The moment they crossed the threshold, the rules of reality abandoned them.
Shadow stood motionless for a long time, letting the strange rhythm of this realm settle into his senses. The mirrored ground beneath their feet reflected not just their bodies, but echoes of different versions — alternate selves flickering like broken memories.
Above them, the sky pulsed with cosmic veins, each a river of stars flowing in reverse. There was no sun, no moon, only endless constellations forming and unforming — telling stories that had never been written.
Leon was the first to speak.
"I don't feel my magic," he said, his voice tight.
Aeryn reached for an arrow from her quiver. "My enchantments are flickering. This place… it doesn't follow normal rules."
"It's a Null-Space," Shadow finally said. "Or something older than it. We've stepped outside of continuity."
He crouched and touched the mirrored floor. His reflection didn't mimic the movement. Instead, it smiled back.
That was enough for Aeryn to draw her bow.
"What the hell was that?"
"It's not a reflection," Shadow muttered. "It's a fragment."
"Of us?"
"Of possibility."
Leon exhaled through his teeth. "Great. So we're stuck in a dimension of our own regrets and maybes."
Shadow rose.
"Not stuck. Guided. The Herald didn't send us here by accident."
A humming sound vibrated through the air, like a forgotten hymn sung backward. In the distance, the mirrored surface rippled, and something began to rise.
It wasn't a creature.
It was a structure.
A tower of inverted geometry — spires curling inward, windows shaped like runes, its height impossible to measure because it stretched both up… and down. At its apex burned a single, hovering orb of light — black at its core, white at its edges.
Aeryn's breath caught in her throat.
"That's…"
"The Watchtower," Shadow confirmed. "But not the one we know. This is its origin form."
Leon narrowed his eyes. "You're saying this is the first one? The one that predates the Orders?"
"Yes," Shadow said. "This realm... existed before choice."
They walked toward the inverted tower, its impossible structure looming larger with each step, though the distance never seemed to change. The more they moved, the more the world bent, warping in optical loops and mirrored echoes of the same horizon.
"We're not moving," Aeryn said after a while. "I think we're walking in place."
"No," Shadow replied. "We're being observed."
Leon instinctively reached for his blade, but it wasn't there. Instead, a shadow of the blade hovered beside him, intangible — like a memory.
"They're stripping away causality," he muttered. "Even our weapons exist here only as concepts."
As if in response, a sound echoed from the direction of the tower — not a roar or screech, but the delicate chime of a bell, deep and distant.
The orb of light at the top of the tower pulsed once.
And then, suddenly, they weren't alone.
From the mirrored landscape around them, figures emerged — not hostile, but wrong. They wore their faces. Walked like them. Moved with eerie synchronization.
One of them — a version of Aeryn — stepped forward. Her hair was shorter, and her eyes glowed faintly with a green hue.
"I made the opposite choice," she said. "I left him behind."
The real Aeryn stiffened.
Shadow's double appeared next — taller, wrapped in golden armor rather than a cloak, his expression severe.
"I accepted the crown," he said.
Leon's copy was next — covered in blood, with eyes devoid of remorse.
"I never stopped," he said, voice cracked. "Not after she died."
The real Leon's jaw clenched.
"These aren't just illusions," he muttered. "They're roads we didn't take."
Shadow took a step forward, locking eyes with his alternate.
"You're echoes," he said. "Fragments. But you're not the path."
The golden-armored Shadow tilted his head. "Then prove it."
Without warning, the copies struck.
Aeryn fired her first arrow — it passed clean through her doppelgänger, disrupting her form but not stopping her. The false Aeryn reformed, faster, stronger, unleashing a volley of light-formed arrows in return.
Leon dodged a flurry of strikes from his counterpart, barely managing to block a shadow blade with his bare hands. "This version of me is relentless," he growled. "Focused. Empty."
"Don't fight them like enemies," Shadow shouted as he parried a blow from his golden self. "They're us! Fight them like... memories!"
The words clicked in Aeryn's mind.
She closed her eyes for a second — and remembered. The moment she could have left. The moment she stayed. That pain. That guilt. That love.
When she opened her eyes, her arrow was different — not forged of magic, but of resolve.
She fired.
The false Aeryn shattered like glass.
Leon understood. He let the shadow version strike, but didn't retaliate. Instead, he looked him in the eye and said:
"I forgive you."
The bloodied version faded into dust.
Shadow was last. He faced himself silently.
Then he lowered his blade.
"I walk my own path. Without title. Without chains."
The golden version of him bowed his head… and vanished.
The field was quiet again. The tower was suddenly closer.
And the orb pulsed once more.
Shadow turned to the others.
"This realm is testing us. Filtering us."
"For what?" Aeryn asked.
Shadow looked up at the tower, eyes narrowing.
"To meet the Voice."
The gates of the Watchtower opened without a sound.
No hinges. No mechanism. Just the subtle shift of space folding away to allow them entry. Inside, the geometry defied sense — staircases hanging in midair, doors suspended upside down, halls that bent back into themselves. The interior was alive with symbols carved into light, each one pulsating with silent purpose.
As they stepped inside, the orb above the tower dimmed.
"She knows we're here," Shadow said.
Leon scanned the room cautiously. "So who exactly is she? The Voice? Another piece of this cosmic puzzle?"
"She's more than that," Shadow replied. "She's not a being. She's a consequence."
Before Aeryn could ask what that meant, a presence washed over them. It wasn't sound. It wasn't sight. It was knowing — the kind that bypassed reason and drilled straight into instinct.
They were no longer in the tower.
They stood in a vast expanse of white — not a room, not a void, but something else. A field of stillness. At the center, a woman sat upon a throne of fragmented time. Her hair shimmered with the texture of stars. Her eyes… were empty, yet infinite.
The Voice.
Shadow stepped forward.
"We seek truth," he said. "We seek the fracture."
The Voice tilted her head. Her lips moved — but the sound echoed not in their ears, but in their memories.
"Then you must see what was hidden."
The field shifted.
Suddenly, they were standing in a memory — not their own, but the world's.
They watched as an ancient council debated the sealing of something called The Absolute. A being that could walk through every possible timeline simultaneously. A creature with no anchor, no fate, no beginning. Shadow's fists clenched.
"They locked him out of time itself... not to destroy him, but to erase his story."
Leon muttered, "Then that makes the Herald right. He wasn't evil. He was feared."
Aeryn's eyes were wide. "And we've just broken the seal."
The vision ended.
Back in the white realm, the Voice finally stood. When she spoke, the words were absolute.
"Now you must face him."
Shadow's voice was quiet. "Who?"
"The one who walks without consequence."
The tower around them shattered. The sky broke.
And from the far edge of existence… someone stepped forward.
A man with no shadow.
Eyes that held every star.
And a voice that was their own.
"So. You finally found me."
He stepped from the horizon as if it were a curtain pulled aside — not walking, but emerging, as if he had always been there, waiting for reality to remember him.
The man had no name, not in this version of the world. His cloak bore no emblem. His face held no time. But his presence distorted the space around him — stars realigned, light bent, and logic failed.
Leon instinctively moved to draw a weapon.
"Don't," Shadow said, unmoving. "It won't matter."
The man smiled faintly. Not cruel. Not kind. Just… inevitable.
"You were never supposed to find this place," he said, voice echoing in all directions. "And yet here you are, dragging your fates behind you like broken chains."
Shadow stepped forward.
"We came for the truth. No more lies. No more seals."
The man tilted his head, as if amused.
"You think I wanted to be sealed? You think this exile was my design?"
A pause. The stars behind him blinked out, one by one.
"I was the truth. I held the multiverse in place — not through control, but through acceptance. And they feared that. So they unmade me."
Aeryn whispered, "You're the Absolute…"
He turned toward her slowly, expression unreadable.
"I was."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Shadow's voice cut through it.
"Then help us. You said they erased your story. Let's rewrite it."
For a moment, the Absolute said nothing. Then he laughed. Not mockingly — more like someone who hadn't felt anything in millennia and didn't know how to react.
"You think it's that simple?" he asked. "You can't 'rewrite' a story when the pen was shattered. The moment you broke the seal, everything changed. This realm? This Watchtower? It doesn't exist anymore. You're writing with the tip of a blade now."
Leon growled. "Then give us a reason not to use it."
The Absolute's gaze sharpened.
"Because you don't understand what's coming. What they've done to survive. The Council. The Watchers. The ones above even me."
Shadow's eyes narrowed.
"Then tell us."
The Absolute stepped closer — and suddenly the world twisted again.
They stood in a shattered city made of light and code, where giant constructs clashed in the skies and entire timelines burned like paper.
The Absolute's voice followed them.
"This is the aftermath. A war not of armies, but of stories. A collapse of narratives. When the Absolute returns, the foundations of all realities tremble. Because choice… becomes irrelevant."
The vision ended.
And once again, they stood beneath the now-ruined Watchtower.
The Absolute faced them one last time.
"You want to know the truth? It's not about me. Or you. It's about her."
He turned his gaze skyward.
And in the sky, beyond the last flicker of stars, a shadow moved — vast, serpentine, ancient.
Aeryn gasped. "What… what is that?"
The Absolute spoke one word.
"Oblivion."