Darkness—then a flicker.
Tylor's boots touched glass. Above him, stars spun in reversed constellations. Around them, time flowed sideways—raindrops falling upward, birds flying backward into silence. They stood in a place that wasn't a place: the Loom, the heart of all timelines.
The figure—part machine, part myth—drifted ahead, wires trailing from its back like tattered sails. Its face remained obscured by shifting patterns, unreadable as static.
Kayla whispered, "This isn't just between moments… this is where they're made."
The figure stopped. "You seek answers. You carry the Knot—Amaira. But you've never asked what she's tied to."
Tylor stepped forward, fists clenched. "Tell me why my sister was hunted. Why our lives were rewritten."
In response, the floor beneath them rippled and rose into scenes—each memory a thread: Elena handing a device to Daniel. A council of shadowed figures observing a newborn Amaira. A strand labeled Project Spiral.
"She was created," the figure said. "Not born—woven. Not to fix time… but to collapse it. The Collective began it. Elena defied it. But by then, the spiral was already spinning."
Amaira's voice trembled. "Am I real?"
"You are more than real," it replied. "You are choice. You are chaos. You are why time still resists control."
Suddenly, the threads snapped violently. One by one, timelines unraveled around them—whole lives vanishing in a blink. A siren-like wail echoed from above.
"The Archivists," Kayla said. "They followed us here."
The figure turned, its voice now cold. "If they reach the Core of the Loom, everything ends. No time. No before. No after."
Tylor grabbed the spiral-etched key. "Then we stop them. And we start by learning everything. No more riddles."
A final thread hovered near him—unseen until now. His own memory. A young Tylor, looking through a crack in a door. Watching his father carry a crying Amaira. A voice in the dark whispered: "Forgive me, son."
He'd never remembered that—until now.
Tylor blinked, rage and clarity warring in his chest. "He didn't kidnap her to hide her. He was trying to stop… this."
The figure nodded. "You are beginning to see. But we're running out of time."
From the shimmering horizon, the Archivists tore through the Loom like oil through silk.
And at their center—hovering, cloaked in spirals—stood the reborn Chronarch. Not the tyrant from the past… but something worse.
A version of Tylor where Amaira hadn't survived.
Twisted by grief, wielding power pulled from fractured timelines.
The final thread had returned.
And it wanted the Knot back.