The sky had stopped pretending.
The fracture overhead now split the Supreme Isles in two — a jagged wound spilling not light, but something deeper. Not darkness. Not storm. A kind of presence. A pull.
The Rift was no longer watching.
It was waiting.
Reven stood at the edge of the main tower, the vault-shards slotted into the brace across his back. They no longer pulsed randomly. They hummed in sync with the tear above, like tuning forks vibrating to the frequency of a forgotten god.
He could feel it now.
Not just the Rift's presence.
Its attention.
"It wants you to choose," Lirien said quietly behind him.
Reven didn't answer.
She stepped closer, wings furled tight. "It's trying to connect. That's what the fracture's about. It's not a gate — it's a question."
Kaela leaned against the nearby rail, arms crossed, blood drying on her knuckles. "Then what's the answer?"
Lirien glanced at Reven. "Him."
They reconvened in the central archive hall of the first Supreme Isle — a chamber of glass, metal, and living memory. The projections had begun shifting on their own, reacting to Reven's presence. Stories, glimpses, fragments — humanity's archived fear.
But one projection remained fixed: a towering construct of light at the far end of the hall.
It was labelled: Final Directive: Alpha-Sequence.
Steward-9 appeared beside it, materializing without sound.
"The Rift has completed its search protocol. Your existence activated the last layer."
Reven stepped toward the directive. "What does it want?"
"Understanding. Correction. A return to symmetry."
Kaela frowned. "Symmetry of what?"
"The first truth," Steward-9 said, "is that the Rift was not our enemy. It was our echo."
Lirien's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"When humanity opened the Rift, it did not tear the world — it copied it. Reached into the quantum well and pulled back versions. Variants. Paths untaken."
The images shifted.
Multiple Earths.
Multiple Reven-like figures.
Cities surviving. Cities crumbling. In one world, humanity became data. In another, beasts. In another, they never rose at all.
"The Rift remembers every version. It does not destroy. It selects."
Reven took a step back, his voice low. "Then why the Vaults? The Shards? Why lock everything away?"
"Because one version refused to comply. Your version."
Kaela's eyes met Reven's. "What does that mean?"
"Your world chose memory over replacement. Emotion over optimization. The Rift could not overwrite you — so it watched. It learned. It waited for someone fractured enough to step through and mean it."
Lirien said, "Someone like him."
"Reven is not a mistake. He is the only part of this world that cannot be replaced."
The directive behind them changed.
A circle formed in the air. Three paths. Three vaults. Each now glowing in alignment.
"There is one vault left."
Reven stared at the circle. "There were only three."
"No," Steward-9 said. "There was always four. The last vault… is you."
Silence.
It stretched.
Kaela stepped forward slowly. "What do you mean he's the vault?"
"Reven is the final container. The last anchor point for the original human timeline. The Rift could not reach him, so it marked him. Shaped him. Now it's offering him the final choice."
Reven felt the weight settle across his shoulders like stone.
"The choice to do what?" he asked.
"To let go."
Lirien whispered, "Of what?"
"Of everything."
They stood in the courtyard as the fracture widened.
Below, the world was flickering. Whole regions now collapsed under interference — terrain warping, skies glitching, time skipping in broken loops. The Rift wasn't just touching the world anymore.
It was rewriting it.
And at the centre of it, the signal was strongest around Reven.
The Rift wanted a key.
And it had chosen him.
Kaela placed her hand on his arm.
"You don't owe it anything."
Reven looked at her. Then at Lirien.
And then at the sky.
"I know."
He stepped forward, into the light.