Time broke.
Not in a grand explosion or with thunderous sound—but in a silence so absolute, it silenced even thought.
Kael and Aeris tumbled through it, hand in hand, not falling, not flying—just moving, dragged by something neither had a name for. Around them, timelines fractured like glass under pressure. Cities turned to ash and were reborn in the blink of an eye. People lived and died in reverse. Suns blinked in and out of existence like nervous hearts.
And above it all hovered Null.
No longer cloaked in stillness, his form had evolved—or devolved. His body was now made of broken clocks and molten starlight. Wings of corrupted data fluttered behind him. His face remained a mask, but it twisted now, reflecting their every doubt.
"You've made a mistake," he said, his voice now thousands, echoing across time's corpse.
Kael stood taller, body glowing with power he hadn't known he had. Aeris flared beside him, her wings fully restored but now feathered with fire and shadow. The balance between them was perfect—light and dark, faith and doubt, memory and will.
Kael's voice was steady. "You pushed too far. Took too much. You made us remember what mattered."
Null hissed. "Hope is a disease. And you are its patient zero."
He raised his arms. Around him, the remnants of alternate realities shuddered, fusing into monstrous forms: a dragon built from lost futures, a cathedral made of failed gods, a serpent of forgotten kings. They surged toward Kael and Aeris like an unstoppable storm.
Aeris turned to Kael. "Do you trust me?"
"With every timeline."
She smiled, and they leapt.
They didn't fight with weapons. They fought with moments.
Kael reached deep into the fracture and pulled out a version of himself who never stopped fighting. That Kael wielded pain like a blade and stood beside him.
Aeris summoned a version of herself who had lost everything but still smiled. She moved like wind through flame, carving through beasts made of grief.
Null screamed, recoiling, his body fraying at the edges.
"THIS IS NOT ORDER! THIS IS MADNESS!"
Kael answered, voice a roar: "No—it's freedom."
They pierced through the storm, Kael flanked by versions of himself both noble and broken, Aeris followed by all the selves she tried to hide. They weren't alone. They were legion. They were possibility incarnate.
The moment they reached Null, time shattered entirely.
There was no past. No future.
Only now.
Kael raised his hand.
Aeris gripped his other.
And together—they touched Null's heart.
What they saw stunned them.
He wasn't a monster.
He was a boy. Once. Alone in the dark. Forgotten by a version of the world that chose something—someone—else. He'd wandered the ruins of timelines hoping to matter. When he couldn't find love, he became fear. When no one remembered him, he became erasure.
Aeris whispered, "You're not meant to be erased."
Null blinked. Just once.
And wept.
Reality folded inward.
The war ended not with a scream.
But a sigh.
And a promise.