Kaien fell through the Gate in silence, tumbling not through space but through moments. Time fractured around him in thin layers, like stained glass catching distant light. Each pane a different version of reality—some familiar, others alien.
A war lost.
A war never begun.
A world where Elion still stood.
He landed hard on obsidian stone, the impact softened by a gravity that didn't obey physics. Here, up and down swirled gently around him, as if the ground were breathing. Kaien rolled to his feet and steadied himself.
Above him—or around him—the Fractured Moon spun in pieces.
Not shattered. Suspended.
Colossal shards of what was once a single lunar body now hovered in a vast orbital dance, each one connected by thin trails of gold-light tethers—ancient chronolinks that pulsed softly. A sky of broken silver and dust.
The Gate behind him vanished.
He wasn't alone.
Mirra, Gorran, and Lyra materialized seconds later, blinking from the dimensional transition. Lyra fell to her knees, hands digging into the lunar soil.
"By the Spiral…" she whispered. "It's still intact."
Mirra stood, scanning the surroundings. "No trace of the Choir yet."
"Doesn't mean they're not watching," Gorran muttered.
Kaien felt the pull again—faint, distant, but undeniable.
The third spark was here.
And it was alive.
They began their journey across one of the larger shards, a crescent-shaped landmass dubbed by old maps as The Queen's Fang—so named because the central structure on it looked like a colossal curved tooth made of black stone.
But it wasn't a tooth.
It was a palace.
As they drew closer, Kaien's temporal senses started to glitch. Not visually—but internally. He couldn't tell how long they had been walking. His heartbeat fluctuated. Sometimes it took one second. Sometimes it took one hour.
"Temporal decay," Lyra muttered, eyes narrowed. "The gravity fields here are feeding off time itself."
Mirra clicked a device on her belt. "Chrono-pulse stabilizers active. We'll hold for now."
Kaien kept walking.
He didn't know why, but something about the palace called not only to the spark—but to something older in him. Something that didn't belong to Elion, or the Resistance, or the war.
A memory he hadn't made yet.
They reached the gates of the palace.
There were no doors. Only a wide, yawning archway that seemed to stretch far beyond what their eyes could measure. Inside, soft light floated from the ceilings, made of condensed memory orbs—like stars held prisoner in glass.
As they entered, the architecture shifted.
Walls reoriented.
Ceilings bent.
Gravity reversed itself three times before Kaien found a footing that felt stable. And in that moment, they heard it:
A sound like the ticking of a thousand clocks—but none of them in sync.
Then a voice.
Not spoken aloud.
But etched into every corner of the space.
"Welcome, heir of memory.You approach the throne of gravity.Do you come to take… or to understand?"
Kaien stepped forward. "I seek the third spark."
The voice echoed again, closer now.
"Then face the weight of what was lost."
The floor vanished beneath them.
Not in space—but in time.
Each member of the group was separated, sucked into their own temporal fold. Kaien found himself standing in a mirror of the throne room—but empty. Floating islands of stone drifted lazily around him, lit by orbiting suns that didn't cast shadows.
At the center of the space floated a figure—thin, regal, dressed in robes that defied gravity and shimmered with orbiting stardust. Their face was half-mask, half-sky.
Kaien recognized the design. He had seen it once in Elion's fading memories.
The Thronekeeper.
Last Guardian of the Spark of Gravity.
"Child," the being said, its voice neither male nor female, neither old nor young. "You seek power, but you do not yet know weight."
Kaien clenched his fists. "Then show me."
The sky above twisted.
And a memory storm descended.
Kaien was ten years old, watching the fires swallow his home. The world around him screamed in silence. His mother—blurred. His father—already gone.
He turned to run, but the smoke had no exit.
"Why didn't you stop it?" the voice asked.
Kaien flinched. "I was a child."
The memory warped—he was fifteen now, watching Resistance agents die to buy him time.
"Why didn't you return?"
He gritted his teeth. "Because I would've died too."
Twenty. A mission failed. Thirty. A city fallen. Endless loops of choices, guilt, hesitation.
And through it all, the Thronekeeper watched.
"You wish to carry Elion's flame. But can you bear the weight of your own?"
Kaien fell to his knees.
His breath choked in his throat. The gravity of regret crushed him like a planetary core.
But then—
A flicker of gold.
The second spark pulsed inside him. And it whispered:
"You remember because you still care.You regret because you survived.Stand, Kaien. You are the Spiral's legacy."
He rose.
The storm shattered.
The space realigned.
The Thronekeeper lowered their head in solemn recognition.
"You have passed the axis."
From their outstretched hand, a globe of compacted starlight rose—swirling with orbit-lines and anchored light. It hummed with the force of potential.
The third spark.
"One spark remembers.One spark resists.This spark… binds.Carry it, and bear the burden of gravity."
Kaien stepped forward.
And accepted it.
The moment the spark touched his skin, the gravity of the chamber shattered.
He didn't fall.
He became the anchor.
The palace no longer shifted. The walls stopped spinning. The lights aligned. The fragments of the moon stilled for the first time in centuries.
Kaien's body pulsed with tri-light—blue, gold, and white.
Time slowed around him… but not in resistance.
In respect.
Moments later, he emerged from the trial chamber, and the others reappeared too—each shaken by their own private visions. Mirra's cheeks were wet. Gorran wouldn't speak. Lyra looked older, somehow.
Kaien stepped into the center of the throne room.
"It's done."
Mirra looked up. "You have it?"
Kaien nodded.
"The third spark is ours."
Above them, high in orbit, the Spiral Choir stirred.
And in the distance, across a burning field of realities, Biggenator turned his gaze toward the Fractured Moon…
…and smiled.