Time didn't break.
It unraveled.
The moment the Heart shattered, the world split like glass. Colors ran wrong. Gravity bent sideways. For a heartbeat, Faerun stopped being Faerun.
Iris felt the fragments of reality scatter around her—light bleeding into shadow, sound collapsing into silence, air tasting of metal and memory.
She was falling.
No—floating.
The others were gone. The Ember Court was gone. Even the ground was gone.
And then…
It spoke again.
"You sought to mend what was born broken. Foolish child."
The voice wasn't a voice at all, but an impression, like a dream half-remembered. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Iris twisted mid-air, struggling to orient herself. Around her, threads of starlight stretched across the void like veins, pulsing with strange energy. It was beautiful—terrifyingly so.
She reached for her satchel—empty.
The Heart was gone.
Only the broken pocket watch remained.
It ticked.
Once.
Then again.
A steady rhythm now, echoing against the silence.
Suddenly, the space around her fractured, revealing a thousand versions of herself. In one, she never crossed the Veil. In another, she held the complete Heart. In yet another, she lay in a grave marked "Unknown Girl."
All of them flickered—then vanished.
And then the Fracture opened wide.
A blinding seam of golden light tore through the darkness. It swallowed Iris whole.
She awoke gasping, half-submerged in a pool of stardust. It clung to her skin, cool and alive, like water remembering something it had forgotten.
Above her, a sky she did not recognize stretched on forever—a canvas of swirling galaxies and dying stars.
She wasn't in Faerun anymore.
Not truly.
"Where… am I?" she whispered.
The stardust shimmered, forming symbols in the air. Ancient. Beautiful. Wrong.
From the mist, a shape emerged.
A tall figure, cloaked in robes that shimmered like oil on water. No face. No eyes. Just a presence.
"Iris Thorne," it said. "Bearer of the broken watch. Weaver of stray timelines."
She flinched. "Who are you?"
"I am the Custodian of Echoes. This is the Astral Fold—a space between all realities, shaped by broken time."
"And why am I here?"
"Because you broke the pattern."
The Custodian raised a hand, and images appeared in the sky—visions of Faerun, twisted and bleeding. Thalen battling shadows alone. Nyx captured in chains of starlight. The Veil collapsing.
"All of this," the Custodian said, "because you reassembled the Heart."
"But I was trying to save Faerun!"
"And in doing so, you exposed it to the First Curse—the one not even the Thorn Court remembers."
"The… Astral Curse?"
The Custodian nodded. "A fragment of divinity lost in time. Cast out when the world was young. The Heart was never meant to heal the realm. It was meant to contain the curse. And now it is loose again."
Iris's stomach twisted. "Then I made everything worse."
"No. You made it inevitable."
The Custodian led her through the Fold, where memories floated in crystal globes—lives unlived, wars never fought, children never born.
Iris saw herself again and again: failing, falling, choosing differently.
"Every Seer makes a choice," the Custodian explained. "You are not the first."
"I saw the carvings," she said. "At the Spire. They looked like me."
"Because they were you. Versions of you. Echoes across time. All drawn to Faerun. All touched by the Veil."
"And they all failed?"
"Or were erased."
She stopped walking. "So what do I do now?"
The Custodian tilted its head. "That is your burden. But you are not powerless."
It reached into the void and pulled out the watch.
Except—it was no longer broken.
The hands moved.
Steady. Strong.
"This was never a timekeeper," the Custodian said. "It was a compass. A key. A prison. And now, perhaps… a weapon."
The watch opened.
Inside was a glowing shard—not of the Heart, but of her.
Her magic.
Her choices.
The Custodian placed the watch in her palm. "You are part of the curse now. But you are also part of the cure."
"Can I go back?"
"Yes. But Faerun will not be the same."
Iris nodded.
"I don't care."
The Fold cracked like glass.
Iris fell again.
This time, she landed hard—on stone, beneath moonlight.
Faerun.
But different.
The Veil overhead was bleeding light, casting the stars in strange, pulsing colors.
The land was split into fragments, floating like shattered islands across a sea of night.
Everything was breaking.
Thalen stood nearby, sword drawn, his armor torn and scorched.
"Iris," he said, breathing heavily. "You're alive."
She rushed to him. "Where's Nyx?"
"Taken. The traitor revealed himself. The Crimson Pact's leader—he was never loyal."
"And the Heart?"
"Gone. But…" He looked at her hand. "Your watch…"
"It's changed," she said. "So have I."
Thalen nodded. "Then we have a chance."
She looked up at the bleeding Veil. "What's coming?"
Thalen's eyes darkened. "Not what. Who."
Far across the shattered sky, something moved.
Not a beast. Not a god.
Something older.
Its form was shifting shadow, wrapped in golden chains, eyes like dying stars.
The Astral Curse had a face now.
And it was smiling.