There was no sky.
No ground.
Only fractures in reality—like someone had taken the universe and cracked it like glass.
The Chronos Gate didn't have coordinates. It was found inside the transmission that followed the Thanatos Protocol's seal: a recursive data pattern that unfolded only when observed from multiple angles of thought. It took Genesis seven full minutes of quantum computation to decipher the location.
It wasn't on any planet.
It was in sub-temporal space—a pocket of reality where time coiled rather than flowed.
Riven, Talia, and Obsidian stood inside the temporal rig known as the Paradox Well, their bodies linked to the neural simulation chamber and shielded by chrono-harmonic stabilizers. Time outside ran normally. Inside, it was something else entirely.
"Whatever happens in there," Talia warned, strapping on the cognitive limiter, "don't believe anything that tells you what year it is."
Obsidian grunted. "I already don't trust clocks."
Genesis activated the gate.
The world turned inside out.
Riven awoke in a memory that wasn't his.
He stood in the middle of a battlefield, bodies strewn across burning plains. Above, silver clouds churned backwards. Time was rewinding. The dead gasped, stood, and re-entered the fight.
A familiar face approached—his mother. But she was young, vibrant, laughing.
"Riven! Come inside, you'll catch cold!"
He stepped back. "You're not real."
She smiled sadly. "Neither are you. Not yet."
The illusion shattered.
He tumbled through a thousand versions of himself: the boy in rags, the warrior in gold, the overlord in chains.
Meanwhile, Talia found herself aboard a broken Genesis cruiser, adrift between stars. The crew were long dead—except they weren't. They kept reliving the moment of impact, screaming, repairing, dying again.
A figure sat calmly in the captain's chair.
"Gideon Raze," she whispered.
The man didn't look up. "I failed time. You might not."
She approached cautiously. "Are you an echo?"
"An anchor," he replied. "The Gate needs witnesses. If no one remembers the fracture, it consumes itself."
He handed her a data prism. "Chronos only allows those who've broken to reshape it."
Talia accepted it, and the vision dissolved.
Obsidian's test was… cruel.
He relived the moment he killed his own brother.
Over and over.
Each time, a new version of the scene played: sometimes he hesitated, sometimes he begged, sometimes his brother thanked him. But each ended with blood.
Eventually, a boy—his brother at age nine—stood before him.
"Why do you keep killing me?"
Obsidian fell to his knees. "Because it was the only way."
The boy nodded. "Then find another way."
The world went white.
They all emerged at the heart of the Chronos Gate.
A massive construct floated in the temporal abyss—like a clocktower built by a god who'd never seen a clock. Gears the size of cities spun sideways. Pulses of reverse-light throbbed through golden arches.
A final test awaited.
CHRONOS QUESTION:Would you change the past if it broke the future?
Three answers floated before them:
Yes. Sacrifice stability for redemption.
No. Let pain shape evolution.
Both. Carry the wound, but never repeat it.
Riven answered without hesitation.
"Three."
The Gate agreed.
A sphere of compressed time unraveled at their feet, revealing a core of infinite mirrors.
Each reflection showed a world that could have been: Eden Core failed. Thanatos unleashed. Riven dying at birth. Earth abandoned.
Then all the mirrors snapped into one.
A final message echoed across all frequencies:
Chronos Gate Synced. System Memory Restored.FINAL VAULT: HADES ENGINE. LOCATION: EARTH CORE.
They awakened in the real world.
But the stars outside the Genesis flagship were no longer familiar.
Obsidian gasped. "That's… not the Moon."
Talia stared in horror. "That's not even the solar system."
Genesis confirmed it.
"Due to temporal drift, reentry coordinates shifted by 3.2 million years."
They were still alive.
But time had moved on.
And something else had come with them.