Outside, the city was waking under a gray sky. Sirens wailed in the distance as dust and debris from the collapsing museum spilled into the cracked streets. Aven and Rhea stumbled onto the pavement, coughing, eyes stinging from smoke and grit.
Behind them, the massive structure convulsed one last time before caving in on itself, sending up a towering plume of dust and twisted steel. The hum of failed futures, once ever-present, finally fell silent.
Aven bent over, hands on his knees, breathing hard. "It's… gone."
Rhea wiped blood from her temple, her face pale but steady. "It had to be. Whatever that place was… it was never meant to survive."
Aven looked back at the rubble. "Then what about us? Were we ever meant to survive?"
Rhea turned to him, her eyes bright in the dawn light. "Does it matter? We're still here. That's enough."
Aven swallowed. The silence left in the museum's absence felt enormous, heavy with questions he couldn't answer. But in the space where the future had once been dictated by broken archives, there was now possibility—terrifying, unmarked, real.
He reached out and took Rhea's hand. "What do we do now?"
She squeezed his fingers gently. "We start over. Build something worth living for."
Aven glanced around at the empty streets. "And if the past comes back for us?"
Rhea smiled faintly. "Then we'll fight it together."
They stood there as the sun rose, the city slowly brightening around them. Aven felt the weight of every choice he'd made, every ghost of failed futures fading into nothing behind him.
The world was broken. But it was theirs now.
And as the light spilled across the rubble, he dared to imagine a future that wouldn't fail.