The time tunnel stretched before them like a turbulent artery of light, its colors a jumble unlike any they had ever known.
Their footsteps were audible with an uncanny clarity, though the ground beneath them was not real earth, but a solid specter of time itself.
And then…
The voice echoed.
"Turn back…"
Lloyd paused, not with his feet… but with his soul.
"Where do you think you're going?"
The guard clenched his fist and said sharply,
"Don't look back. These aren't real voices… This tunnel tests those who enter."
But the voice returned, closer… deeper… as if emanating from within Lloyd's own chest.
"Eliminating Lord Zebra?
Are you an idiot… or a madman?"
A long laugh echoed in the void, not loud… but enough to make one's heart race.
Riorno looked around, his eyes sharp.
"This isn't just an illusion. Someone is deliberately sending these signals."
Shira moved closer to Lloyd and said in a low voice, "Lloyd… don't listen to him."
But the sound wasn't just heard…
It was in memory.
The walls of time around them began to crack, like mirrors opening one by one…
And images appeared.
Images the team hadn't experienced… only Lloyd had.
An ancient battlefield.
A sky torn apart by storms.
A man standing amidst the ruins… holding a heavy, broken-edged sword.
"These… memories?" the guard whispered.
Lloyd stared at the scene, his eyes wide.
"No… this… is impossible…"
The man in the vision turned slowly.
It was Argon.
But he wasn't like the one in the stories…
He wasn't a victorious legend…
He was tired. Wounded pride.
Standing alone before an unseen force.
And his voice emerged from the same memory:
"The force you face… is not an enemy that can be killed.
It is a system… a destiny… an entity that swallows worlds."
Lloyd muttered:
— Why… didn't anyone tell me this?
The memory intertwined with another.
Argon was speaking to a small figure standing before him… a child… bearing the same features as Lloyd.
"A day will come when you will be forced to walk. Not because you are the strongest…
But because you are the only one who hasn't been broken yet."
The dark voice laughed again:
"You see? Even he wasn't confident in you."
The tunnel shook violently, and time currents began to swirl around them.
The guard shouted:
— This is an attempt to unsettle your consciousness! If you give in, we will be lost in time!
Riorno stepped forward and placed a firm hand on Lloyd's shoulder:
— Listen to me. Memories are a weapon… but the choice is yours.
— Will you let them write your ending? Or will you write it yourself?
Shira said, her voice steady despite the fear:
— You didn't come here because you're weak… We follow you because you've never backed down.
A moment of silence ensued.
Then…
Lloyd closed his eyes.
He let the voices speak.
He let the memories pass.
He let doubt surface… then subside.
Slowly, he said:
— If this is a test… I'll complete it.
— If it's a warning… I'll understand it.
— But I won't return.
He opened his eyes.
A white aura erupted from his body, not as fighting power… but as inner peace.
The dark sound abruptly ceased.
As if the tunnel itself had rejected him.
The path before them trembled, and the light began to intensify until it transformed into a vast, slowly rotating gateway, within which the outlines of a new world were visible.
Black mountains like blades.
Rivers of silver light.
And cities built on the edge of the abyss.
The sentinel took a deep breath:
— We've crossed the "Pass of Memory." Few have managed it.
Riorno smiled faintly:
— It seems the journey is starting to get interesting.
Shira looked at the new world in wonder:
— This place… I feel like it's watching us.
Lloyd took a step toward the gate and said:
— Because we've entered… the first world to know of our arrival.
And as they crossed…
The gate closed behind them with a sound like the tick of a giant clock.
As if the countdown… had begun.
The space trembled the moment they entered…
This was no ordinary world.
It was like a cosmic throne suspended within an endless void, where paths of light hung like chains, and the stars moved slowly as if subject to a single will.
Then…
A voice boomed.
"You're late…"
It was a heavy voice… not emanating from a specific place, but from all directions simultaneously.
The team froze.
Then he appeared.
Lord Zebra didn't take a step…
His presence formed gradually, as if reality itself were withdrawing to make way for him.
"But… wow. I'm impressed by your courage."
He raised his hand very slowly.
A simple gesture… but it was enough.
An immense silver aura exploded, transforming into chains of pure energy that wrapped around the Guardian, Riorno, and Shira in an instant.
They weren't physical restraints…
But restraints that bound the soul before the body.
Ryorno tried to move—
But his energy was extinguished as if it had never existed.
The guard shouted:
—This isn't a force of repression… This is the nullification of power itself!
Shira tried to call out:
—Lloyd…!
But the only one untouched by the restraints…
Was Lloyd.
Zebra looked at him, then said in a cold, terrifying voice:
"Your strength… or your courage… will no longer avail you."
Then he drew a weapon.
It wasn't a sword…
Nor a spear…
But a strange blade, like a fragment of a broken time, surrounded by an ancient glimmer.
And as soon as Lloyd saw it…
His eyes widened.
A distant memory… painful…
Suddenly surged forth.
His brother's voice.
Their training together.
The unfulfilled promise.
Yatayo.
Lloyd clenched his fist so tightly the air around him trembled.
"You... you bastard criminal..."
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Zebra smiled behind his mask.
It wasn't a smile of triumph...
But the smile of someone who had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
"Finally... the true reason for your coming has been revealed."
And at that moment—
Lloyd's power exploded.
But it wasn't like any other time.
It wasn't just a white aura...
It was a dual energy, a light burning within a deep shadow, as if two opposing forces had awakened simultaneously.
Space trembled.
Star trails cracked.
A black fissure appeared in the sky.
The Guardian, despite his restraints, realized the truth and shouted:
"Lloyd! Stop!"
"This is the forbidden state!"
Riorno tried to break free violently:
"If he continues... he'll lose his balance!"
But Lloyd could no longer hear them. He wasn't just angry…
He was opening a door within himself
that he'd never been allowed to open.
His voice changed as he spoke:
— You took everything…
— And now… I'll take it back.
The weapon in Zebra's hand trembled, as if responding to that energy.
And then…
"Yes… that's exactly what I wanted," Zebra said in a chillingly calm voice.
He raised a finger.
Time stopped… for a tiny fraction of a second.
"The power you're using now… isn't yours alone."
The energy bursting from Lloyd began to distort, transforming into unstable vortices.
The cosmic floor began to crack.
Stars went out one by one.
Shira whispered fearfully:
— This power… is hurting him…
The Guardian said haltingly:
— Because… he wasn't supposed to use it until it was complete… It's a power connected to the secret of Yetaiyu's own disappearance!
Lloyd stood in the midst of the storm he had created.
But for the first time…
He began to feel that the Force wasn't entirely under his control.
It would respond…
Then rebel.
It would give him control…
Then take it back.
And this…
was forbidden.
Zebra took a step forward.
Unaffected.
Unhurried.
The power within Lloyd exploded like a tornado finally freed from its chains…
But it wasn't ordinary power.
It was the forbidden power the guardian of the threshold had warned him about… a power that comes at a price.
The ground cracked beneath his feet, and the white aura he usually controlled rose, but this time it was mingled with black threads like living shadows moving around his body. The forbidden magic tattoos on his arms and neck appeared, glowing with a slow pulse… like another heart beating within him.
Zebra took only a step back.
Not out of fear… but out of concern.
"Finally… you've released this face from your power," he said in a heavy voice.
Lloyd raised his head, his eyes no longer the same… One radiated a pure light,
The other was as dark as an endless void.
Lloyd said, his voice not his own,
"This… is for Yetayo."
He charged.
It wasn't just a physical charge; it was as if the very void itself compressed between them. Lloyd vanished from his vantage point and reappeared directly in front of Zebra. A single blow caused the air around them to explode like a silent thunderbolt.
Zebra raised his weapon to block the attack, and a silver flash struck Lloyd's dual aura.
The world shook.
Not metaphorically…
But literally.
The dimensional walls began to crack, and the space they fought in rippled like water, because the power emanating from Lloyd was not in accordance with the laws of that dimension.
In the background…
The threshold guardian was struggling to break free from the silver restraints.
He shouted,
"Lloyd! Stop! If you continue like this, you'll break the balance!"
But Lloyd couldn't hear him.
He saw only one image repeating itself:
Yatayo… falling…
The sound of the gunshot…
The silence that followed.
Zebra smiled behind the mask.
"Yes… that's what I wanted."
He reached out, and the restraints holding the others began to absorb the energy leaking from Lloyd, like conduits collecting that power.
The threshold guard noticed and his eyes widened:
"He's not just fighting him… he's pushing him to lose control!"
At that moment, Lloyd launched a fiercer attack, a blow that pierced Zebra's defenses and forced him to retreat several steps.
And for the first time… a piece of Zebra's mask shattered.
A small fragment fell to the ground.
A sudden silence fell.
Lloyd paused for a split second.
And in that precise second… the tattoos on his body trembled violently.
The ground beneath his feet transformed into a magical circle unlike any he'd ever seen—a circle Zebra hadn't created…
It had sprung from within him.
"The sealing has begun…" the threshold guardian whispered, his voice filled with shock.
Zebra raised his head. "If it's complete… Lloyd won't be the Lloyd you know."
The energy began to devour Lloyd's own consciousness.
Not killing…
Transformation.
And now he had to fight two battles at once:
Against Zebra… and against the force that was trying to consume him.