One Step, One Ruin

The step Kael took felt like walking into his own grave.

His boot met the fractured floor of the Rift tower, and time itself screamed. Shards of moments scattered in the air—visions of Aeris holding Lyra as a child, Aeris lying dead beneath the ruins of Null's throne, Aeris as the savior… Aeris as the destroyer.

And in the space between one second and the next, both versions of her reacted.

One—the woman he loved, scarred but still burning with that untamed light.

The other—a cold silhouette, beautiful and distant, stripped of feeling and forged into fate.

"Kael…" the Aeris from now said, reaching out. Her voice cracked. Human. Real.

"Kael," the other one whispered—serene, confident, timeless. "You were meant for more than love. Choose power."

His pulse thundered. Behind him, Lyra screamed as the sky split open—the Architect's seal was uncoiling like a god-serpent.

"KAEL! We're running out of—!"

He chose.

He reached—

—

Flashforward: A Future That Shouldn't Exist

In a ruined timeline Kael never knew he birthed, statues of him lined a hall of glass.

"He chose wrong," a shadow said, walking barefoot over broken timelines. "And in doing so, he became one of us."

Another shadow stepped forward, lips twisting into a cruel smile.

"Ashes of Tomorrow... began with a choice."

—

Scene Return: The Present

Kael's hand closed around the fingers of his Aeris. The one with the burning gaze. The one who still remembered lullabies and pain and laughter.

Her body shuddered, the collision of her fate with the other Aeris sending out a blast of cosmic backlash. The other version of her—Null reborn—let out a soundless shriek and shattered into silver particles, swallowed by the collapsing Rift.

But it wasn't over.

Aeris fell to her knees, her skin glowing, flickering like a dying star.

"I… I'm not stable," she gasped.

"You don't have to be," Kael whispered, kneeling beside her. "You just have to be here."

Suddenly, a deafening howl echoed through the fractured horizon.

The Architect had arrived.

He didn't descend. He unfolded, as if space was merely his cloak and time his breath.

"You disappoint me, Kael," the Architect boomed. "I gave you the choice to rewrite fate. And you… clung to your weakness."

He raised his hand.

Across the tower, Lyra collapsed, her eyes glowing.

"She is the last living Paradoxborn," the Architect said. "Her blood can anchor the new timeline. Or unmake it."

Kael rose, heart pounding, Aeris half in his arms.

"Touch her," he snarled, "and I will rewrite you."

The Architect smiled.

"You already did, Kael."

And then he opened a rift—

—

Visual Interlude: Inside the Rift

Lyra floated, suspended between seconds. Her memories unraveled, rewritten by every possible version of herself.

In one, she was a villain.

In another, she never existed.

But in all of them, one truth remained:

"You were never just our daughter," a whisper echoed."You are the Rift's heart."

—

Final Scene: The Shatterpoint

As Kael charged at the Architect, Aeris whispering a final incantation, and Lyra began to burn with paradox light, the sky cracked with a sound no one in the multiverse had heard before—

The End of Time Beginning Again.