Shoving first, Kai noticed the silence. Not the comforting silence of an empty field, but a hollow, suffocating quiet, as if the world itself had stopped breathing.
They stood at the edge of a cracked plain. The ground was a mosaic of floating shards, each one suspended above a bottomless void. The sky above was worse shattered like a broken mirror, each fragment reflecting a different version of reality. Some pieces showed their home city intact, armourers burning, and a few twisted into alien landscapes they didn't recognise.
"Yeah, okay," Juno muttered, squinting at a sky fragment where she swore she saw herself flying a ship that didn't exist. "I hate this. I hate all of this. Somebody tell me I'm hallucinating."
"You're not hallucinating," Reiss said grimly, scanning the horizon with his console. The readings were erratic, spiking so fast the device glitched and shut off, rebooting on its own. "The Architect wasn't lying. We've destabilised the timeline. This isn't a single world anymore, it's all of them. Colliding. Collapsing."
Mira stood still, her expression unreadable as she looked out over the void. "We caused this."
Kai shook his head. "No. We stopped the Architect from keeping us chained to a cycle we didn't choose. This… this is just what freedom looks like right now. It's messy."
"Messy?" Juno raised an eyebrow. "Kai, that is a literal floating upside-down mountain over there. Messy is leaving dishes in the sink. This is apocalyptic nightmare fuel."
A shadow swept over them, and all four turned instinctively.
Hanging in the sky like some god's cruel ornament was a colossal golden hourglass. It turned slowly, impossibly, its sand glowing as it trickled down into the void below. Each grain that fell made the ground tremble under their feet.
Reiss's voice was quiet. "That… That's the Architect's anchor. A failsafe. It's resetting the cycles manually."
"How long before it resets everything?" Mira asked.
Reiss adjusted the console, his brow furrowing. "I'm reading… maybe twelve hours. But if we let it finish, we'll all be erased. No second chances."
Kai stared at the hourglass, his jaw tightening. "Then we stop it. No matter what it takes."
They started moving across the floating shards of land, each step requiring precision as chunks of reality drifted unpredictably. Some fragments were harmless stretches of forest, pieces of road. Others were not.
On one shard, they found themselves standing in a replica of the city, but everything was reversed, as if mirrored.
"Creepy," Juno muttered, kicking a trash can that clanged like glass when it hit the ground. "It's like being inside a broken snow globe."
Kai's hand froze mid-step when he caught sight of a figure moving down the mirrored street. It was him. Not just a reflection, another version of himself, dressed in the armour of the Guardian, golden-eyed and radiating power.
"Not this again," Kai muttered, stepping forward.
The other Kai turned, smiling faintly. "You don't get it, do you? You're not fighting against the Architect. You're fighting against what you'll become."
"Okay," Juno whispered, backing up a step. "When did we start collecting evil twins? Because this is officially too much."
The alternate Kai tilted his head, eyes burning like molten metal. "I'm not evil. I'm inevitable. You think you can break the cycle? You think you can fight time? I am what's left when you lose."
Kai drew his sword, pointing at his counterpart. "Then I'll make sure you never exist."
The alternate Kai laughed, a hollow, chilling sound. "You can't erase me. Every cut you make, every choice you take, brings you closer to me. You've felt it, haven't you? That power humming in your veins. That hunger. It's already too late."
Mira stepped beside Kai, her blades humming with energy. "Step aside. Or I'll cut you down."
The alternate Kai's grin widened. "Try."
The ground erupted as the alternate Kai moved, his speed almost inhuman. His sword, a twisted, golden version of Kai's own, clashed with Mira's blades, sparks flying in bursts of light.
Kai charged, his strikes meeting his counterpart's in perfect symmetry, as though they knew each other's every move.
"Stop holding back! Spectral alternate, Kai snarled. "You'll never win like this!"
"I'm not like you," Kai spat, forcing him back.
Juno and Reiss scrambled to provide support. Juno fired precise shots, but each bullet was deflected by the alternate Kai's blade, as if he'd anticipated them.
Reiss cursed under his breath. "He's drawing power from the fractured timeline. We can't outfight him, we have to cut him off from it!"
"How?!" Juno demanded, reloading.
"I need 90 seconds," Reiss said, already typing furiously into his console.
"You have 45!" Mira yelled as she narrowly dodged a sweeping arc of golden energy.
As the battle raged, the sky above them cracked further. Huge fissures split the horizon, and pieces of alternate realities began bleeding through.
One shard showed an older version of Kai kneeling before the Architect. Another showed Mira standing alone, her blades broken.
Kai felt his resolve harden. "Not this time," he growled, shoving his alternate self back with a surge of raw force.
The alternate Kai's grin faltered. "You're resisting… but you'll break."
"Not today."
"NOW!" Reiss shouted.
A pulse of blue energy shot from Reiss's console, hitting the fractured ground beneath the alternate Kai. The golden glow flickered violently.
Kai didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, his blade slashing in a blinding arc. It met his counterpart's chest, cutting clean through the golden armour.
The alternate Kai's eyes widened in shock. He stumbled back, dissolving into shards of light that scattered into the void.
"Nice," Juno said, lowering her rifle. "Please tell me that was the only evil twin situation we'll have to deal with today."
Reiss looked uneasy. "I wouldn't count on it."
With the immediate threat gone, they continued toward the colossal hourglass in the sky. As they moved, the landscape became increasingly unstable fragments of past battles, places they'd been, and even people they'd lost appeared and vanished like ghosts.
At one point, Kai swore he saw Lyra standing on a distant shard, reaching for him. He almost ran to her, but when he blinked, she was gone.
Mira placed a hand on his arm. "She's not real. Don't let it distract you."
Kai nodded stiffly. "I know. But it's getting harder to tell what's real and what isn't."
They finally reached the base of a towering spire of broken time fragments, each one swirling upward toward the hourglass.
"That's our way up," Reiss said, pointing. "But once we start climbing, we'll be completely exposed."
"Then we don't stop," Kai said, tightening his grip on his sword. "We get up there and destroy that thing before it resets everything."
Juno smirked. "I like the plan. Very direct. Very likely to get us all killed."
"Then let's not waste time," Mira said, stepping forward.
As they began to climb, the voice of the Architect returned, echoing through the broken sky.
"YOU THINK YOU CAN UNDO ME? YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL TIME ITSELF?"
Kai looked up, defiance burning in his eyes. "We don't have to kill time. We just have to make it ours."
The hourglass shuddered, as if the Architect itself was angered by his words.
The spire wasn't made of stone or metal but of frozen moments, fragments of time itself solidified into jagged platforms. Each step Kai took shifted under his feet, showing glimpses of different eras: a childhood memory of Lyra, the day he first held his blade, and even a vision of a future where he lay broken on a battlefield.
"Focus," Mira said, leaping to the next shard without hesitation. "Don't let the visions pull you in."
"Easy for you to say," Juno muttered as she climbed after them. "I just saw my high school prom. It was bad enough the first time."
Kai gritted his teeth and pushed forward, forcing his mind to stay on the now. Every platform pulsed with a heartbeat-like rhythm, as if the spire itself was alive and watching.
Reiss brought up the rear, eyes locked on his console. "We're on borrowed time literally. The hourglass's sand is almost halfway through. Once it empties, everything will reset."
"How many more levels?" Kai asked, scanning the swirling ascent above them.
"Too many," Reiss said grimly.
The air trembled. From the shards around them, spectral figures began to form echoes of the Guardians they'd already defeated.
"Oh, come on," Juno said, haven't we killed these guys already?"
"They're not real," Mira said, reading her blades. "But they're dangerous."
The Shadow Guardian from Chapter 98 lunged first, its chains lashing out like vipers. Kai dodged narrowly, his blade ringing as he parried the attack.
"Keep moving!" he shouted. "If we stop to fight, we'll never reach the top!"
The group pushed forward, slashing and dodging as the ghostly Guardians clawed at them. Each fragment of time they destroyed shattered into glimmering motes of light that spun away into the void.
As Kai cut down another phantom Guardiadestabilisingrembled with exhaustion. The silver light from earlier battles still flickered faintly around him, but each use drained him faster.
"Don't burn out now," Mira warned, landing beside him with a spinning slash that shattered a clock-faced spectre.
Kai gave a strained grin. "You sound worried about me."
"I am," she admitted. "You're not invincible, Kai. Nocentius are."
He glanced at her, caught off guard by the softness in her tone but there was no time to answer. Another wave of Guardians surged toward them.
They reached a narrow bridge made of swirling glass-like time fragments when the sky exploded with light.
The hourglass overhead tilted violently, and a storm of gold channelled around them, each grain burning through the air like molten sparks.
"What's happening?!" Juno yelled, diving for cover.
Reiss's face was pale as he scanned the scene. "The Architect's Awake. It knows we're coming."
The shards beneath them buckled as if they were being pulled apart by invisible forces.
"Move!" Kai roared, dragging Juno forward as the bridge behind them collapsed into the void.
A colossal silhouette began to form inside the hourglass, its shape slowly solidifying into a humanoid figure made of clockwork and light.
It had no face, just a swirling void where its features should be, with a single golden eye spinning like the hand of a clock. Its voice thundered across the shattered sky:
"YOU DEFY THE DESIGN. ALL THAT YOU ARE IS BORROWED. ALL THAT YOU LOVE IS TEMPORARY. RETURN TO THE CYCLE, AND I MAY SPARE YOU."
Kai raised his sword, his voice cutting through the storm. "We don't need your mercy. We make our own time."
The Architect laughed, a deep, resonant sound that made the shards quiver.
"THEN YOU WILL BE ERASED."
The golden eye flared, and the entire spire shuddered as time itself warped. The platforms around them rewound and fast-forwarded, shattering unpredictably.
"Go, go, GO!" Juno shouted, firing at the Architect's form. The bullets bent midair, curving as if time didn't obey the same rules anymore.
Mira's blades glowed as she sliced a path through collapsing shards. "Stay close to me!"
Kai sprinted ahead, every step forcing him to push through the drag of reversed time, as if he were running through quicksand.
As they climbed, a voice, softer but no less chilling, echoed in Kai's head.
"You can't win this, Kai. You know what you have to do. Give in. Become me."
Kai stumbled, clutching his head. "No… I'm not you!"
Mira grabbed his arm, steadying him. "Kai! Snap out of it!"
He looked at her, sweat running down his face. "It's trying to make me… something I'm not."
"Then fight harder," she said fiercely. "We'll do it together."
"We can't just hit it head-on," Reiss said, pulling up a rotating 3D model of the hourglass on his console. "The Architect's body is just a projection. We have to hit its anchor, the Core hidden inside the hourglass's frame."
"And I'm guessing that's not gonna be easy?" Juno said, dodging a bolt of golden energy that smashed into the shard behind her, splintering it into nothingness.
Reiss shook his head. "Not even a little. But I can give us a window, maybe 60 seconds, where its defences drop."
Kai tightened his grip on his sword. "Then we use those 60 seconds to finish this."
The last stretch of the spire was the hardest. The shards twisted like rotating gears, each one moving in a pattern designed to throw them off balance.
Mira took point, leaping gracefully from shard to shard, her blades carving pathways when obstacles blocked them. Juno provided cover fire, her shots keeping the Architect's projections at bay.
Kai moved with them, but his gaze kept flickering upward to the hourglass. The sand was almost gone.
Twelve hours? No. Now it looked like they had minutes left.
As Kai leapt onto the final platform, his vision blurred. Suddenly, he wasn't there anymore; he was somewhere else.
He stood on a battlefield of ash, Mira and Juno lying broken beside him, Reiss nowhere to be found. The Architect stood above them, its golden eye blazing.
"This is what happens when you fight me," the Architect's voice whispered.
Kai's hand trembled. "No… this isn't real. This isn't real!"
The vision shattered, and Mira was shouting at him. "Kai! MOVE!"
He stumbled forward just as the platform behind him disintegrated.
They reached the base of the hourglass's pedestal. It was massive up close, its surface carved with runes that pulsed with golden light.
"Alright, I'm in," Reiss said, his fingers flying over the console. "I can destabilise the hourglass's temporal field, but when I do, the Architect is going to come at us with everything it's got. You'll have exactly one minute to destroy the Core."
Kai nodded. "We'll make it count."
The sky split open. The Architect's projection descended, towering over them like a god of broken time.
"FOOLS. YOU WILL BE DUST."
It raised one massive hand, and the shards of the world began to collapse inward like a black hole.
"Reiss!" Juno yelled. "Any time now would be GREAT!"
"Almost… done… THERE!" Reiss hit a final key, and the hourglass flickered, its golden aura destabilising.
"GO!" he shouted.
Kai, Mira, and Juno surged forward, leaping across fragments of collapsing reality. The Architect swung its colossal arm, but Mira intercepted it with a spinning slash, carving through the projection's golden energy.
"Keep going!" she yelled.
Kai sprinted straight for the Core, a glowing heart of pure time energy at the hourglass's centre. His blade pulsed with silver light, resonating with the Fractured Clock's power.
The Architect's voice thundered:
"YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME. I AM FOREVER."
"Not forever," Kai said through gritted teeth. "Just long enough for me to end you."
He reached the Core as the final grains of sand fell. Raising his blade, Kai channelled every ounce of strength, every memory, every regret and every hope.
"THIS IS OUR TIME!" he roared, driving the blade into the Core.
The world exploded in light.