The Shattered Path Beneath Our Feet

A crimson dusk draped the sky like a bloodstained curtain, streaked with gold and fire, painting the world in war-torn light. The wind no longer whispered—it howled through the broken arches of the Temple of Parallax, carrying with it the scent of scorched stone and something darker… something ancient.

Kael stood at the temple's edge, his silhouette framed against the dying light. His coat, once black, now fluttered in tatters, smeared with dust and dried blood. The air around him shimmered faintly—residual temporal energy still clung to him like ghosts unwilling to let go.

Behind him, Aeris limped into view, her left hand pressed hard against her ribs. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, yet her eyes—burning silver now—held defiance instead of pain.

"Kael…" she said, her voice raspy but steady. "He's close. I felt him slip through the Rift Thread. We're running out of moments."

Kael didn't answer. Instead, he turned slowly, revealing eyes that glowed faintly violet—his timeline attunement still activated. "I know. Null isn't hiding anymore. He's drawing us in."

Their surroundings were a ruin of shifting time echoes. Stones flickered between present and past—one moment whole, the next shattered, then whole again. Time here was a broken glass—each shard cutting deeper the longer they stood in it.

From the fractured floor, a strange sound echoed—like a heartbeat, but mechanical. A pulse of energy thrummed through the walls.

Aeris's breath caught. "It's the Pulse Engine... he's waking it."

Kael moved. "Then we stop him here."

He extended his hand toward her, fingers streaked with dried blood and energy lines that pulsed beneath his skin.

She hesitated for just a breath—then took it.

Together, they stepped through the cracked archway into the inner sanctum of the Temple.

The inner sanctum was unlike anything they had seen before. A colossal sphere hovered at its center, suspended mid-air by invisible forces, rotating slowly. Lines of light etched across its surface in constellations of memory—timelines from across fractured realities woven together in chaotic elegance.

Surrounding it stood three pillars, each with a figure bound within—supporting villains who had once sided with Null. Time had not been kind to them. Their forms flickered, caught between aging and rebirth, screams silently echoing from their mouths. Prisoners of time itself.

"Kael," Aeris whispered. "Are you sure we can shut it down? You said yourself—tampering with the Pulse Engine could erase us from every strand."

"I'm not here to survive," he replied, stepping closer to the sphere. "I'm here to stop him."

Suddenly, the air around them fractured. A ripple split across the floor—and from the shadows stepped Null.

He wore no mask this time.

His face—Kael's face—twisted in cruelty, glowed with mirrored energy. "How poetic," Null said, his voice echoing unnaturally. "You stand here, trying to preserve a world that has already written you out of its ending."

Kael didn't flinch. "Then let me write a new one."

Time ruptured. The chamber collapsed into chaotic flux. Pillars split. Gravity twisted sideways. Memory screams howled from the sphere as Null raised his hand—and the Pulse Engine glowed blinding white.

Kael lunged. Aeris followed, her body blazing silver like a comet.

Their final confrontation had begun.

As Kael's hand reached for the Engine's core, time slowed—then froze entirely.

He blinked—and found himself alone.

No temple.

No Aeris.

No Null.

Just darkness. And a single voice whispering behind him:

"Welcome back, Kael. I've been waiting..."