The sky split open.Kael didn’t speak. He just stared up at the burning trail of fire carving through the quiet stars. It wasn’t a comet. Not in this world. It wasn’t natural. Nothing here had been since they crossed into this place—their so-called “new beginning.”“That’s not debris,” Marcus said under his breath. “That’s a ship.”Pamela narrowed her eyes. “Then why does it feel like it’s falling on us?”The crash shook the ground minutes later. The light vanished beyond the eastern ridge, just over the valley of red ash. A long silence followed, broken only by the low wind curling through the strange new forest. Everything felt… wrong.Kael adjusted the collar of his coat. “We follow it.”Selene didn’t hesitate. She was already moving. “Something came for us.”⸻They reached the crater before dawn. The rim was jagged—shattered glass and what looked like bone scattered across the slope. Whatever landed hadn’t simply crashed—it had torn through the fabric of this world.Marcus crouche

The Warden descended like a nightmare unfolding in reverse.It didn’t move through space—it bent it. With each step, the world behind it peeled apart and stitched itself again, like reality was afraid to offend it. Clouds stilled. Wind stopped. Even light seemed to avoid its path.And then it spoke—with Kael’s voice.But it wasn’t his voice now. It was the voice he had once used when he had no soul left to protect. Cold. Authoritative. Void of all human weight.“Kael Vale. You have violated narrative integrity.”Kael’s fists clenched. “I didn’t ask to be made.”The Warden’s face flickered—his own face, but hollow. Distorted. A mask of a god who forgot how to bleed.“Your regret is noted.”The Warden raised its hand—and the air shattered.Kael barely dodged the strike as a spike of silver light tore through the rock behind him, vaporizing a crater into the mountainside.Selene screamed, “Kael!”Pamela pulled her gun and fired—but the bullets passed through the Warden like paper through

The first thing Selene heard was the sound of wind.Not the wind of any world she’d ever known—this wind carried memories.Laughter. Screams. Regrets. Kisses never given. Promises never kept.She opened her eyes and gasped.Before her stretched a garden. Endless. Silent. Alive.But it wasn’t filled with flowers. No trees. No grass.Instead, it was lined with mirrors. Thousands of them. Tall and still.Each one reflecting not her—but a different version of her.One was older, hair streaked with silver, wrapped in battle-scarred armor.Another sat in a pristine white dress beneath a dying tree, her smile too wide, her eyes dead.One crouched in shadows, blood coating her hands.One wept endlessly.One held a child.Selene stumbled backward.A voice rippled through the garden—not loud, not deep. It was precise.Cold.“Timeline tethered. Identity fractured. Reconstruction in process.”The Warden.She couldn’t see it—but she felt it in the soil, in the way the mirrors pulsed like veins.It

Selene sat across from Kael, a distance that felt impossibly wide—even though only a few feet separated them.He stared at her like she was a stranger.Her eyes—once his anchor—now confused him. Familiar, but wrong. Like looking at a dream he couldn’t quite remember.“You were important to me,” Kael said slowly, the words tasting like broken glass in his mouth. “Everyone keeps saying it.”Selene nodded, her voice a whisper. “You said you’d burn the world for me.”Kael looked down at his hands. “That doesn’t sound like me.”Pamela stood nearby, arms crossed tight across her chest. She hated this. Hated watching Selene unravel in slow motion. She had seen Selene face down gods, memory beasts, voidwalkers—and win. But this?This was breaking her.“Kael, listen to me,” Pamela said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You and Selene… you’ve died for each other. More than once. You chose her when everything else said you shouldn’t.”“Right,” Kael muttered, rubbing his temples. “Except now, I

“Everything is folding,” Riva said, her eyes fixed on the sky as it twisted like glass melting under heat.Above them, stars blinked in and out of existence—not fading, but shifting. Some reappeared in new constellations. Others reversed direction, as if time was starting to hesitate.Kael stood at the edge of the crater, still staring at the God-Form who wore his face like a crown. That figure hadn’t moved since it stood—but it didn’t need to. Its presence alone was altering the balance of everything around them.Riva’s voice was tight with dread. “The universe is starting to mirror.”Pamela turned. “Mirror?”“It’s copying itself,” Riva said. “Trying to find the right version of events. The right Kael. One that fits the new timeline. One that won’t collapse it.”Marcus winced. “That’s bad, right?”Riva gave a hollow laugh. “It’s… catastrophic.”Kael’s hands trembled. “So what happens if the universe picks the wrong one?”Selene answered, her voice low. “It deletes the rest.”That sil