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The roar chased them through collapsing starlight.
Ayame gripped Yui's hand tightly, Kael leading the way as the Hourglass Labyrinth cracked and folded into itself. Time shards spun past them—fragments of futures that might have been, glowing with eerie potential. One flicker showed a ruined Earth, another a version of Ayame with wings of ash.
"Don't look!" Kael called out, his voice strained as the space around them blurred into streaks of color and memory.
They broke through.
The moment they stumbled out of the labyrinth, the world felt *thinner*. The air buzzed, and gravity tugged like it remembered another shape. They were back in the real realm—or close to it—but nothing looked familiar.
They stood in a windswept field of glass grass, the sky overhead smeared with violet clouds. Strange monoliths, shaped like inverted pyramids, floated quietly above the horizon, dripping with runes that shimmered with heat.
"This is the Wound," Yui said hoarsely. "The wound in the world where timelines bled together during the Fall."
"You mean the Fall of the Custodians?" Ayame asked.
Yui nodded. "This is where the sixth key hides. And where the Cradleborn were buried."
Kael frowned. "You keep saying 'Cradleborn' like we should already know what they are."
"They're not enemies in the usual sense," Yui whispered. "They're... broken reflections. Born from the failed timelines. They're us, in the worst-case scenarios. They want to rewrite everything—to give their versions of events a chance to live."
Ayame shivered.
"So they're monsters made of regret."
A sudden vibration thrummed beneath their feet. The glass grass vibrated in waves, glowing red at the roots. All around them, the air cracked like ice melting in reverse.
Then the first Cradleborn emerged.
It looked like a twisted Kael—taller, armored in obsidian, with eyes like boiling ink. But what unsettled Ayame most wasn't the sharp edges or the monstrous hands.
It was the *smile*.
"Ah," it said in a silky, distorted version of Kael's voice. "The originals. So soft. So *unfinished*."
Kael stepped forward instinctively. "What do you want?"
"To fix the world," the thing said. "And for that, you have to end. All of you. All your choices. All your failures. We'll make better ones."
Yui trembled. "There's more coming."
From the horizon, more figures appeared—each one a Cradleborn echo, distorted echoes of friends and enemies. Some bore twisted versions of Ayame's sketchpad, others carried weapons made of melted time.
"We can't fight them all," Yui said. "Not yet."
"Then we *run*," Kael said, grabbing Ayame's hand.
But Ayame didn't move.
Her eyes were fixed on a Cradleborn version of herself—one with burnt hands and blank eyes, holding a chain made of broken paintbrushes.
"You abandoned me," it rasped. "You moved on. You *forgot* me."
Kael tugged. "Ayame—!"
But it was too late.
The earth split beneath them, and the Wound screamed open.
They fell—again.
This time, into a city made of bones and music.
The sky was gone. Above them loomed a shifting aurora of screams, and below, a streetlamp flickered over signs written in languages they'd never learned.
Yui coughed beside them. "Welcome to Threshold."
Ayame blinked. "This doesn't look like a city."
"It's what remains of the timelines that *almost* made it," Yui said. "A halfway place. And the last known location of the sixth key."
Kael stood slowly, scanning the strange architecture—temples fused with libraries, glass bridges woven through spirals of forgotten staircases. Even the shadows whispered.
"Let me guess," he muttered. "We don't have long."
"No," Yui replied. "The Cradleborn can't enter here yet. But the moment we touch the sixth key, everything changes."
Ayame looked ahead, her heartbeat drumming in her ears.
At the very center of the city, suspended in a dome of frozen thunder, floated a golden prism—singing silently to her soul.
"I can feel it," she whispered.
Kael took her hand again, their fingers locking with quiet resolve.
"We get the key. We stop the Cradleborn. And we go *home*."
But as they stepped forward, the prism flashed—
And an arrow of starlight shot toward them from the rooftops above.
Someone else had arrived first.
And they weren't alone.
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