Their descent into the canyon was like falling through silence. Not ordinary silence, but a weighted stillness that swallowed breath, memory, and time itself. The shimmering cliffs that walled them in seemed carved from strands of unspoken thoughts—each pulse of light a conversation never had, a truth never told.
Ethan led the way, guided by the resonance of the Axis shard still warm in his palm. With each step, his perception grew more fragmented. Time looped around them—echoes of their own footprints preceding their arrival, voices whispering in dialects they hadn't learned yet.
Lily walked closest to him, her frame flickering with the strain of layered probabilities. "The canyon is too precise," she whispered. "It wasn't formed. It was written."
"Written by what?" Cael asked from behind, scanning the walls with a jittery grip on his pulse rifle.
Quoros hovered overhead, wings retracted into a cloak of pure data. "Not what. Whom. The Architect of Masks."
They all paused.
Even Marcus looked uncertain. "A myth. A programming ghost. The first one to ever bend time back on itself."
"No myth," Quoros responded. "This is their domain."
The canyon narrowed into a plaza of spiraling arches, where light diffused like breath upon glass. At its center stood a monolith—a single slab of obsidian-veined stone, inscribed with glyphs that shimmered in all known languages.
The glyphs were names.
Thousands.
Lily stepped closer, her voice barely audible. "These are names of... timelines?"
"No," Ethan said, frowning. "They're names of people. Of travelers. Every name etched here is someone who altered time."
Suddenly, light rippled from the monolith. One of the names flared bright: ETHAN TEMPORAL.
The air fractured.
The Architect emerged—not walking, not flying, but unfolding. Its form was constantly shifting: sometimes a robed figure, other times a lattice of suspended orbs, and at moments, a living tapestry of clocks all set to different regrets.
"You have arrived late," the Architect said. Its voice was neither male nor female, but the echo of something ancient pretending to be human.
Ethan stepped forward. "You know why I'm here."
"Do I?"
"The Axis has been stolen. The Accord is breaking. Kalnor is rising."
The Architect nodded slowly, layers of its form flickering in and out of visual alignment. "Kalnor rises because you fracture too deeply. Echoes cannot hold if their source is too loud."
"Then help me silence it."
The Architect studied him. "You are not the first Ethan Temporal to stand here."
"What?"
It waved a single appendage—an arm, a beam, a sigh—and the canyon walls flickered with images: Ethans from different threads. Some warriors. Some cowards. Some kings. One was a tyrant. Another, a martyr.
"All of these are you. You have failed and triumphed, destroyed and rebuilt. Time does not fear you—it anticipates you."
Lily stepped forward. "Then why bring him here?"
"To choose," said the Architect. "Each Ethan came to the Fold. Each made a decision. Yours must be made now."
"What kind of decision?" Ethan asked.
The Architect gestured toward the canyon's far end. A doorway shimmered, shaped like an hourglass split by a blade.
"One path preserves time. The other preserves you. Choose."
Ethan stood frozen. His thoughts ran wild. Was this the true test? Had the entire journey, every echo, every shard, been leading to this canyon—this choice?
Behind him, Lily waited. Marcus said nothing. Cael gripped his weapon in silence.
"You already know," the Architect said softly.
Ethan stared at the doorway. And stepped forward.
Not toward either path.
But toward the monolith.
"I refuse your choice," he said. "I won't preserve just one. I'll find a way to hold both."
A crack echoed across the canyon. The monolith split.
And for the first time in a thousand cycles, the Architect of Masks smiled.