The silence following the Vault's restoration was unnerving—not peaceful, but too quiet. Like the hush before an avalanche.
Kael stood still, fingers brushing the smooth surface of the now-stable Forgotten Heart. It no longer pulsed violently. Instead, it beat in sync with his own rhythm—as if it recognized the new path he had forged. A path balanced between who he was and who he could have become.
Aeris watched him with guarded eyes, her wings dimly glowing. "It's over… right?"
Kael turned to her slowly. "No. That wasn't the end. That was the beginning."
The words left his mouth just as the vault ceiling split open with a deafening shriek—not stone tearing, but reality itself. From the rupture oozed a darkness unlike any Kael had faced. Not the chaos of Null. Not the cold logic of his corrupted reflection.
This darkness was... aware.
A massive eye, vertical and bloodless, stared down through the rupture, unblinking and ancient.
Aeris stepped back, wings spread. "What is that?"
Before Kael could speak, the Forgotten Heart trembled violently in his hand. The Vault's light dimmed. One by one, the scattered timelines shown in the mirror-like floor began to swirl into a single, terrifying vision:
A throne forged from dying stars.
A figure seated upon it—its face always shifting, never settling. A god of contradiction. Neither man nor beast. Neither past nor future.
Only hunger.
A whisper slithered through the air like smoke.
"You were meant to feed me."
Kael's breath caught. This… thing wasn't from any timeline. It was older than time. A cosmic parasite living between the folds of choice, devouring what might-have-beens.
"I am the Dissonance," it said. "The eater of consequence. You've been dancing through dreams, rewriting echoes—but every choice you corrected starved me further. And now I've come to feed."
It lashed out—not with limbs, but with doubt.
Kael collapsed to one knee as visions tore through his mind: Aeris dying in his arms. Dray's screams echoing in a burning kingdom. Veyra, broken and begging him to end her.
Each nightmare felt real. He smelled the ash, felt the blood, tasted the guilt.
Aeris shouted his name—but even her voice sounded like betrayal in the storm of fear.
The Dissonance surged through the Vault, dissolving the crystalline spires, unraveling memory itself.
"You made a choice," it hissed. "Now I will consume everything it cost."
But Kael clenched his fists—and focused on a single, fragile truth.
Aeris's hand in his.
Not as a soldier.
Not as a savior.
But as a person.
"You're wrong," Kael whispered.
He stood. "I didn't starve you. I freed us from you."
He summoned the light from the Forgotten Heart—but it flickered. The Dissonance laughed.
Aeris moved beside him, and for the first time, she took his hand without hesitation. Together, their energies intertwined—his forged from balance, hers from pain turned into hope.
The Vault responded.
A sphere of radiant energy pulsed outward, shielding them.
"You are not enough!" the Dissonance bellowed.
Kael looked up into that vast, hideous eye—and smiled. "We're not supposed to be."
Then came a rumble.
A second light burst into the Vault.
Dray arrived through a golden tear in space, staff ablaze, symbols burning along his arms like forgotten runes reawakened.
And from another horizon—
Veyra returned.
Alive.
Her coat burned at the edges. Her face smeared with blood. But her eyes? Fierce.
"You thought you could divide us forever," she snarled. "But you didn't account for one thing."
She lifted her blade. "We chose each other."
Together, they stood.
Against the dark.
As the Dissonance screamed—
And the war for all tomorrows began.