The journey back from Solkaris was not a simple return. The rift they opened led not to a place—but to a time. A specific moment: a forgotten corridor within the ruins of the Oblivion Vault, buried under the oldest layer of reality. This was where it had begun.
Here, Rivan had first encountered the voice that twisted his path.
And now, Akuzai would follow it back.
As they stepped through, the world around them shifted. This wasn't a battlefield or a memory—it was a trap designed to test conviction. Time didn't move forward here. It looped. Reality folded upon itself, and thoughts became doors.
Aditya cursed under his breath. "We've been here before. I remember this archway."
"No," Abhishek replied. "It remembers us."
Inside the Vault, the walls whispered forgotten truths. Old scrolls hovered in stasis. Ancient blades floated beside echoes of past warriors—all sealed by the First Chronomancer. At the center of it stood a towering gate—half-formed, sealed in pure thought.
Akuzai approached it, and the Eternis Edge pulsed in response.
A voice echoed from the gate. Cold. Calculated.
"You broke Rivan. But I can make another. Stronger. Sharper. Closer to perfection."
Akuzai replied calmly, "We don't need perfection. We need freedom."
The gate cracked.
Suddenly, visions slammed into them—hundreds of potential futures. In some, Akuzai fell. In others, he became the villain. In one, the world ended without Rivan ever being born.
These weren't threats.
They were offers.
"You can avoid the pain," the voice whispered. "Just walk away. Let me finish the work."
Akuzai turned, looked to his friends—Abhishek breathing steady, Aditya holding his stance—and shook his head.
"No more shortcuts. No more rewritten truths. We walk the hard path."
And with that, he drove the Eternis Edge into the ground.
The gate shattered—revealing a descending spiral staircase lit by starlight. At the bottom lay the Throneless Chamber—the birthplace of the First Chronomancer's code.
As they descended, something changed.
The sky above the timeline cracked again.
A pulse, deep and resonant, thundered through the multiverse.
The Seed had awakened.
Far to the east of time, something older than cause had stirred.
The return path had led not to closure—
But to the next trial.
The battle ahead would not be about saving timelines.
It would be about defining reality itself.