It wasn't emptiness anymore; it was made of whispers, fragments, and the weight of every heartbeat that had ever stopped.Riven floated through it, weightless, every breath leaving trails of light that bent and folded behind him.
The Architect's voice returned — quieter than before, almost human.
"You shouldn't have destroyed the simulation so soon. It was stable. It was safe."
Riven whispered back, "It was a lie."
"And truth will tear you apart. You're decaying, Riven. The merge is incomplete."
He ignored it and kept moving. Each step took him deeper into the dark, where the void began to shimmer with images — not memories, but echoes:Lira smiling by a sea that never existed.Lira screaming under collapsing skies.Lira whispering "forever" as the world burned.
He wanted to look away, but the darkness wanted him to watch.
A pulse rippled through the void.
Something massive stirred beneath the surface — not the Traveler, not the Architect. Something older.The air froze, then cracked like glass as a ring of light formed around him — a circular platform suspended over nothing.
In its center hovered a sphere of pure energy, pulsing faintly with a heartbeat that wasn't his.
Lira.
He stepped forward. Every pulse of the sphere flooded him with emotions — love, fear, guilt, endless longing. Each one stronger than the last, each one almost enough to crush his chest.
"Riven…"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere — soft, trembling, real."Riven, please… stop. It hurts."
He fell to his knees, the sphere's glow wrapping around him like arms that once knew how to hold him. "Lira, I'm here. I'm—"
"No." Her tone shifted. "You're always here. You never leave. You never die. You just keep coming back."
The sphere expanded, light turning crimson. Images poured out: Riven standing over her corpse, Riven building the Chrono-Gate, Riven breaking the world again and again.
"I tried to end it," she said. "But you kept trying to save me. Every time I begged the Traveler to let you rest, you rebuilt the machine. You wouldn't let me go."
Riven's vision blurred. "That's not true…"
"Then remember."
The sphere shattered into shards of light that pierced his mind.
He saw it — the first loop. The true beginning.
A laboratory engulfed in smoke. Lira dying from radiation exposure after helping him stabilize the Chrono-Gate prototype. Her last words: "Promise me you'll stop."But he didn't. He rewound time to save her.And by doing so, he fractured reality itself.
He had started it all.
The loops. The Traveler's intervention. The Architect's birth.Everything.
Riven fell backward, screaming into the void. The truth tore through him like fire.
"Now you understand," Lira's voice said softly. "You didn't lose me, Riven. You erased the world trying to keep me."
The Architect's voice flared suddenly, full of static rage:
"She's lying! The first event wasn't your fault — it was mine. I miscalculated the gate's resonance!"
But Riven could feel it — deep inside — the echo of the moment his hand pressed the button despite her tears.
He whispered, broken, "No. It was me."
The void responded with a low hum, almost sympathetic.Reality shifted again.
The ring beneath him began to crumble, shards of light spinning outward. Beyond them, he saw the Traveler, watching — silent, distant.
"Now that you remember," they said, "you can finally choose."
Riven's head rose slowly, eyes blazing white. "Choose what?"
"Redemption… or release."
They extended a hand, and two paths opened before him —one blazing gold, leading upward, glowing with fragments of the lives he'd destroyed,the other descending into a storm of shadow, where the Architect's voice whispered promises of power.
Lira's voice, faint but still alive, reached him from somewhere beyond both.
"Riven… whatever you do, don't let love become guilt. Let me go."
He clenched his fists. Tears burned down his face.
"I can't let you go," he whispered."But I can let the world live."
And as he stepped between the two paths, rejecting both fate and forgiveness, the void screamed — a sound that made time itself flinch