They fell through light.
Not air. Not gravity. Not space.
Light.
But not blinding—rather, it wrapped around them like threads of memory, gleaming in the shapes of decisions long made and futures not yet born. Every color had a pulse. Every flicker whispered something known only to the soul.
Kael held Aeris's hand tighter as the spiral around them unwound like a helix of stars. Their bodies shimmered with resonance—his glowing gold, hers pulsating with silver and deep violet. They were no longer who they'd been.
They were who they had chosen to become.
The spiral deposited them gently onto a mirror floor, floating in an endless expanse.
Above them, the sky was written in code—runes of fate spinning like galaxies, shifting with every breath they took.
Kael looked around. "Where are we?"
Aeris turned slowly, reading the horizonless place with her heart more than her eyes. "This is the Before-After. The moment between choice and consequence."
Ahead, a door of fire stood alone.
It had no hinges, no frame. Just flame and silence.
Carved into it was a symbol they both knew too well—the sigil of the Rift.
They approached, side by side.
But as they drew near, the flames rippled outward—and split into two doors.
One gold.
One obsidian.
Aeris touched the gold. "This one leads to peace. We live quietly. We forget. The world moves on without us."
Kael's voice was low. "And the other?"
She nodded to the obsidian. "We return. To the war. To the remnants of timelines screaming for repair. To everything we tried to seal away."
Kael stepped back, torn.
The silence around them trembled as if it, too, awaited their decision.
"We could have forever," he whispered.
Aeris looked at him, eyes shining with more than power—with truth. "Forever only means something if it's chosen."
A gust of wind surged between the doors, and from the obsidian path… a scream echoed.
Not just any scream.
A child.
Kael flinched. "Did you hear that?"
Aeris did. She nodded grimly. "Another future just shattered."
And in that moment, they both knew.
They couldn't turn away.
Kael took her hand again. "Then let's steal the future. The right one."
And together, they stepped into the obsidian door.
Flash.
They emerged in a city suspended mid-collapse.
Floating architecture frozen in time. Debris hanging like ornaments in air. People stuck mid-run, mid-fall, mid-breath.
Time had paused—except for one.
A little girl stood in the center of a fractured plaza, a silver crystal blooming from her chest. She was crying, glowing faintly. A timeborne parasite wrapped around her like ivy.
Kael rushed forward. "She's a conduit!"
Aeris summoned her light. "Not yet. But if we don't act—she becomes one."
Kael reached for the parasite, but it hissed, latching onto his wrist. Visions poured into his mind:
The girl grown up, tearing timelines with a smile.
A world where Kael dies before meeting Aeris.
A reality where the Rift consumes itself.
"No," he growled. "Not this one."
With a surge of gold light, Kael burned the parasite off. Aeris lifted the girl gently, whispering, "You're safe. You still belong to time."
Time resumed.
The city exhaled.
People screamed, ran, cried—alive again.
Aeris knelt, the girl clinging to her.
Kael stood tall, eyes scanning the sky as new tears formed across it.
"This is what we're choosing, isn't it?" he said. "No end. No rest. Just moments like these—saving them, one heartbeat at a time."
Aeris rose beside him. "We can rest between breaths. But yes… this is our beginning now."
He looked down at her hand in his, then up at the fractured horizon. "Then let's begin again."
And somewhere, deep within the fabric of what was once fate—The Rift smiled.