The aftermath of the garden's eruption was silence—dense, suffocating silence. The kind that fills the lungs with dread instead of air. Ash blanketed the earth like snowfall in a cursed dream, and the statues of the fallen wept black ichor from empty eyes.
Kael lay sprawled on the ground, his ribs aching, his sword buried three feet away in the cracked soil. The stars above flickered wildly now, like faulty memories in a dying universe. He struggled to rise, only to be met by the face of a familiar stranger.
Veyra stood untouched in the chaos, her expression unreadable. Around her, time bent like water. Trees regrew, burned, and regrew again in an endless loop. The wind whispered in reversed languages. Her coat shifted with every breath, displaying glimpses of battles yet to come.
"You think you're ready?" she asked softly, tilting her head. "Ready to decide the fate of all timelines?"
Kael coughed blood but stood, wincing. "We're not here to decide. We're here to stop you."
Aeris emerged from the smoke behind him, one wing injured, feathers blackened and glowing at the edges. Her aura pulsed with raw entropy, barely contained. She didn't speak, but her presence radiated conviction. Dray followed, limping slightly, his runes dimmer than before but still pulsing with resolve.
Veyra laughed—not cruelly, but with the weariness of someone who had seen too much. "You still don't understand. I was the hero once. Until time asked me to be the villain."
She raised both arms. The citadel responded.
Massive stone hands erupted from the ground, each carrying fragments of broken realities: a burning village from Kael's childhood, Aeris' mother drowning in shadow, Dray's kingdom overrun by plague. Memories forged into weapons.
"You made your choices," Veyra whispered, stepping back as the storm formed around her. "Now face what they cost."
Kael charged first, blade in hand. The sky fractured with each strike as he tore through his own trauma, deflecting the image of his father's death, resisting the screams of the innocents he failed to save.
Aeris closed her eyes—and when she opened them, her left eye blazed with cosmic light. She extended her hand, not to attack, but to absorb. She drank the chaos, channeled the grief, and let it mold her power into something new: Hope reborn through pain.
Dray summoned a sphere of golden fire and hurled it at the illusion of his dying sister. It exploded in a crescendo of truth—dissolving the lie that he could have saved her.
Together they pressed on, carving a path to the pulsing throne of memory where Veyra stood.
And then—it changed.
The ground opened not to consume them, but to reveal.
Beneath the citadel was a sanctum of paradox: A room that contained every version of them that had ever lived and died. Some heroic. Some monstrous. Some broken.
One version of Kael had wings. Another was blind, guided by whispers. A thousand Aerises stared back, each with different scars. Drays in armor, in robes, in chains.
Veyra stood at the center of them all.
"This isn't about me," she said. "It never was. It's about which version of tomorrow you choose to be."
She extended a blade made of light and shadow. "End me—or join me."
Kael looked to Aeris, then Dray. No words. Just breath. Just shared resolve.
Kael took the blade.
And chose.