The Girl Who Touched the Rift

The battlefield had fallen silent — not with peace, but with the eerie hush that follows the eye of a storm. Debris floated midair, frozen for a breath before gravity remembered its purpose and dragged it all down with a whispering crash.

Aeris lay crumpled in the cracked earth, her fingers twitching as the remnants of the Core's power flickered through her veins like dying stars. The Core was gone. So was Kael.

But something had awakened inside her.

She rose slowly, trembling — not from fear, but from transformation. Her eyes no longer shimmered silver; they now glowed with fractured hues of violet, gold, and obsidian. Like the cosmos had stitched themselves into her gaze.

She looked to the sky where the breach had sealed shut.

Gone.

"Kael..." she whispered, her voice breaking like glass. Her hands clutched at the space where his warmth had just been. Her soul screamed in silence, but there were no tears — just a storm brewing in her chest.

From behind her, the remaining rebels gathered, stunned.

"What just happened?" whispered Zera, her eyes darting to the sky.

"He traded himself," murmured Jin. "Again."

"No," Aeris said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it shook the ground beneath her feet. "This time... he fractured himself."

She turned to them, her hair now crackling with static energy, levitating like a crown of solar flares. Her aura twisted — familiar yet monstrous, warm and terrifying. She was still Aeris.

But she was becoming something else.

"What did he give you?" Zera asked, hesitant.

Aeris blinked — and a memory not hers unfurled. A wedding that never happened. A child that never existed. A life lived in a world where the war ended differently. A Kael who never left.

He had given her his memories.

"Everything," Aeris said hoarsely. "He gave me everything he couldn't live to see."

The ground shook. Somewhere far off, reality warped, and a tear in the sky reopened — small, but pulsing.

Aeris stepped forward. Her armor reformed around her with a whisper of light and shadows, forged by her own will. Her new power wasn't born of science or prophecy. It was born of love twisted by loss — of a heart still tethered to a boy lost between timelines.

She would find him.

Even if it meant becoming the storm the multiverse feared.

Even if it meant confronting the other version of herself — the one who had already turned villain to rewrite fate.

From within her chest, the Echo Shard glowed, a sliver of Kael's soul sealed inside it — beating in rhythm with her rage, her hope, and her unrelenting will.

She turned to the others. "Get ready."

"For what?" Jin asked.

Aeris looked at the sky again. The tear widened — and from within it came a voice.

A broken, familiar voice.

"Aeris... don't trust her. She's not me."

And then a silhouette stepped through.

Aeris.

Older.

Colder.

Crowned.

And not alone.

🌌 Who is the Aeris from beyond the Rift? What version of the future did Kael end up in? And what happens when love and power collide across fractured destinies?