The Rift Between Two Kaels

The sky was no longer sky.

It was a storm — stitched with fractures of time, bleeding echoes from realities that should never have touched.

Aeris stood on the edge of the battlefield, her Crowned armor cracked, her breath ragged. The war of timelines had slowed — not stopped — as if the world itself held its breath.

And then… he emerged.

Kael.

But not alone.

From the breach between timelines, two Kaels fell — twin silhouettes wrapped in contrasting auras. One burned with defiance and starlight. The other… void-black, his eyes cold, calculating.

"No," Aeris whispered. "No—this isn't real…"

The two landed in a blast of energy that sent shards of reality slicing through the ground. Buildings bent. Time reversed in pulses. Birds screamed as they flew backward across the horizon.

They rose together. Same face. Same voice. But completely different.

"Aeris," they said in unison — and then glared at each other.

"You don't belong here," said the darker Kael, stepping forward, his voice smooth, venom-laced. "She's mine. In my timeline, we ruled the stars."

"You broke her in that timeline," the real Kael snapped. "She was just a crown to you. Not a person."

Lightning cracked between them.

Aeris stepped back — but her mind spiraled.

Memories began to fracture. Some real. Some fake.

Her first kiss with Kael — but now it was in a throne room of fire.The moment he died for her — now in chains, smiling.The words he whispered — now twisted: "We'll burn the world together."

"No… what's happening to me?" Aeris clutched her temples.

The Rift was collapsing. The timelines were bleeding — and the paradox had duplicated not just Kael, but her past.

"You can't have her," real Kael growled, stepping in front of her. "She's not a prize. She's a person."

"She's a weapon," dark Kael smirked. "And with her, I ended the war. I saved reality in my world. What did you do, brother? Cry over her corpse?"

Kael charged.

The two collided — not fists, but memories.

Each blow unleashed fragments:– Kael bleeding on a starship bridge.– Kael kissing Aeris under a red eclipse.– Kael holding a dying child's hand in a timeline that never existed.

And Aeris — caught in the center — began to split.

Two versions of her fighting for dominance in her mind.

"STOP!" she screamed.

The ground cracked, and a storm of temporal shards exploded outward, ripping apart the false Kael's illusions.

But it wasn't over.

Because as real Kael stumbled to her side, bloodied and gasping—

"He's not the only one," came a voice from above.

A third Kael stood atop the broken tower, cloaked in white, eyes glowing with untold knowledge.

"I didn't come to fight," he said. "I came to warn you. The Architect... isn't dead."

Silence.

"What do you mean?" Aeris choked.

The third Kael looked at them both, then at her.

"You rewrote time. But he rewrote the rules."

And with a gesture, he opened a tear in the sky — revealing a timeline where Aeris never existed. A world of endless decay.

"This is what he's building. And to stop him, you'll have to destroy one of us."

The cliffside trembled.

Three Kaels. One Aeris. A choice that would rewrite fate — or end it entirely.

🔥 next chapter will decide who survives — and who becomes a ghost of a future that never should have been. And when Aeris is forced to choose between the man she loves… and the man who could save the universe — what will she sacrifice?