White.
Endless white.
Aeris opened her eyes slowly, vision blurring, breath suspended between heartbeat and memory. She was weightless, suspended in an infinite expanse where light held no source and silence was so pure it ached. The battlefield—the Beacon, Kael, Dray—was gone, like smoke whisked away by a cosmic wind. Here, in this liminal place, nothing and everything existed.
Then she saw the child.
A faint ripple of light coalesced into a platform beneath them, suspended like a droplet in the void. They sat cross-legged, serene, hands resting gently in their lap. Their eyes—glowing orbs of shifting time—watched her with knowing stillness.
"You're not dead," the child said, their voice melodic yet weightless, as if the air itself whispered. "This is the Chrono-Void—the seam between collapsing timelines. Only the untethered survive here. Like me. And now... you."
Aeris steadied her breathing, though the air felt thin, unreal. Her limbs moved, but her body felt like mist. "Who are you really?"
"I am what remains when decisions go uncorrected," the child said softly. "I am the consequence of broken vows, the echo of what should never have been. Born of betrayal. Raised in silence."
The void stirred like a living creature. Shimmering images bloomed in the distance—fragmented memories dancing like shattered glass:
Dray, kneeling beside a dying child on a field of ash.
Kael, screaming beneath a crimson sky as a city crumbled.
Aeris, taking an oath before a council of cloaked timekeepers, her voice firm but her eyes afraid.
"You each chose a path," the child continued. "Each choice carved a fracture into the foundation of time. And one man—Dray—tried to fix what had already begun to rot."
Aeris's hands clenched. "He tried to control time."
"He tried to heal it," the child corrected. "And failed."
The light bent and split again, folding reality like paper until Aeris stood in a memory not her own—Dray's.
Copper clouds swirled over a desolate plain. The ground was littered with bodies—children, soldiers, elders—all twisted by the aftermath of war. Dray knelt amid the wreckage, his armor scorched, his arms cradling a dying child. Their small hands clung weakly to his tunic.
"They said we'd be safe," the child whispered, blood glistening on their lips.
Dray wept, jaw clenched. "I tried. I tried to reach the Beacon in time."
"You're late again," the child murmured. "Just like last time."
And with that, they stilled.
Behind Dray, a tall woman emerged from the drifting smoke. Her robes shimmered with the texture of galaxies, and her voice sang like starlight. "You carry power, Dray. More than most. But time is not yours to command."
He stood, face shadowed. "Then I'll rewrite its laws."
"Time does not obey men."
"Then I'll become something it cannot ignore."
The vision cracked and fell away like ice.
Back in the Chrono-Void, Aeris gasped, her mind racing.
"He wasn't trying to conquer time," she said, almost to herself. "He was trying to stop the same tragedy. Again and again."
The child nodded. "Every failure shattered another thread. Every success was incomplete. His grief became a compass... and a weapon."
A rumble echoed through the void.
Kael stumbled into view, ragged and breathless, his form flickering like a ghost. "Aeris!"
She ran to him, grounding herself in the only reality that mattered. "You saw it?"
He nodded, eyes haunted. "I saw what he became... and why."
"And still," came a third voice—quiet, heavy with old power.
Dray appeared from the mist, his presence distorting the light. He looked tired, older somehow, as if every timeline etched a wrinkle into his skin. The air bent around him. Time swirled like a wounded tide.
"I came to stop this," Dray said, voice almost a whisper. "Not just the Beacon. Everything. The endless cycle of sacrifice, of betrayal... of pretending we can fix what was broken at the start."
"You broke the world," Kael growled, fists clenched.
Dray didn't flinch. "The world was already breaking. The moment you were forged to serve instead of choose. The moment she," he nodded at Aeris, "was told to forget. The moment I lost the child—again."
Aeris's voice cracked. "Then help us fix it. Not as gods. As the people we were."
The child stood between them, glowing with quiet resolve. "There is one path left. A single fracture that could reset the stream. But it comes with a price."
They all stared at the child.
"One of you will not return."
Silence.
Around them, the void pulsed with timelines unraveling—ghosts of worlds that might never be born. Choices danced on the edge of becoming.
And the last decision waited.