The storm had passed, but the silence it left behind was a more unsettling force. Winds once howled over the blasted plains, but now, nothing moved. No birds cried. No whispers rustled through the trees. Nova stood still at the edge of the forgotten clearing, staring at the hollow that had once been the Temple of Ciphers. The once-proud spires had crumbled into soot and glass. He could still feel the vibrations of the past, an echo of something greater buried beneath centuries of false memory.
"Are you feeling it?" murmured Riven beside him, the ex-agent's breath visible in the cold air. "Something here… it's ancient."
Nova nodded, eyes narrowed. "It's not just ancient. It's waiting."
*--------------------*
They descended into the ruins as the sky bruised with violet hues. The entrance, hidden behind vines shaped like thorns, gave way with a reluctant groan, revealing a staircase spiraling into the dark. Each step carried weight — not just physical, but historical. Nova's fingers grazed the wall; it pulsed once, as if recognizing his presence.
"This architecture… it predates the Quantum Accord by at least three millennia," Riven muttered, examining the angular etchings in the stone. "This shouldn't exist."
"That's becoming a theme lately," Nova replied, pulling his scarf tighter. The deeper they went, the colder it grew — not with the chill of the earth, but the sterile, precise coldness of a machine buried in mourning.
They reached a chamber lit by strands of glowing algae strung across a collapsed ceiling. Ancient machinery blinked slowly, trying to wake from a slumber that felt too long. At the center stood a pedestal with a single crystalline tablet.
Nova approached, hand trembling. The tablet responded, symbols flickering to life.
"You sure about this?" Riven asked. "Could be another trap."
"I'm counting on it."
He touched the crystal.
*----------------------*
The world flipped.
Pain tore through Nova's skull as time bent inward. He collapsed, convulsing. Riven shouted — but from a distance — warped and delayed. Then, silence.
When Nova opened his eyes, he was no longer in the ruins.
He stood in a city carved from glass and shadow. The buildings breathed. Lights moved like thoughts between towers. Above him, twin suns hovered in a static sky, unmoving, as though time had been arrested.
A voice echoed.
"You finally returned, Keeper of the Last Flame."
He turned.
A woman stood before him, draped in white armor etched with sigils. Her eyes were like fractured mirrors, reflecting his face — and something behind it.
"Who are you?"
"Archivist Elura. You don't remember, do you?"
"Remember what?"
"This city — Veridion — was once your home."
*----------------------*
He didn't remember.
He couldn't.
But when he looked around, pieces fit. The statues, the fragments of dreams he'd seen during the wormhole collapse, the shadows that whispered his name in nightmares — they were all here. Frozen in a place no longer on the map of time.
"I wasn't born here," Nova muttered.
"No," Elura said. "But you were remade here."
He felt it then — a pulse in his chest that didn't belong to the boy raised in Sector K. The memories Mark Patro tried to erase. The experiments. The machine beneath the Citadel. It all connected.
"What is this place really?"
"A vault. Not for gold or weaponry, but for truths. Dangerous ones."
The sky darkened.
"You're out of time," she said.
*---------------------*
Nova jolted awake.
Riven was holding him, eyes wide. "You've been unconscious for six hours. What the hell did you touch?"
Nova sat up, dizzy. The crystal tablet was gone. In its place, a glyph burned into the stone — the same one etched onto his skin during the wormhole surge months ago.
"I saw Veridion," Nova muttered. "The lost city. It's not gone. It's… waiting in fractured time."
"You saw it?"
"I lived it."
Riven looked at him, something changing in his expression. "What are you, Nova?"
Nova didn't answer.
He didn't know anymore.
*--------------------*
Elsewhere, far beyond their reach, Chairman Mark Patro stood before a console within a sealed chamber beneath the Ark Ministry. Streams of data bled from the walls like veins. Screens blinked with chaotic symbols.
"She touched the gate," a voice said behind him.
Patro turned. Admiral Vesk, his eyes glassy and hands gloved in synthetic mesh, waited in the shadows.
"Yes," Patro replied. "And the city responded."
"What now?"
"We accelerate the plan. If Veridion awakens fully, the entire structure of the Horizon Protocol could collapse. We won't survive another reawakening."
"But Nova—"
"He'll survive," Patro said. "Or he won't. But the truth will not."
*---------------------*
Back in the ruins, Nova stood over the sigil burned into the ground. His mind raced.
"There's a pattern," he said.
Riven raised an eyebrow. "What kind of pattern?"
"Temporal bleed."
"You're losing me."
Nova reached into his bag, pulling out the black ledger they recovered in Chapter 5. The pages — previously blank — now glowed with writing only he could see.
"Someone encoded events through memory signatures… and left breadcrumbs through time. The ledger updates as I learn."
"That's impossible."
Nova didn't argue. Instead, he read aloud.
"To find the first gate, awaken the memory of light.
To reach the final door, bury what you were."
"What does it mean?" Riven asked.
Nova stared into the darkness.
"It means we're not just uncovering the past. We're rewriting the future."
*---------------------*
From the shadows beyond, something stirred. A presence watching them from a dimension misaligned with time. Nova turned suddenly, heart thudding.
"Did you hear that?"
"No," Riven replied, gun raised.
A figure emerged — draped in cloaks made of shifting static, face obscured by a prism mask.
"You should not be here," it said in a voice like broken glass.
Nova stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"I am the Warden of Breached Timelines."
"You knew about Veridion?"
"I lived and died there, countless times."
The Warden's mask split open briefly — inside, a vortex swirled, infinite versions of Nova screaming into silence.
"You are not the first to walk this path. You won't be the last."
"Then why stop me?"
"Because this time, the city remembers you too."
*----------------------*
The confrontation ended not with a fight, but with a question.
The Warden handed Nova a shard — part metal, part bone, etched in the same language as the glyph.
"This will guide you to the next gate," the Warden said. "But every answer comes at the cost of forgetting something else."
Nova took it, uncertain.
"What will I lose?"
The Warden did not reply.
---------------
Back at their camp, Nova couldn't sleep.
The stars above shimmered, just slightly off.
He turned to Riven. "What if I was never supposed to survive?"
"You did. That's all that matters."
Nova didn't reply.
In the silence, the shard pulsed once. A countdown began.
*--------------------*