The wind over Elderglen carried whispers of the dead — low, hollow tones that stirred through the silver grass like sighs from forgotten souls. The moon hung swollen and red above the plains, its light staining the horizon like a wound. Kael and Lira trudged through the mist, weary from days of travel, every step echoing softly against the earth that seemed to hum with restless energy.“Do you hear that?” Lira murmured, her voice barely a whisper.Kael stopped, scanning the darkness. His senses, sharpened by both flame and frost, caught the faint distortion of mana rippling nearby — something bending time’s rhythm, making sound stretch and twist. He frowned. “It’s not the wind. Something’s phasing the air.”He drew his staff — Emberbrand — its faint runes pulsing like a heartbeat. The air shivered. A second later, shadows rippled forward, bending around a humanoid silhouette cloaked in smoke and steel. The figure stepped into the half-light, his mask reflecting the moon’s scarlet hue.

The days that followed their escape from the Sanctum of Clocks bled together in haze and frost. Kael and Lira camped beneath dying trees along the Ridge of Glass, where the wind screamed like a living thing. The ruin’s phantom still clung to Kael’s mind — but it wasn’t the battle that haunted him. It was what Varen had said.The Tower isn’t a place. It’s a lock.And you’re the key.Since that night, something inside Kael had changed. The Aetherheart no longer pulsed only with fire and frost — it now whispered. Softly at first, like a dream half-remembered. But as the days passed, the whispers sharpened into words — old, broken syllables that clawed at the edges of his thoughts.He didn’t tell Lira. Not yet.Instead, he focused on survival. The Ridge was barren, its soil poisoned from old magic. The two scavenged what little they could — mosswater from frozen streams, jerky from Lira’s dwindling pouch. At night, Kael watched the stars twist, the constellations shifting unnaturally towa

The gate pulsed like a heartbeat, its mirrored surface rippling as though alive. Each rune shimmered with a fractured light, drawing Kael and Lira closer until their reflections no longer mimicked them—they watched. Kael raised his staff, the twin flames along its length dimming as he studied the runes. “This isn’t a seal,” he murmured. “It’s a loop. A bridge made from what once was.” Lira tilted her head. “Meaning?” “Meaning whatever lies beyond doesn’t move forward in time… it turns it inside out.” Before she could reply, the gate inhaled. Light surged outward like a breath reversed, pulling them both through in a flash of white flame. ⸻ Kael landed hard—on cobblestone. Familiar cobblestone. He staggered to his feet, staring around. The streets were drenched in sunlight, the air rich with the scent of burning incense and baked bread. A bell rang somewhere in the distance. Eldoria. Not the ruins he remembered, but the living city — before its fall, before the war. Children p

The world had changed. Kael felt it the instant the Gate released them. The air that hit his lungs wasn’t the same—too thin, too sharp, as if the sky itself had been bled hollow. He rose shakily, Lira beside him, both blinking against the harsh white glare of a sun split into three fractured halos. The landscape around them twisted in unnatural symmetry. Mountains bent like liquid mirrors. Rivers flowed upward into the torn clouds. And the sky… It was cracked. Not metaphorically, not in illusion—split like glass under a hammer, fragments of light and darkness bleeding through the fractures. Time stuttered in visible waves, scenes flickering across the horizon: battles, ruins, cities that shouldn’t yet exist, and others long dead. Lira’s breath came out in a trembling exhale. “Kael… what did you do?” Kael stared upward, numb. “I rewrote us.” She turned to him, horror etched on her face. “You what?” “The Gate was collapsing. Time was folding into itself. I… forced a convergence

The northern wastes no longer had a name.Once, they were the Dominion Plains — a vast field of gold that fed empires. Now, the plains floated in shattered fragments, their soil suspended in air like broken glass caught in the wind. The laws of the world had fractured here. Gravity, time, and memory twisted upon themselves until even the sky could no longer decide which direction it belonged to.Kael stood at the edge of the cliff, cloak rippling in the updraft that rose from the abyss below. His reflection shimmered faintly on the surface of the floating stones — sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes not quite him.Behind him, the survivors of the Guild murmured prayers or simply stared. There were only twenty left. They had buried twice as many along the way.Lira moved up beside him, arms crossed. “You sure about this?”Kael didn’t answer immediately. His gaze remained locked on the swirling heart of the anomaly ahead — a massive column of black-gold light twisting skyward,