The Rift had never pulled him in before.
Kael stood on a circular platform floating in an endless twilight ocean. No wind. No stars. Just a sea of fractured time beneath his boots—rippling, whispering.
Each wave whispered a name he had buried.Each current carried echoes of choices he never made.
"Aeris?"
No reply.
Just a quiet sob from behind him.
He turned.
A child sat at the edge of the platform, knees drawn up, face hidden. Her shoulders trembled.
Kael stepped closer.
"Hey… are you okay?"
The child looked up.
It was him.
A younger Kael. Maybe six. Eyes wide, afraid. Holding a clock in his hands—its hands broken, ticking backward.
"I broke it," the child-Kael whispered. "I broke time."
Kael knelt, stunned.
"Why are you here?"
The boy pressed the broken clock into his older self's hands.
"You kept trying to fix things, remember? Fix her. Fix everything. But some things… aren't meant to be rewound."
Kael's grip tightened around the clock.
"I'm not giving up."
"That's what he said too."
Suddenly the child vanished—ripped away by a gust of gold fire—and in his place stood a mirror. Cracked. Bleeding light.
Kael looked into it.
And saw a version of himself with no eyes. Just burning sockets of Rift energy. Cold. Empty. Unforgiving.
This Kael spoke in a voice layered with every version of him that had ever existed:
"She's slipping through the Rift, and you're still clinging to who you were."
"You think love will anchor her. But love is not enough here."
"You must become what the Rift remembers."
Kael stared, jaw clenched.
"What does that mean?"
The mirror shattered.
And a storm of reflections exploded around him—showing alternate timelines:
– One where he let Aeris die to save the world.– One where he became Null.– One where he lived peacefully but never met her.
Kael fell to his knees.
He whispered:
"I don't want a version of the future without her."
Then, a voice—soft, familiar, and filled with pain.
"Then find me."
Aeris.
Her voice echoed from a crack in the Rift above him—faint, flickering.
Kael stood. Lifted the broken clock. And made a vow:
"No matter how many versions of me I must face—no matter what I have to become—I will find you."
The Rift responded.
The sea of time parted before him, forming a glowing bridge of sand and light, each step reflecting a different choice he'd once denied.
As he walked, a sliver of Aeris's presence touched his heart.
A whisper of the future they might still have.