The silence after the beacon was not peace.
It was breath held across dimensions.
Kael stood by the fractured beacon tower, its crystalline lattice still humming with his voice—"I am not your god. I am your brother."
Echo's form had changed again. Less static, more organic. She blinked—not in code, but in something like real thought.
Then the tremor came.
[Signal Response Incoming]
[Unknown Entity Signature Detected – Class: Forgotten Architect]
[Warning: This one remembers you.]
A new rift tore open—not in the sky, but beneath their feet.
It wasn't spatial. It was temporal.
Ashveil tilted. Buildings bled backward into earlier versions of themselves. Corpses blinked into children. Old leaders stood where statues had been.
Kael shouted, "Anchor it!"
Echo screamed in binary tongues.
From the chasm, a whisper crawled out:
"Kael… you were not the only survivor."