The landing was unlike any before.
No crash. No wind. No impact. Just arrival—as if reality folded politely to place them at the center of everything.
Kael, Reeva, and Elara stood on a floating platform suspended in an endless void. Below them stretched a fractured version of Earth—unblemished by time, yet stitched together from countless timelines. Some regions gleamed with golden-age technology, others burned under apocalyptic skies. Giant clockwork towers rose beside caveman camps. Dragons flew next to fighter jets.
Earth-Z3R0 was every version of Earth—merged into one.
"The Lattice converges here," Elara whispered. "Time isn't linear. It's... recursive."
Reeva turned slowly. "It's like someone hit reset, but forgot to clean up first."
Suddenly, the sky above them fractured like glass.
A ripple of darkness tore through the stars, and from it emerged a structure so colossal it dwarfed the planet. A citadel of voidstone and shadow, chained to the fabric of spacetime by luminous tendrils of entropy.
Kael's stomach turned. "That's it. That's his fortress."
Elara nodded grimly. "The Architect's Sanctum."
Without warning, a pulse radiated from the citadel. The ground beneath them shifted, forming a new path—straight toward a vortex at the planet's core.
"He wants us to come," Reeva muttered. "He's expecting us."
Kael tightened his grip on the Keystone. "Good. Then we stop hiding."
As they walked, memories flooded Kael's mind.
Not just his.
All the other Driftbearers.
Visions of battles fought and lost.
Worlds saved and sacrificed.
He felt their courage, their fear, their regrets.
And something else:
A message hidden deep within the Keystone—locked away by the first Driftbearer.
"There is no defeating the Architect. Only replacing him."
Kael stopped in his tracks.
"What?" Elara asked.
Kael shook his head. "I saw something... a warning. The Keystone—it's not just a key. It's a throne. Whoever uses it at the core of Earth-Z3R0 becomes the new Architect."
Reeva's eyes widened. "You mean... you could become him?"
Kael looked at the citadel in the distance. "Or something else. Something better."
Elara scowled. "No one should have that kind of power."
"I agree," Kael said, voice steady. "That's why we have to end the cycle. Not rule it."
They reached the edge of the vortex. The pull was immense—gravitational, temporal, even emotional. The center of creation—and destruction.
A voice greeted them.
Smooth. Cold. Infinite.
"Welcome, Driftbearer. You've come far. Too far."
The Architect emerged from the vortex—his form a cloak of darkness threaded with stars, a mask of shifting faces, each one belonging to a different Kael.
"You've seen my failures," Kael said.
"I am your failures," the Architect replied.
Lightning danced between timelines. The final battle was no longer approaching.
It had already begun.