The vault door groaned open with ancient weight, revealing a circular chamber pulsing with pale blue light. Inside hovered a containment sphere, cracked along its surface like thin ice, and within it floated the man—if he could still be called that.
Dr. Niko Serran.
His body shimmered in and out of phase, wrapped in strands of suspended time. Spirals coiled across his skin like circuitry, his eyes twin vortexes of fracture energy.
Amaira whispered, "He's not just alive. He's connected to the fractures."
Tylor stepped forward cautiously. "Why did they lock you away?"
Niko turned his head slowly, voice vibrating through the chamber. "Because I discovered the truth. That time is not linear. It's conscious. It remembers. It resists."
Kayla's pendant glowed violently. "You tried to control it."
"I tried to warn them," Niko said. "But they feared what I became. Hale, Sarah, Clara… they locked me here, thinking the fractures would decay with me."
The containment sphere flickered. With a flash of energy, it shattered. Niko landed on his feet, slow and deliberate, though the air rippled around him like broken glass.
Elias drew his weapon. "Step back. You've been part of this too long."
"I am not your enemy," Niko said calmly. "But your timeline is. It's still infected. Still running scripts left behind by the Collective. You're living in a polished illusion."
He raised a hand. A flicker of light spun into a floating cube, showing moments from earlier chapters—Amaira's kidnapping, Lila's sacrifice, the Chronarch's fall.
"They weren't random," Niko said. "They were designed. Loops. Fail-safes. Even your father's betrayal."
Tylor's fists clenched. "What do you know about my father?"
Niko turned to him. "He didn't take Amaira to harm her. He was trying to hide her from the ones coming next. From the Archivists."
The name hung heavy in the air.
Kayla's eyes widened. "The Archivists… I saw them in a dream. They erase timelines like rot."
Niko nodded. "They're the ones who made the Collective possible. A group that exists beyond time, cataloging, editing, deleting. Your journey hasn't ended. You've just left the sandbox."
Suddenly, Amaira gasped. "Look!"
The spirals in the chamber shifted. A new symbol appeared—an open eye with a line drawn through it.
Niko looked solemn. "That's their mark. They've seen you now."
Outside, the ground shook. The cliffs cracked. Time warped.
Niko stepped forward, placing a fractured hand on Tylor's chest.
"You want the truth about your father? Then follow the trail he left in the broken timeline. His memories are encoded in a place even I couldn't reach—The Spiral Remnant."
Tylor staggered as a vision hit him—a dark forest of floating clocks, fractured symbols, and a glowing tree at its center. His father stood beneath it, whispering his name.
When Tylor opened his eyes, the chamber was already shifting.
Time itself was opening a path.
And now, they had no choice but to follow it.