The Reality She Left Behind

Kael stumbled from the memory wall, his breath ragged, face smeared with phantom ash. The Rift had gone silent. Too silent. As if even time refused to witness what came next.

The phrase still glowed in his vision—Only one of us gets to live.

"Aeris," he whispered. "What did you do?"

Behind him, the portal cracked and hissed. It was reopening—not the way portals were meant to. This one pulsed like a living heart, stitched together with fragments of broken realities. Screams echoed from within—some familiar, some… impossibly his own.

"Kael!"

A voice. Real.

Alive.

His heart thundered. He turned—

And there she was.

Aeris.

Not a fragment. Not an echo. The real her.

Or… was it?

She looked different—armor torn, hair shorter, her eyes darker than he remembered. But those eyes still held galaxies. Memories. Pain.

"Aeris?" he choked out.

"Don't move," she said sharply. "You're still bleeding chrono-light. You'll destabilize."

She raised a trembling hand, and golden threads wove between her fingers—ancient magic she had sworn never to use. Kael felt warmth flood his chest. His wounds began to mend.

"It's really you," he whispered, stepping closer.

"Not for long," she replied.

He froze.

"What?"

Aeris blinked hard, and a single tear slipped down her cheek—burning like liquid silver.

"I'm a convergence point now, Kael," she said softly. "A timeline anchor. I can't move between rifts anymore. If I leave, this branch collapses… and with it, everyone who's found safety here."

Kael shook his head, storming toward her. "There's always a way! We've cheated death. We've rewritten fate!"

"Not this time."

She touched his cheek, her fingers still warm with stardust and sorrow. "You have to go. Find the Fifth Anchor. Bring them all together. That's the only way I get to come home."

Kael clenched his fists, jaw tight. "And what about you?"

Her smile was bittersweet.

"I'll wait in the echo. Where the morning never comes."

A crack thundered above them. The Rift was beginning to fracture. Reality threads unraveled like pulled strings, exposing bleeding stars beyond the veil.

Aeris reached into her coat and pressed something into Kael's hand. A time-sigil. One he'd carved for her lifetimes ago—long before either of them knew what they were fighting for.

"Use this. When the anchors are united, this will lead you back."

"Back to you?"

"Back to who we used to be."

The ground trembled. Kael had seconds before the convergence locked him out.

He pulled her close, just once, arms wrapped around her like the past would allow them to breathe again.

"Don't forget me," he said into her hair.

"I couldn't," she breathed, "even if I wanted to."

And with a final kiss—brief, burning, broken—Kael stepped into the dying portal.

It swallowed him whole.

Behind him, Aeris stood tall, watching her reality crumble with the poise of a queen and the heartbreak of a woman who had lost everything more than once.

As Kael landed in the Fifth Anchor timeline, scorched and shaking, a child ran into him—wide-eyed, familiar… and whispering the name "Mom?" while staring at Kael.

And then he realized—

The child had his eyes.