The grass beneath their feet was soft, damp with dew, yet it shimmered faintly, like it remembered the touch of machines. As the red balloon vanished into a pale turquoise sky, Tylor's gaze followed it until it became a pinprick. The sound of whispering hadn't faded—it now formed words, just beyond comprehension, like echoes trying to become real.
Amaira led the way toward the strange tower on the horizon. With each step, the landscape subtly morphed—flowers folding inward, trees twisting to form spirals in their bark. Time wasn't broken here. It was waiting.
They reached a hill crowned by a crooked stone sign that read: The Archive of Echoes.
Below, the tower loomed—taller than any they'd seen before. It wasn't metal or stone, but pages. Thousands, maybe millions, fluttered in its structure like feathers in a boundless book, each page glowing softly, engraved with memories and moments.
"Every timeline leaves residue," Kayla murmured, eyes wide. "This place... it's built from what we've forgotten."
Elias approached the tower's door—there wasn't one. Instead, a sentence appeared on a blank page that formed the entrance:
"To enter, one must surrender what they most fear to forget."
Tylor's hand clenched. "What does that mean?"
Amaira stepped forward. The moment her fingers grazed the glowing page, it shimmered and pulled her inside with a blink of light. The others shouted, reaching after her, but she was gone.
One by one, they touched the page—Kayla, Elias, then Tylor last—and were pulled inward, their fears and memories unraveling as they fell.
Inside, the Archive was endless.
Rows of floating books spun in midair, each pulsing with emotion. One tome screamed in silence when Tylor touched it—he opened it and saw himself as the Chronarch, holding Amaira's lifeless hand. Another showed Kayla as a mother, smiling over a crib in a timeline that never was. Elias's book was blank—until a single word inked itself in bloodred: "Lila."
They were in a library of what-ifs. And someone—something—was watching.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor of pages.
A girl stepped into view. No older than Amaira, but paler, dressed in a cloak stitched from frayed book bindings. Her eyes were mismatched—one green, one ink black.
She smiled faintly. "I'm Margra."
Tylor's breath caught. "Who?"
"I'm the Curator," she said simply. "I tend the Archive. And one of you... doesn't belong here. One of you is still fractured."
The walls of the Archive pulsed. Pages flipped violently.
"You've sealed the Collective. You've destroyed the Spiral. But something—someone—came through with you. A ghost in your thread."
Amaira stepped into view from behind Margra—pale, eyes wide. "There's another me," she whispered. "I saw her in the bloom. She didn't wake up when I did."
Everyone froze.
From the end of the corridor, a soft hum began—like a lullaby played on a broken music box.
Then the walls split open—revealing a second Amaira, hovering midair, her body flickering between timelines, her face blank but eyes full of pain.
Margra whispered, "The Echo that should never have lived. If she stays… your world falls apart."
The chapter ends as the two Amairas lock eyes—one real, one residual—and the Archive begins to choose between them.