A week ago, this city stood tall.
Now, it bled in silence.
Eron Vale crouched atop the skeleton of a shattered skybridge, the lights of Neo-Bastion flickering below like a dying starfield. Cracks of anti-time still cut through the air, scarring reality like claw marks. Whole blocks floated mid-collapse—frozen fragments where time no longer followed rules.
"This wasn't supposed to happen yet," Eron muttered.
Beside him, Kest stared into the chaos. Her eyes narrowed beneath the weight of timelines she never asked to remember. "The Council is accelerating. They know we've re-entered the chain."
Eron gritted his teeth. "Then they remember too."
"No," she said. "They suspect. They're probing timelines to find which one you splintered into."
A pulse echoed from his chrono-gauntlet. A new fracture. Someone else had altered time—and not subtly.
Eron looked to Kest. "Do you think they've deployed a Precursor?"
"I think they sent something worse." She handed him a chip. "Coordinates. We're not the only ones hunting answers."
They jumped.
---
The coordinates led to the Wastes—an irradiated scar at the edge of the city where memory itself decayed. Here, buildings collapsed in loops. Old conversations echoed like hauntings. No map could chart it because the streets refused to remain in one configuration for long.
Eron stepped forward. His chrono-core vibrated erratically.
"Stay close," he told Kest.
But she was already gone.
A flicker. A scream. And silence.
He spun.
Then everything blinked—like a tape skipping.
He was alone now.
And the Wastes weren't empty.
"You always return to the scene of your crimes," said a voice.
Eron turned slowly.
From the fog, a man emerged. Bronze armor. Mask shaped like a sundial split in half. His presence warped the ground beneath him—time recoiled from him.
Eron's breath caught. "You're not from this strand."
"No," the man said. "But you broke my world. My sister died because your timeline consumed ours."
"I didn't choose this."
"Neither did we."
The Sundial Knight raised his hand. A spear of condensed time screamed toward Eron.
Eron barely dodged, rolling into a collapsed doorway. He activated the chrono-core's pulse mode—halting time for half a second—and sprinted.
He burst through glass, landing in a stairwell twisted by entropy. He scaled it as the knight tore through the building below.
"Keep running," the knight growled. "You've rewritten one too many endings."
Eron reached the roof and turned. His gauntlet buzzed.
Overclock initiated.
He threw his hand out—time froze in jagged frames.
He launched forward in bursts, striking the knight's mask mid-dodge. Sparks exploded. The spear shattered.
But the knight laughed.
"You fight like someone desperate to make it right."
Eron's voice was cold. "I am."
He slammed the knight with a focused chrono-pulse, hurling him through a frozen billboard. The man disappeared into the temporal fog.
Then Kest returned—staggering, blood trailing from her side. "That was a test."
"A test?" Eron demanded.
She nodded, breathing hard. "They were tracking how far you've unlocked your gauntlet."
He helped her to her feet.
"And now?"
She looked him dead in the eye. "Now they'll stop playing fair."
They moved, limping through a corridor of collapsing time.
Eron didn't speak. But deep inside, something solidified.
This wasn't a redemption arc.
It was a rebellion.
And he wouldn't fail it.
Not again.