Descent Begins
The rift passage moaned as the team pressed forward, its walls pulsing with a low, guttural hum—less like a machine, more like something breathing. Not warm, not alive, but aware.
Kael stepped first, his boots crunching against crystallized time-shards that scattered beneath him like fragile glass. Behind him, Kura kept low, her eyes constantly shifting, wary of every flicker. Jessa brought up the rear, adjusting her anchor dial with every step as the air around them fluctuated.
None of them spoke. Words felt brittle here.
Above them, the Rifted Zone narrowed into an open wound of light and shadow. Aya and Elrik had split off earlier, following the Sovereign's pulse toward the Spire's lower edge. Kael had taken Kura and Jessa deeper into the Rift, hoping to intercept Dex's last signal ping. They hadn't heard from him since. He only knew Dex was down here somewhere. And this place... this was where answers would either find them or break them.
The walls distorted, mosaics of past and future stitched together with agonizing precision. For a moment, Kael saw a forest path covered in snow. A blink later, it became a flood-soaked alley under a burning red sky. Then a hallway, one he almost recognized. A childhood place?
He didn't stop to confirm. Memory was a weapon here.
"Don't trust what looks familiar," Jessa whispered. "It's the Rift playing nice before it bites."
Kura froze ahead of them.
Kael stepped forward, hand ready on his blade-hilt. "What is it?"
She didn't speak, just pointed.
Floating mid-air ahead was a smear. Not a portal. Not a door. A ripple, pulsing like a heartbeat, violet-black and silent. Around it danced fractured shadows, humanoid, but stretched impossibly thin.
Kael's name echoed faintly from the ripple.
"K—Kael…"
It wasn't Jessa. It wasn't Kura.
It was the Rift.
Kura's face drained of color.
"I heard that voice," she said. "Back at the fall site. When the wall broke."
"Same voice?" Kael asked.
"No," she replied. "Same... weight. Like it's not talking to us, it's remembering us."
He stepped closer. The ripple dimmed.
It knew he was there.
Dex's Prison
Dex had been trying to follow the anchor pings Aya sent from the Spire's node chamber, hoping to reconnect with Kael's team along the lower path. But something intercepted him, twisting space beneath his feet. Now he wasn't sure if he was beneath time… or inside it.Somewhere far deeper, Dex sat cross-legged in the middle of a floor that wasn't a floor. The surface shifted every few seconds, sometimes tile, sometimes root-veined stone, sometimes data-slick metal.
He gritted his teeth, not from pain, but from exhaustion. Every breath here was borrowed. Every thought felt like it echoed twice, once now, once from a version of himself who hadn't made it.
All around him were mirrors. No glass, just... reflections. Some showed him younger. Others, older. Some had no eyes. One had too many.
"Not real," he muttered. "Not you. Not me."
But they all blinked in sync with him.
A step echoed behind him, though he hadn't heard anyone approach.
He turned slowly.
A child stood there. Not more than six years old. Familiar face. Familiar eyes.
Kael.
"You brought him here," the child said, not in accusation, but with certainty.
Dex stared. "You're not real."
"You're wrong," the child replied, then began to glitch, his limbs unraveling into lines of light, reforming into the figure Dex had met before. The time-cloaked being.
It hovered again, fragments of ancient glyphs orbiting its form like torn prayers. Its face, if it had one, was a mask of memory.
"You brought the Woven One," it said. "You helped shape the thread. Now you must watch it fray."
The floor pulsed beneath Dex. Heat and cold battled across his skin.
"What do you want from me?"
The being moved closer, not walking, drifting like smoke in slow rewind.
"You carry the echo that binds him. You chose him."
"No," Dex said. "I chose survival. And he, he gave me a way out."
"A way in," the figure corrected. "You are not his tether. You are his mirror."
Before Dex could respond, the air around him snapped, time itself folding inward.
And in the fracture, he saw a scene that hadn't happened yet:
Kael, kneeling at the heart of the Rift, a voice pouring from him not his own.
Aya, crying, reaching out, but not toward Kael.
Toward him. Dex.
And Dex vanishing.
He gasped.
And the vision ended.
Temporal Collapse Event
Kael didn't see the trap until it triggered.
One moment, he was leading them down a slope lined with fractured memory-lights. The next, the world around him looped.
Kura disappeared. Jessa froze mid-step. And Aya, suddenly was in front of him. Bleeding. Collapsing. Again. And again.
"No," Kael whispered, reaching out, but each time his fingers touched her, the loop reset.
"Kael, behind you!" she cried, again.
He turned. Nothing.
She died.
Again.
And again.
Kael dropped to his knees, hands in his hair, trying to find the anomaly's edge. But the loop held tight. He wasn't dying, but Aya was. Over and over.
His anchor buzzed.
The Rift wanted to break him.
But it didn't want to kill him.
Kael took a breath. Then another.
He stood. Walked toward her.
She collapsed.
He held her, but didn't fight it.
Didn't scream. Didn't resist.
He whispered.
"I'm not afraid of this. I know this isn't real. But she is. She matters."
The loop stuttered.
Flickered.
Broke.
Kura's voice snapped him out of the trance. She'd reached him through the field. "Kael! You stopped it. You broke the cycle."
"So how did you break it?" she asked
"I stopped being afraid of losing what wasn't real."
Kura stumbled ahead of the others, breaking into a chamber hollowed from tangled roots and strands of flickering light, like veins pulsing with forgotten moments.
The chamber breathed with memory.
She reached out.
One thread, a thin silver strand, brushed her palm, and the world shifted.
Not her memory.
Dex's.
A younger Dex stood in a cluttered chamber, arguing with someone obscured in shadow,Aya's voice? Elrik's?
"You don't have to follow him," the voice said. "He's not ready."
Dex answered, sharp but steady:
"Neither was I. But he gave me a reason to be."
The memory snapped like glass.
Kura gasped, stepping back. The echo faded.
Her voice was soft. "He chose Kael… even before Kael knew who he was."
Kael turned toward her, but said nothing.
The Rift hadn't just shown them time.
It was showing them loyalties.
The tunnel opened.
Before Kael, Kura, and Jessa lay a hollow carved from time itself, a great sphere with tendrils spiraling into infinity.
The Null Core Cradle.
It pulsed, not with air, but with possibility.
The walls shimmered as they entered, and each of them saw it, visions flickering just beneath the surface of their thoughts.
Jessa saw herself walking away from this place, returning to her family. Safe. Unknown.
Kura saw herself older, bearing Dex's gear, training a new generation of Riftwalkers, as if she'd inherited something deeper than memory.
Kael... saw nothing.
Or maybe he did.
But he didn't flinch. Didn't react. Just walked forward, steady, silent.
Jessa exchanged a glance with Kura. "Did you see anything from him?"
Kura shook her head slowly. "No... but I think he did."
Dex Awakens Something
Dex opened his eyes.
He wasn't alone.
The cloaked being had gone. But the chamber, the prison, had shifted. Cracked.
He stood slowly. His body trembled. But his mind, was clear.
He reached into his pocket. The shard the being gave him.
He held it to his chest.
And he screamed.
Not in pain.
In defiance.
The shard cracked.
The ground split.
And from beneath it—a sound.
A hum.
Deep. Ancient. Alive.
Every surface in the chamber turned toward him. Like it was watching. Waiting.
Then a voice, not his, not the being's, but something older.
"It is no longer sleeping."
Dex collapsed to one knee.
And smiled.
Because now, they would hear it.
All of them.
And the Rift would never be silent again.