The Obel Core dimmed.
Theo stumbled back from the console, his breath caught in his throat. The surge had passed, but its aftershock still echoed in his bones. Threads of light faded into the walls, leaving behind a humming silence, as if the room itself were holding its breath.
Rell stood slowly, eyes locked on his wrist tool. "Output just… stopped. Like a door slammed shut."
"No." Theo's voice was hoarse. "Not shut. Stabilized."
Ayen stepped forward, scanning the room with narrowed eyes. "Feels like the room just… reset. But everything's still broken."
Theo rubbed his temple. A slow ache throbbed behind his eyes. "Because the past didn't change. I didn't rewrite it. I anchored it. Locked it in place."
Rell glanced at the flickering console. "And what did that do to the future?"
Before Theo could answer, the air shifted.
A low frequency vibrated through the chamber, a sound that didn't come from speakers but from inside their skulls. Rell winced. Ayen reached for her sidearm. Theo turned sharply, scanning the dark corners of the Core chamber.
Then a figure stepped from the shadows.
Nova Rae.
She wore her travel cloak, but it was soaked in rain, as if she'd stepped out of a storm that hadn't touched this place. Her hair clung to her face, and her eyes—those luminous seer's eyes—burned with urgency.
Theo took a step forward, stunned. "Nova? How did you—?"
"I felt it," she said, voice tight with restrained emotion. "The thread pulled me here. You lit up like a flare across every fate line still standing."
Rell backed up slightly, warily eyeing her. "She's not supposed to be here. The entrance—"
"Didn't matter," Nova interrupted, stepping past him. Her gaze was locked on Theo. "You touched the Origin Core without understanding what it would ask of you."
Theo stiffened. "I anchored the reset. I stopped the loop."
"No," Nova said. "You inherited it."
The room was silent. The flickering projections were gone now, leaving only cold stone and data coils buried in glass veins.
Theo's voice dropped. "What do you mean?"
Nova stepped closer, eyes softening, though her jaw remained set. "The moment you activated the override, the core didn't just stabilize the wound—it made you the anchor. You're part of the fracture now. You carry its memory. Every timeline it touches, every iteration it broke, every failure… it's in you."
Rell turned slowly. "You're saying he's… what? A living reset switch?"
Nova nodded grimly. "And the Warden Orders will know. The moment you anchored that command, they felt the pressure shift. They'll come for you now. Not to interrogate you… but to erase you."
Theo said nothing. His hands clenched at his sides.
"I had to," he said finally. "The timeline was unraveling. I saw the command string—whoever first triggered it bent reality so hard it left everything bleeding. I couldn't let it spiral further."
Nova stepped forward until she stood just before him. "And I believe you. But choices like that echo, Theo. They leave ghosts behind."
He met her eyes, and for the first time in days, his voice cracked. "I saw them. All of them. The forgotten. The broken. People whose lives were shattered and overwritten—entire cities that never got to exist."
Nova's expression softened, and she reached up, gently touching his cheek. "And now you remember them. That's the burden of the Resetter."
Behind them, Ayen shifted uncomfortably. "I hate to interrupt, but if we're talking about ancient time gods and Warden assassins, maybe we should not still be inside their favorite ruin."
Rell checked his scanner. "Too late. I've got a signal. Multiple blinks. High-speed approach—quad signatures. Definitely Warden-grade."
Theo turned to the console one last time. The override string was gone now—cleared. In its place was a pulsing sigil: the spiral-helix emblem, now glowing crimson.
"They marked us," he muttered. "A flag on the threadline."
Nova's voice was sharp. "Then we run. Now."
They turned and bolted toward the elevator shaft, Rell pulling a bypass line as they went.
"Lift's offline!" he shouted. "I can rig a drop cable—twenty seconds!"
"We don't have twenty!" Ayen snapped.
Theo looked at the shaft, then at the hallway behind them—where shadows began to move.
"Forget the cable," he said. "Jump."
Rell stared at him like he was insane. "It's ten stories—"
"Jump!" Theo shouted, already vaulting over the edge.
One by one, they followed—plummeting into the dark, away from the past and into whatever came next.
As they fell, Nova's voice echoed in Theo's mind again:
"The past doesn't need fixing. It needs understanding."
But
some things, Theo knew now, demanded more than understanding.
They demanded a fight.