The journey westward led Kael and his companions into the skeletal arms of the Void Peaks—jagged mountains carved by ancient riftstorms and bathed in unnatural starlight. Black snow blanketed the crags, falling not from the sky but seeping upward from deep fissures in the earth. Gravity bent strangely here. Time itself slowed and twisted.
Veyr muttered, "This place is a scar. The Rift bleeds here."
The path was narrow, cut along cliffs that fell into swirling clouds of violet lightning. Every footstep echoed with eerie delay. Shadows danced too slowly, as if caught in loops.
Kael gripped his cloak tighter, the Gauntlet humming with restrained energy. Since the Timefracture Nexus, it had begun absorbing ambient chronal energy—he could now sense temporal anomalies before they struck. He was changing, adapting. But so was the world around him.
At midday, they stopped at a plateau to rest. Seris scanned the skies. "No birds. No life. Just quiet. Too quiet."
Ryssa placed a hand to the ground. "Something's waiting. Something big."
Kael nodded. "The Wyrm. It's watching."
---
They moved on, climbing higher until the air thinned and the stars began to shift in unnatural ways—aligning into patterns resembling eyes, runes, teeth.
"The Heart lies in the Wyrm's domain," Veyr explained, pulling a cracked map made of stitched memory-thread. "The Void Wyrm, once a guardian of the Peaks, fell to Garmon corruption centuries ago. It feeds on time."
"And it's waiting for us?" Seris asked.
"Or hunting us already," Ryssa replied.
As night fell, a deep vibration shook the mountain. A roar—low and guttural—rolled through the peaks.
They weren't alone.
---
That night, Kael dreamed again.
He stood in a field of mirrors, each reflecting a different version of himself. One bore wings of light. Another, horns of black metal. One wept blood. Another laughed maniacally. In the center stood the Sovereign, tall and cloaked in darkness.
"You see now," the Sovereign said, voice like velvet and ash. "Every path ends with me."
Kael reached for his Gauntlet, but it was gone.
"You are not a hero," the Sovereign whispered, stepping closer. "You are the storm."
Kael woke gasping, the fire beside him cold.
---
By dawn, the wind had shifted. The mountain groaned. Ice shattered beneath their feet. Then they saw it—far ahead, curled across a black ridge, was the Void Wyrm.
It was colossal. Its body was coiled around a crystalline structure that pulsed like a massive, corrupted heart. Its scales shimmered like obsidian and silver. Where eyes should've been, portals spun endlessly, revealing fragments of other worlds. With each breath, it exhaled misty threads of time.
Kael whispered, "That's the Heart."
Ryssa clenched her fists. "We have to reach it."
Veyr shook his head. "We can't kill it. Not like this."
Kael stepped forward. "We're not here to kill it. I'm going to talk to it."
Seris looked stunned. "Talk? It's a corrupted ancient!"
But Kael walked alone, the Gauntlet glowing with violet light. The Wyrm stirred.
---
Kael approached slowly, feeling time bend around him. Each step stretched into eternity, yet passed in an instant. The Wyrm lifted its head. Its voice echoed not in sound but in Kael's thoughts.
"You are marked."
"I seek the Heart," Kael replied. "And answers."
"Many seek. Few listen."
Kael paused. "Then I'll listen."
The Wyrm's tail curled, tightening around the crystalline Heart. "The Sovereign seeks to devour all endings. He would use your blood to do it. But you... you are not yet whole."
Kael stepped closer. "Tell me how to become whole."
The Wyrm opened one of its temporal eyes. Kael was swallowed by visions—his childhood, the lab explosion, the bullies, the death, the awakening, the battles—all unfolding and folding again.
"You must walk the path of Memory, the path of Loss, and the path of Becoming."
Kael asked, "And where does that lead?"
"To the Final Rift."
He stared at the Heart. "Will you let us pass?"
"You will face a Trial. Survive it, and the path is yours."
---
The Wyrm lifted its tail from the Heart. The crystal pulsed—and a wave of temporal energy exploded outward, knocking the others to the ground. Kael stood firm.
A being emerged from the Heart. It was Kael—but older, crueler, cloaked in dark energy and wielding a twisted version of the Gauntlet.
"I am what you become if you fail," the doppelganger said. "You will not defeat me."
The battle began.
They moved with perfect symmetry—strike for strike, block for block. Every blow Kael landed, the shadow-Kael answered in kind. But the shadow drew from darker emotions—hatred, regret, rage.
Kael remembered Veyr's words: Power without purpose is destruction.
He slowed his breathing, calmed his mind.
"I don't need to beat you," Kael whispered. "I just need to let go."
He closed his eyes.
The Gauntlet responded. The violet light turned white.
The shadow vanished.
The Wyrm roared in approval.
"You have passed. The Heart is yours to touch."
---
Kael stepped to the crystal Heart. The moment he touched it, knowledge flooded into him. The Heart was not a source of power—it was a map. It revealed the location of the Final Rift, deep beneath the Sea of Glass, guarded by the Ninefold Gate.
Kael stumbled back, breathless.
"We have a destination," he said.
Veyr helped him stand. "Did the Wyrm... help you?"
Kael nodded. "It sees what we're fighting. It's as trapped as we are."
The Wyrm's eyes dimmed.
Ryssa asked, "Then what now?"
Kael looked to the south. "We head to the Sea. We find the Gate. And we end this."
---
As they descended the mountain, Kael looked back one last time. The Void Wyrm lay still, coiled around the Heart like a sleeping god. The wind howled through the peaks. But the stars above had shifted.
They no longer looked like eyes or runes.
They looked like constellations.
Like hope.
Kael's journey wasn't over.
But for the first time, the path ahead was clear.
He was no longer running from his past.
He was racing toward the end of everything—
—to rewrite it.