Silence.
Not the kind born from peace — but the silence of a world that had forgotten how to exist.Riven floated through it, weightless, surrounded by fragments of light that pulsed like fading stars.Every flicker was a memory. Every spark — a life that once had meaning.
The Paradox Core.The place where every timeline met to die.
He landed on a surface that wasn't solid — a floor made of overlapping reflections, each showing a different version of him.Some smiled.Some bled.One was still screaming.
"You've reached the heart of what you broke," said the Architect, voice trembling, faint. "This is what's left of reality's memory."
Riven's steps echoed in the nothingness. "Where is she?"
"Everywhere."
He turned — and there she was.
Lira.
But not as he remembered. Her body shimmered like glass filled with galaxies. Her eyes reflected hundreds of versions of herself — alive, dead, lost, erased. She was both infinite and broken.
When she spoke, her voice carried a thousand tones.
"Riven… you shouldn't have followed me here."
He couldn't breathe for a moment. His throat locked with grief, rage, disbelief."You died in my arms."
"I did. And then I didn't. You pulled me back every time you reset the timeline."
Her tone wasn't angry — it was tired.Each word cracked slightly, like a recording that had been replayed too many times.
"Every loop, every second chance you created… it all came from me. My death was the anchor. You built your time machine around it. Around me."
Riven's heart dropped. "That's not true."
"You used my death as the constant. You turned my existence into the equation that stabilized your experiments."
The air rippled. Riven fell to his knees, hands shaking.He remembered — the endless calculations, the equations that only worked when he input a specific constant.LIRA-0.He'd told himself it was a code name.He'd lied to himself to keep going.
"I didn't know," he whispered.
Lira smiled faintly — not out of forgiveness, but sorrow. "You always knew. You just couldn't live without me, so you made the world die with me."
The Core began to tremble. Each reflected version of Riven in the mirrors started to scream, reaching for him through the glass.
"You merged us all," she continued softly. "Every reality, every version of me — you folded them together. And now… I can feel them all. Every death, every moment you tried to fix, every lie you told yourself to believe I could still be saved."
Riven stood slowly, tears tracing lines down his face. "Then let me fix it. One last time."
"You can't fix what you are, Riven."
Her words struck deeper than any weapon could.
The Architect's voice returned, weak, glitching.
"She's right. The Paradox is complete. You and her are now the two constants — the dual singularities. If either of you vanishes, everything collapses."
Riven's eyes widened. "Then if I end myself—"
"No." Lira's tone sharpened. "If you die now, all versions of you die. That means every timeline dies too. There'll be no world left to save."
Silence again.Riven closed his eyes, breathing shakily.
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Let go."
He laughed — hollow, almost hysterical. "You think I can? After everything I burned for you?"
Lira stepped closer. She reached out, her hand trembling like static. When her fingers touched his cheek, his skin shimmered with light — tiny fragments of broken timelines peeling away.
"You were never trying to save me," she whispered. "You were trying to save the moment before I died. You wanted time to stop — right where love still existed."
Riven stared at her, broken, lost."I would have destroyed eternity to see that moment again."
"And you did."
The Core pulsed violently — red and blue lights clashing, forming cracks in the space around them.
The Architect screamed,
"The Paradox is reaching terminal point! The continuum can't sustain both of you!"
Lira looked up at him, eyes glowing like dying stars.
"You can still save one world — not by controlling time, but by ending it."
Riven looked into her eyes — the last light left in a universe drowning in echoes."Then I'll end it with you."
She shook her head, tears of light falling.
"That's why I loved you… and that's why you have to live."
The Core split apart — and Lira began to fade, her body dissolving into shards of memory and color.
Riven screamed, reaching out, his fingers grasping at light that could no longer hold shape.
"LIRA!"
Her final whisper reached him as the Core collapsed:
"Find the world that still remembers us."
Then everything shattered — and Riven fell through the ruin of time itself.