The boy breathes in, and the world holds its breath with him.
His chest rises unnaturally, slow and deliberate—like he's syncing with a rhythm the rest of us can't hear. Above us, the stars twist, burn, and realign. Entire constellations flicker out and return in new formations, as if the sky itself is being rewritten.
> [Codex Alert: Recalibration Event Detected — Cycle Imminent.]
The message blazes red across all our visors.
Kara stares upward in disbelief. "The stars are... changing again?"
Liora doesn't speak. But I notice her fists clenched so tightly her nails draw blood.
Ashen takes a step forward, hands raised. "We need to stabilize the field before he triggers a breach."
"Wait—" Navi begins, but he's cut off by what comes next.
A silent shockwave bursts from the boy's floating body. No sound. No light. But its effect is immediate.
Time stutters.
The air thickens like molasses. Kara gasps, her boots lifting from the floor as gravity bends sideways. My own Codex glitches—flickering between timestamps, some of them... wrong.
The chapel around us doesn't collapse—not physically. But something fundamental groans. The stained-glass windows shiver, then shift—images of saints replaced by impossible scenes.
Liora, crowned in obsidian.
Kara, lying in her arms, lifeless.
Myself, standing alone on a dead Earth.
My throat dries. These aren't memories.
They're predictions.
> "He's not just dreaming," Ashen mutters. "He's... reshaping outcomes."
Liora snaps out of it first. "We have to anchor him—now!"
I override Codex's safety locks and open a direct neural tether. It's dangerous. It could fry my mind. But it's the only shot we have.
> [Codex Sync: Observer Zero — Neural Link Established.]
Everything goes dark.
I land in a landscape of cracked glass.
Endless. Reflecting the heavens, now made entirely of melting clocks. The air is heavy with ticking—each second a footstep into oblivion.
The boy stands alone at the center. Small. Crying.
I approach slowly. "Hey... it's okay. You're not alone anymore."
He turns. His eyes are voids—bottomless wells of unspoken time.
"You're not real," he whispers. "You're what comes after."
Before I can respond, the clocks begin to drip. Their hands spin wild, numbers bleeding off their faces like dying memories.
Shadows rise along the edges of the glass field—shapes stitched from fractured timelines. I see broken versions of myself. A Kara who never existed. A Liora burned to ash.
The boy reaches out.
"Don't let me become them."
A wall of corrupted futures rushes forward—teeth bared, eyes empty.
I grab his hand.
"Codex—NOW!"
I jolt back to reality.
The chapel is still standing—barely. Everyone's down on one knee or doubled over. Kara is vomiting blood. Navi has a nosebleed. Ashen is pressing both palms to the floor, muttering equations like prayers.
But the boy...
He floats inches above the ground. Eyes open.
Calm.
And very awake.
He looks at each of us—not like a child, but like something wearing the shape of one.
Then he speaks. His voice carries echoes. Layers. Memories of ages he never lived.
> "I dreamed of a world where humans remembered how to hope."
Silence. Thick and suffocating.
He turns to Liora.
> "Will you help me build it… or burn it down again?"
Kara stumbles forward, glaring. "What are you?"
The boy tilts his head, curious. "A mirror. A question. A chance."
Liora doesn't answer. Her lips part slightly, but no words come. She's staring not at the boy, but at the pulsing mark on her wrist—the glyph that began glowing when she touched the Pattern.
Ashen speaks at last, voice low. "We're not ready for this. None of us are."
The boy closes his eyes. "Then hurry. The next Cycle won't wait."
He lowers slowly to the ground, breath steady.
And the stars outside change again—this time not into constellations, but a single glowing symbol.
A sigil none of us have ever seen before.
But we all understand what it means.
War.
End of Chapter 22