The core of the city loomed ahead—an obsidian cathedral that floated alone in the heart of the sky, suspended by veins of shattered time. Its architecture was impossible, shifting with every blink. One moment it was ancient and crumbling, the next it stood pristine and untouched, as if time couldn't decide what version should remain.
Kael stepped onto the final bridge, a floating trail of black stone suspended in nothingness. With each footstep, reality bent, groaning under his presence.
"This place…" Lyra whispered, eyes narrowed. "It's not just outside of time. It's against it."
Valen's magic shimmered faintly around him, unstable. "Even my spells are warping. Kael, if we go in there, we leave logic behind."
Kael didn't slow. "Then we make our own logic."
The closer they came to the cathedral, the heavier the air became—thick with memories, as though the walls were built from the regrets of everyone who had ever stepped foot here.
And then the door opened.
No creak. No warning. Just the sudden absence of resistance.
Inside, time stood still.
Literally.
Frozen warriors were locked in eternal mid-swing. Arrows hovered in the air, unmoving. A bird hung in flight, feathers caught in motionless wind. The very breath in Kael's lungs felt delayed.
And in the center of the cathedral, on a throne made of clockwork bones and shattered hourglasses, sat the being.
He didn't rise. He didn't blink.
He simply… was.
"Kael of the Abyss." The entity's voice layered over itself, as if every version of it across time spoke at once. "I have waited for you across a thousand eternities."
Kael's hand tightened around his sword. "You're the one who fractured this world."
"I am the one who saw the truth," the entity replied, eyes glowing with spiraling galaxies. "That time is a lie. A chain that binds creation to a single path. So I shattered it. Freed this world. Freed myself."
"By dooming everything around you?" Kael demanded, stepping forward.
The entity chuckled, and it echoed like falling glass. "Progress requires sacrifice. You, of all kings, should understand."
Kael pointed his blade. "I understand power. I understand darkness. But I'll never accept control through destruction."
The entity finally stood. With each movement, he unfolded, as if space itself bent to accommodate his form. He wore armor made of years pages torn from history, ages wrapped around his limbs. Time obeyed him.
"I am Chronovain, the Firstbreaker," he declared. "And you are a child playing in shadows. You command the Abyss, but I command reality itself."
Then he snapped his fingers—
And Kael vanished.
The cathedral faded. The sky was gone.
Kael found himself alone in a memory his own. A battlefield. The day he died on Earth. The bullet. The betrayal. The pain.
Except now… the moment froze just before impact.
"Relive it," Chronovain's voice whispered all around. "Over and over. Let your past consume you."
Kael's heart thundered. But this time, he wasn't the same man.
He stepped forward, into the memory. Faced his former self. And whispered, "You don't define me anymore."
The memory shuddered. The illusion cracked.
Kael roared, unleashing a surge of Abyssal power that ripped the false reality apart, tearing through space and time until the cathedral returned.
Chronovain staggered.
Kael stepped through the shards of his own past, eyes blazing, cloak of the Abyss billowing behind him.
"You broke time to escape your fate," he said. "But I mastered darkness to forge mine."
And as the clockwork gears of war began to turn, the final battle for the fate of the timelines began.