The timeline Kael found himself in was eerily silent—like a world that had stopped spinning long ago but hadn't yet realized it. Skyless, sunless, yet flooded in amber twilight. A wasteland of frozen decisions.
He stood at the edge of a ruined city: iron towers melted into the sand, their skeletal remains pierced by bolts of red lightning that cracked across the horizon like broken veins. His hands were calloused. His armor bore the crest of a rebellion he had never led in his real life.
Kael wasn't Kael here. He was General Kael Virex, once a symbol of revolt, now a fugitive accused of treason by the people he'd tried to save.
"Where am I?" he murmured, brushing dust from a rusted sign that read: Welcome to Ilyrian Dawn.
From the shadows emerged a girl—small, no more than ten—holding a blade far too large for her frame. Her eyes glowed faintly violet.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, not with fear, but with prophecy.
Kael stepped forward, cautiously. "Do you know what's happening?"
The girl looked skyward. "This timeline was buried for a reason. You chose against it. Now it's unchosen, angry, and... leaking."
Behind her, the horizon cracked open, revealing a cavernous void in the shape of a forgotten decision.
Kael's pulse spiked. The girl extended her hand.
"I can take you to the tombs."
He didn't ask why. He just followed.
—
Aeris stood in a battlefield of her own making. Flaming arrows covered the sky like a swarm of fireflies gone mad. The ruins of Eden stretched before her—an Eden that had chosen war instead of unity.
This version of her wore armor fused with mechanical feathers. Her wings were metal, her heart stone. She was The Warden, a judge with no court but her own vengeance. And she was wanted—by both gods and mortals.
From the smoke emerged her double. Alive. Furious.
"You left us," the Warden hissed, leveling a staff crackling with ancient circuitry. "You ran from your truth. But now you must wear it."
Aeris didn't flinch. "I didn't come here to fight you."
"But you must," said the Warden. "Because I am the version of you that survived what you could not."
—
Dray awoke suspended midair in a tower with no ceiling, no walls—only endless stairs spiraling around his floating form. Each stair held a memory, and each step played a regret.
He saw the plague. The sister who'd coughed blood while begging him to break the rules of magic. He saw himself, crowned too soon, sentenced to exile by his own council.
But in this place, he wasn't exiled.
He ruled.
A mirror version of Dray descended the staircase, his robes woven from silver light, his eyes glowing with cold logic.
"You sealed me away in your shame," the mirror said. "But here, shame is law. And I am its king."
Dray clenched his fists. "You're a lie."
"No. I'm the truth you buried beneath ideals."
As they circled each other, the tower began to twist, each regret growing heavier. The magic in his veins pulsed—choked by memory.
—
Back in the sanctum, Veyra stood at the heart of Null's wound.
The blade Kael had embedded in the floor had grown—tendrils of light and shadow now spiraling into the ceiling, trying to stitch together what Null had torn apart.
She pressed her hand against the rift. It hissed, burned. Her skin blistered but she didn't pull away.
"I won't let them drown in their pasts."
Her voice cracked the silence.
"I was wrong to think the multiverse needed control."
From the wound, Null emerged again. His mask had changed—now bearing half of Kael's face, half of hers.
"You understand too late," he said. "They must be broken to be reborn. And I will ensure they are remade without pain. Without you."
Veyra's expression darkened. "You're not order. You're erasure."
Null raised his arm. The air collapsed inward.
But before the blow could fall—
Kael's voice echoed through time.
"Remember the blade."
—
In the tombs of the unchosen, Kael found a chamber filled with weapons never forged. He approached a dais where his mother's voice lingered, whispering stories of honor and failure.
In the center, the blade.
Not the one of light and shadow—but a new one, forged from raw memory.
He took it.
At the same moment, Aeris embraced her Warden-self. Not with hatred—but with understanding. Their wings merged—half-metal, half-energy, pulsing with a new purpose.
Dray knelt at the center of the memory tower and whispered, "I forgive you," to every version of himself. The stairs shattered—and so did his chains.
Each of them reawakened in the sanctum, reborn.
Null staggered.
"You… cannot override convergence."
Kael raised the blade. "We're not overriding it."
Aeris joined him. "We're rewriting it."
Dray lifted his staff. "Together."
Veyra smiled. "This is the version of tomorrow I hoped for."
As they stepped forward, the storm raged.
But the light—their light—pierced it.
And tomorrow began again.