They returned to the Core bruised, weary, and slightly singed—Malrik's parting curse still smoldering in the shadows of their minds.
Aris waited, arms crossed, wings flickering with residual static that crackled like distant thunder and glowed faintly blue, casting brief ghost-light across the metal floor. "You're late."
"We were almost murdered by a memory that bleeds," Vespera replied, brushing ash from his coat. "You try being punctual under those conditions."
"Did he bleed properly?" Aris asked, too casually. "Color and viscosity matter."
"He bled rage," Liora said, lowering herself into a chair that hissed in protest. "And history. Lots of tragic, messy, emotionally repressed history."
Aris exhaled slowly. "Then he's waking up faster than we thought."
"Who is he?" Vespera asked.
Aris didn't answer immediately. He walked to a screen flickering with timelines, overlaying the multiverse like frayed nerves. One thread pulsed in red.
"Malrik was a Warden once. Like me. Like you, potentially," Aris said, tapping the red thread. "His job was to preserve continuity, guard the seams between realms. Until he started asking... dangerous questions."
"Like why fate must always demand sacrifice?" Liora guessed.
"Or why power is forbidden from mercy," Aris replied.
"What did he do?" Vespera asked.
Aris turned. "He tore the veil between memory and reality. Thought he could remake causality from love. It began as a whisper in time. Then it bled."
They fell silent, the full gravity of that statement settling over them like the onset of winter.
They didn't sleep that cycle. Not that anyone in the Core ever truly slept. Sleep here was optional, replaced by memory-laced dreams filtered through paradox stasis. Vespera tried, of course—lying in a chamber lined with glass that showed not reflections but regrets.
Liora sat across from him on a hovering bench, eyes trained on the shifting wall of memories. One flickered to show her as a child, laughing beside someone she hadn't dared remember in centuries.
"Do you believe him?" she asked.
"Aris? Always," Vespera said. "He never tells the whole truth unless it's falling apart."
"No, I mean Malrik. What if he was right?"
Vespera didn't answer immediately. "Then he died for a cause worth resurrecting."
A low chime echoed through the Core. A signal. A shift.
They rushed to the command spire.
Aris stood at the center, surrounded by holograms crackling with unstable data.
"A rupture in Zone Æther-13," he said grimly. "It's leaking shadow code."
"Malrik?" Liora asked.
"Or worse," Aris replied. "He's not alone anymore."
Zone Æther-13 had once been a tranquil pocket universe built from dream logic and lunar architecture—towers shaped like crescent moons spiraled into impossible curves, their surfaces shimmering with the pale iridescence of moonstone, while bridges of starlight arched gracefully through low gravity air, casting illusions of tides that ebbed and flowed without water. Now it shivered with entropy. Fractured towers floated in slow implosion. Rivers of time reversed midstream. The sky wept backwards.
They landed on a spiraling obsidian shard barely stable enough for two.
A figure waited at the center.
He wore white—not the sanctified kind, but the kind you find on bones left too long in the sun. His eyes were hidden behind a mask carved from broken oaths.
"I heard you coming," the masked figure said, voice like silk over shattered glass.
"Another Warden?" Vespera asked.
The man removed his mask slowly. His face was unlined. Too unlined. The kind of face that forgot how to age.
"I'm what's left after Wardens break," he said. "I'm the answer to a question no one wants to ask."
Liora stepped forward. "And what's the question?"
He smiled.
"What happens when the wrong soul is brought back?"
The attack came like a whisper at first. The air trembled. Then he was upon them.
A flicker—he moved faster than thought. Vespera barely raised his shield sigil in time to deflect the first blow. Sparks of magic collided, sizzling in the chaotic aether.
Liora launched forward, glaive arcing in a crescent of searing energy. The figure vanished mid-strike and reappeared behind her, palm pressed to her back.
"Boo," he whispered.
She spun, elbowed him in the throat. He staggered—not from pain, but from amusement.
"Finally. A real fight."
Vespera cast a time anchor, solidifying the ground under their feet as the realm twisted sideways. Gravity danced erratically. Memory became substance.
The enemy split into three.
One moved through the future. One through the past. One remained to attack.
"Pick your poison," the present-self snarled.
Vespera took the future. His movements became increasingly anticipatory, dancing with probability. Every swing of his blade wasn't aimed at where the enemy was, but where he would be—a combat style that relied on momentary premonitions flickering through his nerves like electric fire. The future-echo moved with eerie precision, but Vespera's tempo was fluid, improvisational, tuned to a rhythm just beyond the now. Each strike forced him to navigate not just his opponent, but a cascade of possible consequences: Aris breaking, Liora failing, timelines unraveling.
Liora charged the past. Her strikes came with weight—each blow imbued with memory, each parry echoing her own lost battles. She wielded her glaive like a scalpel to old wounds, slashing through illusions of her younger self, broken promises, and phantom betrayals. The past-echo tried to anchor her with regret, whispering failures, but Liora answered with fire. Her style was relentless and precise, cutting away the rot of history with the fury of someone who refused to repeat it.
Together, their combat wove the spectrum of time: Vespera's foresight harmonizing with Liora's clarity, a future and past converging against the present's distorted truth.
He struck at the echo of what would be—a flickering version of the enemy carrying swords of consequence. Every clash forced Vespera to glimpse outcomes that might've been: Liora dead, Aris corrupted, himself consumed by regret.
He pushed past the noise. Focus. He spun into a sideways step, catching the echo off-balance, then launched a blast of radiant memory into its chest. The echo dissolved with a hiss.
Meanwhile, Liora moved through moments like a dancer on shattered glass. Her foe whispered old failures, embodying every regret she'd buried. She didn't flinch. She burned through them, piece by piece, until only the present self remained.
They stood side by side, panting.
"You fight well," the last self said. "But you're still too late."
He reached into his chest and tore free a sliver of shadow.
It pulsed.
"Malrik is beyond salvation now. He's become the void he tried to save."
And with that, the figure collapsed into dust. The sliver vanished with a shriek.
Back in the Core, Aris stood silent as they reported.
"You've met the Echo," he said.
"The what now?" Liora asked.
"The Echo of Failure," Aris replied. "He's not a man. He's you, Vespera. Or a version of you. One choice away from collapse."
Vespera looked at his hands.
No blood. But they trembled.
"Then we're on a clock," Liora said, stepping forward.
"No," Aris said grimly. "You are the clock. And the fuse has already been lit."