Kael's boots skidded across the obsidian floor of the Time Vault, his heart thudding louder than the echoes of crumbling timelines. The vault was collapsing—fractures rippling across its walls like veins of dying stars. Behind him, the door to the sanctum sealed shut, trapping the echoes of Null's final threat.
But he wasn't alone anymore.
Aeris landed beside him, her wing half-regrown, haloed in flickers of unstable light. Her eyes met his—and for a moment, all the timelines froze in reverence to what almost was.
"You found your way back," she whispered.
"I remembered what mattered," Kael said, then added softer, "You."
Before either could breathe in that moment's weight, a pulse of darkness surged through the vault. A humanoid figure emerged from the collapsing timestream—elegant, unnaturally still, cloaked in fabric woven from devoured years. Her eyes were hollow hourglasses, her fingers dripping sand that burned holes into reality.
She was Null's prophet: Syra of the Unwoven Thread—the one who had once been a seer, now twisted into a herald of annihilation.
"You stole a future," she hissed, her voice a whisper of every end never witnessed. "Now time demands its toll."
Aeris raised her hand, but Kael held her back.
"She's not trying to kill us," he said. "She's testing what we've become."
Syra raised both hands. The sand spiraled, forming illusions from Kael and Aeris' regrets: a moment where Kael abandoned a fallen soldier, a memory where Aeris hesitated—and a city died screaming.
But they didn't flinch.
Kael stepped into the sandstorm, letting the visions slice into his skin. "We've lived our guilt."
"And we don't run from it anymore," Aeris added.
Syra's form flickered—wavering between rage and awe.
Then, as if some unseen lock turned, the Time Vault revealed its core: a massive suspended heart, beating once every century. Within it—trapped like an insect in amber—was the key to resetting the unraveling timelines.
The Forgotten Heart of Origin.
Syra spoke again, now trembling. "If you take it, you can remake what was lost. But if it rejects you…"
"We become nothing," Kael finished. He stepped forward regardless.
Aeris touched his shoulder. "Not alone."
Together, their hands met the crystalized heart.
The vault screamed. Timelines twisted into spirals. Memories surged—Kael saw himself holding a child he never had, Aeris saw a throne of flame and flowers, Dray wept on a battlefield under two suns.
Then—
Light.
Not blinding, but clarifying.
The Forgotten Heart pulsed in their hands, and in that heartbeat, they understood:
They were not just fighting for the future.
They were the future.
And something had noticed.
A new presence surged into the vault—raven-winged, armor forged from broken dimensions.
The true face of Null.
No longer masked.
And it wore Kael's face.