The Kael Who Never Loved Me

The rain fell sideways—slanted and sharp—cutting across the fractured cityscape like a thousand tiny blades. Veyron was no longer the gleaming future it once promised. This was a collapsed timeline, a paradox shell where all decisions curdled into regret.

Aeris stood beneath the broken arch of a skybridge, watching the older Kael step forward.

He was different.

His hair, once windswept and wild, was now streaked with gray, tied back with a leather band. A long scar carved across his cheek, bisecting the place where her fingertips once lingered.

But it was the eyes.

They were too quiet.

Too empty.

"You're not my Kael," she whispered.

Kael—this Kael—nodded slowly. "And yet, I remember every version of you. I watched your face appear in a thousand timelines… none of which were mine."

The world around them glitched for a moment—sky tearing into static, revealing fragmented visions:

A child Aeris crying alone in the Rift storm.

Kael choosing a different mission.

A funeral with no name on the tombstone.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"To stop you from making the same mistake I did," he replied, stepping through the stuttering rain. "You want to bring your Kael back. I tried that too once… and doomed an entire era."

He flicked his wrist.

A hologram ignited between them—the collapse of Earth-7, its sky melting into screams, oceans swallowing continents, one by one. Billions lost.

"Because I couldn't let her go."

Aeris clenched her fists, her knuckles pale. "You don't understand. He was erased. Not dead. Not gone. Forgotten."

"Which is worse," he said softly. "Because when you chase echoes… you forget who you are."

Suddenly, a low hum spread through the ground. Both Aeris and Kael turned sharply.

A tower of Chrono Glass rose from the center of the city—crystalline and translucent, spinning slowly as gears ticked inside its heart.

From its base, Null Oracles emerged.

White-robed, faceless, floating. Living programs of the Guild.

Aeris stepped forward, eyes blazing. "They're trying to lock this timeline too."

"They will," Older Kael said. "Unless we go."

"Not until I find him."

"I told you—he's beyond reach."

Aeris drew her blade—a folded edge of reality—and turned toward the Oracles.

"If he's beyond reach, I'll go beyond reason."

The battle was chaos sculpted.

Aeris sprinted toward the Oracles, twisting between floating shards of time, her blade crackling. Each swing ruptured memory loops—Oracles fell, bleeding data smoke.

But they adapted.

One latched onto her arm. A surge of electricity pulsed through her veins. Her knees buckled.

From behind, Kael threw a Pulse Disk, shattering the Oracle before it could self-detonate.

"You still fight like she did," he muttered.

"You still hesitate like he didn't."

That stung.

She pushed forward, slicing through the last Oracle and reached the base of the Chrono Glass tower.

It pulsed with Kael's memory signature.

He was trapped inside.

Not her Kael. A possible Kael.

Fragments of him floated inside—pieces of laughter, war cries, soft touches.

But no whole soul.

Only broken data.

Aeris fell to her knees.

"This is all that's left?"

Older Kael knelt beside her. "This is all you'll ever have if you keep chasing ghosts."

Tears ran down her cheeks.

"But I don't want another Kael. I want mine."

He reached out gently, placing something into her hand.

A seed.

Glowing faintly. Warm.

"What's this?"

"A new timeline. One where you choose to begin again, without erasing what was."

Aeris stared at it.

The temptation to tear time apart was strong. To build a throne of paradoxes just to see him smile again. But maybe…

Maybe grief wasn't a wound to fix.

Maybe it was a root to grow from.

"I don't know if I can," she whispered.

Kael stood, eyes soft.

"Then let me walk with you. Just until you do."

The Chrono Glass tower collapsed behind them—its shatter echoing like a clock's last chime.

Together, two people who had never loved each other—but still somehow belonged—walked into the raw, red dawn of a new timeline.

In her palm, the seed pulsed once.

And for a moment, Aeris felt Kael—her Kael—smile from somewhere beyond time.