Riven opened his eyes.
Not to light. Not to darkness. But to a stillness deeper than both.A place where sound had weight, and thought had texture. Where every heartbeat echoed as a universe.
He floated.No ground. No sky. No reference point.
Then he saw her.
Lira — or what remained of her. She wasn't solid. Not exactly.Her form shimmered like liquid starlight, flowing and folding into itself.Her eyes held every version of herself at once — grief, love, fury, and infinite despair.
"Riven…" Her voice was everywhere and nowhere."You brought me here."
He swallowed. "I… I freed you."
"You destroyed the loop, yes. But do you understand what that cost?"
He shook his head, though tears had no place in this silence. "No. I… I wanted to fix it."
"And you did. But the timeline doesn't forgive. You cannot save me, because I am all that was, all that could have been, and all that will never be."
Her form flickered. He could see snippets of her deaths — the radiation in the first experiment, the Paradox Core, the loops he had built — hundreds of versions.All of them bleeding together.
"Every moment you tried to preserve me," she continued, "you fractured reality further. You trapped me in existence itself."
Riven's hands glowed faintly. "Then tell me! Tell me what I have to do!"
"You can leave."
He stared at her. "Leave? I… I can't. You're everything to me. You were everything!"
"I know."
The void rippled. Time — or what was left of it — shifted violently. Stars exploded into colorless fragments around them, forming spirals and whirlpools of memory.
"You are not just in time, Riven," she whispered. "You are of it. You carry every echo, every choice, every failure. But you are not me. And I… I cannot stay."
Riven's chest ached. "Then what now? If you disappear… what am I?"
"A choice."
Her voice softened. "You can stay here and collapse with me — or leave and find the world that remembers nothing… but can still live."
He swallowed, his hands trembling, energy flickering wildly.The Architect's voice came faintly from nowhere:
"Whatever you do now will be absolute. There is no undoing."
Riven closed his eyes. He could feel the weight of centuries, of loops, of love and loss compressing into a single pulse in his chest.
He opened his eyes.
"I… I have to go," he whispered. "But I will remember. Every single fragment of you. Always."
Her smile — fleeting, broken, and infinite — shone like dying stars.
"Then go, Riven. Live for the world that never knew me."
The void stretched infinitely.Riven's body — now nothing but white-hot energy — reached forward, passing through her.
Her form shattered into a thousand shards of light.Each shard whispered: "Find the world… remember me…"
And then she was gone.
Riven floated alone.Time, space, reality itself hummed around him, waiting.
He whispered, "I… will."
And the void began to collapse — not violently this time, but gently, like a sigh of relief.Reality reformed around him. Not the loops. Not the perfect day. Not the city that never existed.But a world that could grow, flawed and fragile and alive.
A single sun rose on the horizon.Birds sang. Wind stirred. Life began anew.
And somewhere, faintly, he could hear a voice in the wind:"Remember me, Riven."
He closed his eyes and smiled through tears.Finally, he was free.