Chapter 135 – The Impossible Path

The starmap trembled.

Under Lysaria's silent guidance, the Spiral Relic rotated within Chen's hand, its edge flickering between past and future—between moments unmade. The space around them twisted, not physically, but metaphysically, as if the Vault's lingering paradox bled into the very breath of time.

They stood at the convergence point: a collapsed ridge in the Broken Skylands, where storms eternally raged and no divine step had touched in millennia. But here, at this fracture, something older than the Flame Court whispered.

"This is the moment," Mei said softly. "The choice not made."

Chen's pulse pounded. "Whose?"

"Yours," Lysaria replied. "From a timeline you never lived."

Lightning cracked the sky—and for a blink of eternity, another Chen stood beside him. Eyes filled with regret. Armor scorched by divine fire. Alone.

Then he was gone.

Lanmei flinched. "Did anyone else—?"

"I saw him too," Ye Yue said, grip tightening on her divine mirror. "A version of you that failed."

"No," Sarina whispered. "One that was made to fail."

The air split.

Not torn—but reversed. A seam opened, revealing a jagged tunnel made of memory, fire, and the scent of lavender and ash. Their entrance was not a portal but a breach in consequence itself. Every step they took forward was a step deeper into a lie denied by fate.

The Obsidian Sky welcomed them.

Dark ruins drifted across broken clouds, shaped like forgotten cathedrals and shattered gates. Black flame danced along the edges of stone that should've never held fire. The very air sang with war songs never written, carried by the winds of things that never happened—but almost did.

Chen's voice was low. "We're being… observed."

Lanmei nodded. "By timelines. Potential outcomes. Things that were erased to make space for the courts' dominance."

"Careful," Sarina murmured. "The longer we stay, the more real this becomes. We could fracture into our other selves."

"Noted," Chen said. "Stay close. If you see a version of yourself that talks, don't listen."

They pressed forward.

Between twisted monuments of gods that never rose, they moved swiftly, ghostlike, using the relics to map silence into the storm. Mei tossed a shard of paradox flame ahead, carving a silent tunnel through space-time. Sarina whispered coordinates to a sky that refused to hold stars.

Then came the heart.

A tower formed of reversed light—the Spire of Consequence, built at the nexus of failed timelines. From here, the Flame Court monitored potential uprisings, filtering them through divine will. If they destroyed this nexus, the courts would lose the ability to suppress destiny.

But it wasn't unguarded.

Rising from the spire's base came a creature built from timelines severed and stitched—a Chronobeast, cloaked in mirrored armor. Its roar sounded like a thousand voices screaming across realities.

Chen stepped forward, Soulflame Unison igniting with divine heat and Spiral essence. "We end this now."

Ye Yue stepped beside him, her mirror pulsing with inverted reflections. Lanmei unsheathed blades that shifted with every breath. Sarina and Mei locked spells of compression and memory entanglement around them.

The impossible path had led them to this.Now came the impossible fight.