The gate didn't open—it devoured them.
Kael and Aeris fell, not downward, but inward. Through light that pulsed like lungs, through silence that tasted like regret. Each second passed like an eternity folded into the skin of a heartbeat. Then—impact.
They landed not on ground, but on memories.
An endless black chamber spread around them, its floor stitched from shimmering fragments of forgotten futures. Some hovered like torn paper in still air—holograms of what could have been. Some were melting. Others screamed.
Directly ahead stood a massive obsidian obelisk, its base veined with dying constellations. Upon its face, names were carved in an alien language, yet Aeris instinctively understood every one.
These were people—versions of themselves—who had been erased.
Kael stepped forward, his boots sending ripples across the fractured floor. The shards responded—flashing with scenes from another Kael's life:
He stood at Aeris's grave, alone, broken.He turned his back on time and burned it to save her.He became Null.
"No," Kael whispered. "This is where he was born."
Aeris touched the obelisk. Her fingers were trembling. "This is… the anchor. Every timeline Null killed, every version of us he obliterated to shape his perfect future—he stored them here."
The air shimmered. A voice rang out—dry, hollow, haunted.
"You call me a villain," it said. "But I only ever wanted to fix what hurt."
From the shadows, he emerged.
Null.
Not the cruel god they'd faced before. Not the towering avatar of entropy. This was a man wearing exhaustion like armor, grief etched into every molecule of his form. His eyes were mirrors—each blink a flicker of infinite suffering.
Aeris raised her hand, a pulse of blue energy forming in her palm. Kael stepped forward, protective.
But Null didn't move.
"I didn't come to fight," he said. "Not this time."
He looked at Aeris. "Do you know what's at the center of the obelisk?"
She shook her head.
"You."
The walls of the chamber lit up like dying stars. Hundreds—no, thousands—of Aerises flickered into view, each suspended in stillness. Some were warriors. Others scholars. One held a child in her arms. One stood alone in a cell of glass. Each version frozen in time.
Kael's breath caught. "You... sealed them."
Null nodded. "Not to destroy them. To protect them. Each Aeris I lost... I preserved. Because losing her—losing you—was the only thing I could never endure."
Aeris's voice cracked. "You killed billions."
"I did." He turned away. "And yet every universe I saved died anyway. Because time… doesn't bargain. It just devours slower."
Kael clenched his fists. "Why show us this now?"
"Because you're different. You chose to remember. And that means…" He stepped aside, revealing a console embedded in the base of the obelisk. "You can unseal them. All of them. But if you do, you'll fracture the stability of your current reality."
Aeris's hand hovered over the controls.
Kael stepped beside her. "If we do this… we risk everything we rebuilt."
Aeris looked into the sea of her other selves—her lost versions, her echoes, her regrets. And she whispered:
"I'm not whole if I abandon them."
She pressed her palm to the console.
The obelisk shuddered. Light shot up its center like a reversed lightning bolt. The chamber trembled, timelines colliding and rewriting like ink in water.
One by one, the Aerises began to breathe again.
And from the edge of the storm, Null watched—his expression unreadable, his form beginning to flicker.
"You saved what I couldn't," he whispered. "Maybe now… I can rest."
His body fragmented into light, leaving only a faint imprint on the glassy floor—a single rose, black as night.
Kael reached for Aeris, who had fallen to her knees, overwhelmed by the surge of returning souls.
He knelt beside her. "You did it."
She leaned into him. "We did."
And in the silence that followed, they heard something they hadn't heard in lifetimes.
Laughter.
Somewhere, one of the freed Aerises laughed. Then another. And another. Joy—small, trembling, but real—rippled through the restored versions like light across a tide.
Kael smiled. "Feels like the end."
Aeris stood, her eyes glowing. "No. This is the beginning."