The plunge into the Fold was like falling through shattered glass—each moment a different sensation, a different memory, a different self. Elira couldn't tell where her body ended and her thoughts began. She wasn't falling through space, but through versions of herself.
One moment, she was a child laughing with her brother in the gardens of Solmere.The next, she was kneeling before the charred ruins of her village, hands bloodied.Then she was standing atop a golden tower, a crown of flame upon her brow.
And then… stillness.
Elira gasped, stumbling forward. Her boots touched solid ground—a floor, if it could be called that, composed of floating shards of memories suspended in an endless void of swirling twilight. Kael appeared beside her, crouched in a defensive stance, his sword already drawn. Zeph fluttered into view moments later, looking spectral, half-glitching, eyes glowing faintly violet.
"This isn't a realm," Kael murmured. "It's a mind."
"Not a mind," Elira corrected. "A wound."
They stood within the Fold: a reality created not by nature but by trauma—a rent in existence where forgotten timelines bled into each other, colliding, fracturing, healing wrongly. Here, cause and effect weren't guaranteed. Past and future had no clear divide.
Ahead of them stretched a broken bridge of thought-fragments—memories and regrets solidified into floating steps. Above it loomed the center of the Fold: a giant orb of pulsating white, wrapped in rings of shadow like celestial chains.
"That must be the anchor," Elira said. "It's holding this reality open."
Kael frowned. "And likely what the masked figure is trying to merge with our world."
They moved cautiously, hopping from one floating fragment to another. Each fragment reacted to their presence, flashing scenes from lost timelines:
A version of Kael kneeling before a shadow-queen.
Elira refusing the call of the Ascension Protocol.
A future where Zeph became a harbinger of destruction, not a guide.
"These aren't just possibilities," Elira whispered. "They're warnings."
Suddenly, the void trembled. A new presence emerged—an echo of the masked god, larger now, more formless, like a wraith made from forgotten choices. It blocked their path, eyes voids of starlight.
"You trespass in a realm not meant for the living," it hissed, its voice rippling with thousands of tones. "Why fight fate when you could reshape it?"
Kael stepped forward, blade raised. "We're here to close this wound. You don't belong outside the Fold."
"I am the Fold," it growled. "I was cast into this place when the Gods culled their own mistakes. I remember what they erased. I remember everything."
Elira summoned her Etherlight into a radiant bow. "Then you remember why you were locked here."
The creature raised its arms, and tendrils of memory lashed out, forming monsters from regret and fragments of past pain: a version of Elira's mother twisted by madness, an army of corrupted Ascendants, even a monstrous Zeph-like chimera.
Kael gritted his teeth. "It's not real. They're not real!"
"No," Elira replied, notching an arrow, "But the damage they do is."
The battle was chaos. Each step they took forward, more fractured echoes rose to stop them. But every monster was defeated not just with blade and light—but with remembrance. Each time Elira accepted her past, her failures, her pain—they weakened.
Finally, they reached the orb. It pulsed with unbearable tension, reality warping around it. Elira approached, holding out the fragments of her shattered pendant.
"You want a key?" she said. "You already broke one."
The pieces began to glow, aligning in her hand into a crystalline shard of pure will. It wasn't a key forged by gods—but by her choice. By truth.
The orb screamed as she plunged the shard into it.
Light erupted. Darkness coiled. Time stuttered.
Then…
Silence.
The Fold began to collapse, unraveling back into the nothing it had once been. Kael grabbed her hand as the ground beneath them gave way.
"Elira—!"
"I've got us!" she shouted, reaching deep into the Protocol, calling its latent code. Ascension Mode: Recall activated.
A brilliant glyph opened beneath their feet.
The last thing she saw before everything turned white was the wraith's form being torn apart—its voice fading:
"You cannot erase what has been remembered…"
And then—
They were back.
Collapsed on the shores of Mirror Lake, gasping. Zeph landed beside them, feathers singed but intact. The Obsidian Gateway was gone. Only a ripple remained where it once floated.
The sun had risen. Birds were singing again.
Elira closed her eyes and whispered, "One wound closed. But how many still remain?"
Kael sat beside her, silent.
They both knew this wasn't the end.
The Fold had only been the first gate.