakness. Some were undone by music, others by memory. Pulse discovered that recalling a person's real name made the creature falter. Gravemind used neural disruptors to lock down the larger ones.
Reyka and a worldwide coalition hacked communication satellites to broadcast a stabilizing frequency—something that slowed the Riftborn for minutes at a time.
It wasn't enough.
For every one they stopped, three more emerged.
And above them all, the sky wept light—a spiraling hole where the first Rift had once been.
It was reforming.
---
The Core Decision
Jalen collapsed to his knees during the third wave.
His skin cracked with Emberlight. His heart raced like it would shatter. Ari dragged him to cover, shielding them both as Gravemind unleashed a pulse that vaporized a wave of Riftborn.
"You can't keep going," she said. "You'll die."
"I know," he said. "But if I don't... everyone will."
Nyx landed beside them, bleeding shadow.
"There's one option left," she said.
Reyka patched in over comms. "I've run the simulations. If Jalen channels the entire Ember Core into the Rift, he can collapse it again. Permanently."
"But?" Ari said.
"It'll burn him out. Maybe... worse."
Silence.
Then Jalen stood.
And smiled.
---
The Final Ascent
They launched together—Jalen, Ari, Nyx, Pulse—riding grav-boosts to the apex of the storm. At the very center of the Rift spiral, reality thinned.
And waiting inside…
Was a Riftborn Queen.
She was Memory incarnate. Neither hostile nor kind. A creature that wore the faces of the lost and the loved. Her voice was a lullaby of extinction.
"You do not belong," she said. "You were not meant to last. Let me rewrite you."
Jalen stepped forward. "We write our own stories."
And he ignited the Core.
The sky exploded in golden light.
He became fire.
A beacon.
A sun.
He reached deep, through the Rift, through time, through pain—and sent a signal to every lightbearer, every hidden spark, every frightened soul across Earth:
Rise.
The people answered.
The world burned bright.
And the Rift... shattered.
---
Aftermath
When the light faded, the Queen was gone.
The Riftborn were still—but empty. Hollow.
And Jalen...
Was gone too.
Only ashes remained—glowing faintly in the wind.
Ari fell to her knees.
Pulse wept.
Nyx looked to the sky and whispered, "He didn't die. He became legend."