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Neo Pandora
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Neo-Pandora's skyline smoldered, its chrono-stabilizers flickering like dying fireflies. Lila Kane stood in the ashes of the battlefield, the shattered Compass heavy in her hands. Beside her, Kieran slept fitfully, his veins still faintly glowing from the paradox he'd unleashed.
"We held them off," Wren said, her voice hollow as she scanned the debris. "But the rift's still open. And Jax…"
A tremor shook the ground. From the Overseer crystal wreckage emerged a figure—Jax, his body a grotesque fusion of flesh and prismatic shards, one eye burning spiral-blue, the other human and haunted.
"Stay back," he growled, voice layered with the Overseers' harmonic drone. "I'm not… in control."
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A Fracture
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The rift pulsed, its edges fraying into a kaleidoscope of dying timelines. From its heart echoed a voice older than language, vibrating through bones and concrete alike.
"Cease this defiance."
The Compass shards levitated, reassembling into a new form—a jagged crown. Above it materialized The Arbiter, a towering entity of shifting geometries, their face a void stitched with starlight.
"The cycle is broken," The Arbiter intoned. "This reality is condemned. But one thread may yet be spared—if you surrender the anomaly."
Their gaze fell on Kieran.
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Badlands
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In the Badlands, Lysandra's spire had become a nexus, its fractal bones birthing portals to a thousand conquered Neo-Pandoras. Weaver hybrids poured through—each a twisted reflection of Lila, Jax, or Elara, their eyes spiral-chained.
"The Overseers prune, the Arbiter judges," Lysandra crowed, her body now a living Hourglass. "But we will feast."
A hybrid with Lila's face lunged at Wren's drones, its claws shredding steel. "You're outnumbered, little hacker."
"Yeah?" Wren smirked, activating a failsafe. "But I've got better toys."
The drones self-destructed, engulfing the hybrids in chrono-fire.
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Neo pandora
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An fracture opens in the central of Neo pandora.
Weaver hybrid coming out of them.
Red lights began to glow on the Screens of Lila's lab.
"What is it." Wren asked Lila.
"Hybrids they are coming." Jax shouted and went to the site where the fractures was open. Lila and Wren followed him.
Jax began to fight the Weavers. Lila and Wren began to evacuat the citizen to a near bunker.
Jax fought his hybrid instincts, phasing through Weaver attacks to shield civilians. His crystal arm aged foes to dust, but with each kill, his human eye dimmed.
"You're killing yourself!" Lila shouted, dragging him behind a barricade.
"Better me… than them," he rasped, echoing Elara's last words.
The Arbiter watched, impassive. "Sentiment breeds chaos. This is why you fail."
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Lila's Lab
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Kieran awoke screaming, the Arbiter's crown searing his mind with visions—a sanctuary timeline, pristine and empty. A world without pain, without him.
"Take the offer," Mirror-Elias urged, materializing beside him. "You've earned peace."
"Peace?" Kieran glared. "Or a cage?"
He seized the crown, its edges cutting his palms. "I choose them."
The crown flared, tethering The Arbiter to Kieran's will. Reality buckled as timelines fused—Lysandra's hybrids disintegrated, her spire crumbling.
"You dare command me?" The Arbiter thundered, their form fracturing.
"No," Kieran said. "I free you."
The crown shattered, and The Arbiter dissolved into stardust, their final words a curse: "You have doomed us all."
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The rift collapsed, sealing the Weavers away. But as Neo-Pandora cheered, the sky darkened—not with ships or storms, but nothingness.
A perfect, consuming void spread where the rift had been.
Jax's crystal arm disintegrated, his human half crumbling. "What… is that?"
"The Arbiter's last gift," Mirror-Elias whispered. "The end of time itself."
From the void, a figure emerged—Zara Voss, whole and alive, her eyes blazing with Elias's light.
"Miss me?"
To Be Continued…
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