Gideon's blade hummed in Kael's grip, its edge singing with stolen time. Lyra hovered before him, her cobalt eyes bleeding into voids, wings reduced to skeletal remains. The garden's crystalline heart pulsed behind her, its light warping the air into a kaleidoscope of memories: his mother's smile, Lira's final breath, Lyra's first scream as she tore free from her lab restraints.
"You've always wanted this," Gideon crooned through Lyra's lips. "Her life for mine. A fair trade."
The heart's vines slithered toward Kael, offering a vision—his mother whole and alive, tending roses in a sunlit garden. Lyra's form flickered, her edges dissolving into time-rot. "Strike the heart, and she lives. Hesitate… and I keep your sister."
Kael's grip tightened. "She's not yours anymore."
Lyra's hand twitched. Amber sparked in her eyes. "Do it…"
The vision shifted—Lira's ghost materialized inside the heart, her hands pressed to the crystalline walls. "Kael!" Her voice pierced the rot. "Destroy it! I'm already gone!"
Gideon snarled, seizing control of Lyra's voice again. "Sentimental fools. You'll always choose the dead over the living."
The cathedral quaked, roses crumbling to dust. Time-rot devoured the walls, reality peeling away to reveal the void beneath. Lyra's bone wings disintegrated as she lunged at Kael, Gideon's blade meeting his in a shower of sparks.
"Fight him!" Lira's ghost screamed.
Kael parried, driving Lyra back toward the heart. "I can't lose you both!"
Lyra's strike faltered. Her eyes cleared—amber, terrified. "Then kill me."
The heart's vines seized her, dragging her into its core. Lira's ghost reached for her, their hands merging in the crystal. "Now, Kael!"
He plunged the blade into the heart.
Light exploded.
The garden screamed. Vines withered, the crystalline core shattering into a million shards. Lyra and Lira's voices intertwined in a final, wrenching cry—then silence.
Kael collapsed as the cathedral dissolved, time-rot consuming the last remnants of Gideon's realm. When the dust settled, Lyra lay beside him, her scars faded, her breath shallow. The blade in his hand was just a shard again, rusted and brittle.
"Did it work?" she whispered.
Before he could answer, the ground lurched.
The cathedral's ruins reknit themselves, stone and rose regrowing in reverse. A figure strode from the light—Gideon, not as a specter, but flesh and blood, his eyes alive with curiosity rather than malice.
"Fascinating," he murmured, kneeling beside Lyra. "You've fractured the timeline. Now I get to choose."
Kael's shard pressed to his throat. "Choose what?"
Gideon smiled, untouched by future cruelty. "Whether to spare her… or become what you fear."