They emerged not through a door, but through a crack in the air itself—reality peeling like paper. One moment they stood in the chamber with Niko Serran, and the next, they stood beneath a sky with no sun.
Above them, a swirling dome of broken stars flickered in silence. Clocks hung from crooked branches of translucent trees. The ground shimmered with fragments of stone, glass, and memory—each one glowing faintly with flickers of the past.
"The Spiral Remnant," Kayla whispered, her voice almost muted by the weight of the place. "It's… alive."
Tylor clutched Amaira's hand tighter. "This is where Dad left the truth."
The path before them twisted unnaturally, curving into spirals and figure eights. Along the edges, ghostly moments flickered—Tylor as a child chasing a red balloon, Daniel whispering to Elena, Amaira drawing spirals in the dirt.
A stone ahead bore a symbol: the same spiral key they'd used to seal the fractures.
Suddenly, a gust of cold swept past them—and with it, a voice.
"Tylor…"
They all froze. Tylor turned slowly.
A shimmering figure stepped forward from the mist—Daniel. Not a memory. Not a recording. It was a temporal echo, aware, watching.
"You finally came," the echo said. "I left this trace in the Spiral Remnant in case you survived the fracture purge."
Tylor's throat tightened. "Why did you take Amaira? Why didn't you tell me?"
Daniel's echo looked pained. "Because knowing too soon would have drawn the Archivists to her. She's not just a child, Tylor. She's a Chrono-Knot—a fixed point that connects branching timelines. If they found her, they would have erased her… and you."
Kayla stepped forward. "So the kidnappings, the silence—it was all a way to hide her?"
Daniel nodded. "Elena and I tried everything. I joined the Collective to slow them down from inside. But Sarah Vey betrayed us. And Clara… she tried to control what she didn't understand."
The trees around them rustled with spectral whispers.
Amaira stepped forward, holding a drawing that had appeared in her hand—a picture of the glowing tree in front of them.
"I dreamt of this place before," she said. "In a dream where the sky cried clocks."
Daniel's echo looked toward the tree. "That's where my final memory is hidden. And something else. A fragment the Archivists fear."
The tree shimmered, its roots revealing a small chamber below.
Tylor nodded. "Then that's where we go."
But before they could move, time rippled—distorted.
From the broken sky above, descending like shadows stitched from ancient ink, came tall, robed figures with hollow faces and eyes like eclipses.
The Archivists.
Their leader raised a hand, and the clocks in the trees began to melt.
"You were warned," it said. "Now, we redact."
As the ground cracked beneath them, Tylor drew the spiral key. Light burst from it, forming a protective dome.
The battle between memory and erasure had begun.
And time… was watching.