Everything was wrong.
The moment Tylor, Amaira, and Kayla stepped into the In-Between, sound itself bent sideways. Footsteps echoed before they landed. Time surged forward in bursts, then looped back like a skipping record. Around them stretched a sky of broken clocks and staircases twisting into nothing.
Tylor felt his heartbeat slow… then rush… then fade. He gripped Elena's journal tighter. "Stay close. Don't lose focus."
Amaira stared wide-eyed at the surreal landscape: a field of mirrors cracked along invisible fault lines, some reflecting them as children, others showing twisted versions—Kayla in Collective gear, Tylor as the Chronarch, Amaira vanishing mid-smile.
"This place feels like a dream," Amaira whispered. "But it knows us."
Kayla touched a mirror labeled "Version 3.2 – Incomplete". Her fingers passed through. Behind it, her mother stood, unchanged, whispering to a sleeping child who looked exactly like Kayla.
"Don't," Tylor warned.
A ticking sound grew louder. Not from clocks—but from above. They looked up.
A floating tower spun like a gyroscope in the sky. Its outer rings resembled a giant spiral key. And bound across its middle—suspended like a crucifix—was Daniel, Tylor's father, chains made of light looping through his chest, mouth open in a silent scream.
A mechanical voice echoed through the space. "Unstable variant detected. Timeline breach recorded. Defense initiated."
Shadows detached from the staircases. Dozens of them. Reflections of the group—but broken. Tylor missing his eyes. Kayla glitching backward. Amaira laughing too wide.
Mirror-Tylor stepped forward, blade drawn. "You're not supposed to be here."
Kayla raised her hands. "We're here to fix this. To get our father back."
"You already tried," the reflection hissed. "He chose his prison. You can't unmake a sacrifice."
Tylor stepped forward. "Then why is he still alive?"
The reflection lunged. A battle ignited across mirrors and staircases—realities crashing into one another as each blow caused fragments of alternate timelines to erupt: Elias dying in a fire, Lila never meeting them, Elena becoming the Architect.
Amaira, darting between flickering platforms, reached Daniel's prison and touched the lock.
A voice whispered into her mind. "Two paths—break the chain or take his place."
She hesitated.
Tylor shouted across the storm. "Amaira! What do you see?"
She turned to him, eyes shimmering with a strange light.
"I see… her. The original Elena. She's watching us. She's waiting."
From behind a cracked mirror, a face emerged—familiar and not.
Elena. Ageless. A half-smile on her lips. "You've come far, my children."
And in her palm, she held a second shard—pulsing, inverted.
She tilted her head. "But whose timeline do you want to save?"
The storm of broken time roared louder.
The choice had begun.