Chapter 14: Chronoforge
> "Time doesn't heal.
It hunts. It haunts. It remembers."
---
Location: Chronoforge – Core of All Timelines
The portal ruptured open.
Rael and Lyra were sucked through—a tunnel of clocks, screaming futures, and decaying memories spinning past them like a cosmic storm.
Then, silence.
They stood on an inverted cathedral, suspended over a starless abyss. Floating gears the size of planets turned above their heads, each tick echoing across existence.
The floor was made of past events—they could see ghost-images beneath their feet.
> Rael's first kill.
Lyra's synthetic birth.
The betrayal of Talon.
The moment Rael first smiled—then never again.
> "This place knows everything," Lyra whispered.
> "Then it knows I'm here to end it," Rael said, unsheathing the Shardkey.
---
Guardian of the Seconds
A tremor.
The gears stopped.
From the sky descended a beast of time, coiled in armor made of ticking watches, hourglass eyes swirling.
Guardian of the Seconds.
> "You carry the scent of paradox," it hissed. "You are not meant to be."
Rael smirked.
> "Yeah, well. I get that a lot."
The Guardian lunged—time folded as it moved. It attacked Rael ten seconds ago, now, and five seconds from now simultaneously.
Rael vanished.
Appeared again.
And stabbed into the exact moment the creature was vulnerable—one frozen nanosecond in the future.
The Shardkey pierced the timeline, snapping it like a branch.
The beast shattered.
The cathedral began to fall.
---
Lyra's Glitch
But Lyra screamed.
She dropped to her knees, clutching her head.
Visions poured in:
A universe where she killed Rael.
One where she was the Clockmother.
Another where she never existed, and Rael became a machine-god without a soul.
The timeline was trying to overwrite her.
Rael grabbed her, forcing his aura around her.
> "Don't you dare fade," he growled.
> "It's rewriting my choices—trying to erase what I am."
Rael looked up at the central tower of Chronoforge—where the Clockmother waited.
> "Then let's end this now."
---
The Clockmother Revealed
They reached the core.
A massive chamber of floating pendulums and fractured glass.
And on a throne made of frozen time sat the Clockmother.
She stood slowly…
And Rael froze.
> "No. That's impossible."
She looked exactly like… his mother.
But not the mother he remembered.
This one wore the same coat he did. The same eyes. The same fury.
> "You were never born," she said.
> "You were written."
> "By who?" Rael demanded.
> "By me."
She stepped down.
> "You are the product of a failed simulation… and a failed son."
> "Then you're just another god I need to break."
She smiled.
> "Good. I was hoping you'd say that."
---
Final Scene: A Fractured War Begins
Time cracked as Rael charged.
The Clockmother split into seven temporal forms, each from a different timeline, each wielding a piece of his past.
Lyra activated her Eidolon form, glowing like a star and cutting through false futures.
Rael unleashed his Third Kind state, collapsing probability into pure intent.
The war wasn't just for time.
It was for identity. For choice. For everything.
And as the timelines collapsed inward…
A new future was about to be born.
---
End of Chapter 14