The air thickened with an electric tension as Ethan and the future Lily ran across shifting plains of fragmented stone and echoing light. Beneath them, the ground shimmered with unstable chronal energy. Each step they took threatened to dissolve into a different era, but the shard in Ethan's grip kept them anchored—for now.
"Where are we?" he asked between heavy breaths.
"This is the Edge," Lily said. "The boundary between timelines. If Marcus breaks through here, he'll reach the Tether—the first link, the heart of everything."
Ahead loomed a colossus of intertwined roots and glowing latticework—a living structure pulsing with the light of every age. Time passed visibly through its veins. Birth. Death. War. Peace. Worlds being formed and unformed.
The Tether of Origins.
"It's beautiful," Ethan whispered, slowing for a moment.
"It's unstable," Lily snapped. "We don't have time to admire it. If Marcus injects even one rewritten event into the Tether, it'll propagate through all realities. Past, present, future—all rewritten in his image."
They reached a jagged overlook, where a platform hovered over a sea of temporal chaos. Lightning danced in slow motion, striking frozen waves. A dozen pathways led out from the Tether's core, like veins from a heart.
And on the far side of the platform—Marcus.
He stood with arms spread wide, the shard he had stolen embedded into a control pedestal. Light surged around him, and the Tether pulsed in response.
"NO!" Lily shouted, drawing her blade.
Marcus turned. "Welcome, travelers. Just in time for the rebirth."
He raised a hand, and the shard exploded with energy.
Ethan screamed as he and Lily were hurled back by a shockwave. They hit the ground, skidding across warped stone.
"Did you think I wouldn't find it?" Marcus continued, his voice amplified through the chamber. "I've seen the beginning and the end. Time was never meant to be balanced—it was meant to be mastered."
Lily rose to her feet and charged. Her blade ignited with swirling blue flame as she struck.
But Marcus caught it—barehanded.
He tossed her aside like a wisp of cloth.
Ethan forced himself upright, raising his shard. He pressed it to the pedestal nearest to him. A holographic interface appeared, flickering with alien symbols. He recognized some—refinements of equations he'd scrawled as a teenager, now encoded into the very matrix of this place.
He tapped into it.
The Tether's memories opened.
He saw the birth of time—not a bang, but a ripple, a harmony of will and possibility. The First Engineers, ancient beings of calculation and compassion, had forged the Tether to preserve potential. Not to control it.
He reached deeper.
Marcus had accessed the rewrite function. One change, and the system would cascade into conformity. One fixed future, one fixed past.
Ethan couldn't match Marcus's power—but he could offer choice.
He began inputting alternate outcomes—forked paths, unresolved options, variables that let timelines breathe.
The system shuddered.
Marcus noticed.
"What are you doing?!" he shouted.
"Restoring freedom," Ethan growled.
The shard vibrated violently, resisting him. Blood trickled from Ethan's nose, but he didn't stop. He fed it all—every memory, every loss, every love. He thought of Lily. Of the boy he'd once been. Of the moments he hadn't yet lived.
The pedestal glowed with rainbow fire.
Marcus screamed and tried to sever the link—but Lily reappeared, slashing across his arm with her blade. He staggered.
The system reached its threshold.
A column of light surged upward from the Tether. Across the chamber, the timeline split—not into one path, but into many. Infinite.
Marcus stumbled back, gasping.
"You… fool…"
"Maybe," Ethan said. "But at least I'm not a tyrant."
With a final cry, Marcus vanished—sucked into a closing rift, screaming as time denied him control.
Silence followed.
The Tether pulsed once… then quieted.
The sky above rippled into calm.
Ethan collapsed beside Lily.
"You okay?" he asked.
She nodded, smiling faintly. "You did it."
"No. We did it."
They sat in silence, watching the timelines bloom like galaxies.
But even now, Ethan knew—this wasn't the end.
There was more.
There always was.