Rain fell in whispers across the Exo-Barrens, but these were no ordinary drops—they shimmered in hues of ghostly blue, glowing faintly with the charge of displaced time. Each droplet sizzled against the fractured domes above, tapping like a warning on the cracked shell of the sky. Above, the clouds churned like a wounded beast, streaked with veins of violet lightning that tore across the heavens, splitting time's veil to reveal fleeting glimpses of futures that might never be.
Below, the world was a graveyard.
The Exo-Barrens stretched endlessly—a scar across the skin of the planet. Rusted mech remains, their limbs twisted in their final moments of failed defiance, jutted from the scorched earth like jagged bones. The soil was blackened, corrupted by chrono-fallout and the residue of a thousand undone battles. Craters glowed with eerie green light, pulsing slowly like open wounds, each one a testament to weapons born in years yet to come.
And in the center of it all stood Aeris.
Still. Silent. Shadowed by memory.
She didn't flinch as the winds howled, carrying echoes of lost voices. Instead, she stood rooted in place, her long coat fluttering like a banner of defiance against the storm of unraveling time. The air around her vibrated subtly, reacting to her presence—the touch of someone who had once been dead to this timeline, but now walked again.
The Beacon's call hadn't merely awakened her.
It had resurrected her purpose.
Visions crashed through her thoughts in bursts: Kael, calling out in the chaos of collapsing corridors; a shattered oath made beneath twin crimson moons; the silence after betrayal; and Dray—his golden eyes, once filled with warmth, now hollowed out by power, burning cold with a promise of destruction.
Her fingers curled into fists. The memory node embedded in her temple pulsed—bright lavender, rhythmic like a second heartbeat. She raised her wrist, activating the embedded interface.
"System," she murmured. "Chrono-link status?"
A female voice, clear as crystal and edged with urgency, answered:"Link active. Kael's position: verified. Sync level: 63%. Warning: temporal bleed increasing in core sectors."
"Show me," Aeris commanded.
A dome of light unfolded around her, illuminating the dark ruins with blue-white radiance. Floating glyphs and graphs danced midair, mapping the dissonance surrounding the Core Beacon. Waveforms jittered, glitching in chaotic rhythms. Three figures glowed at the epicenter of the distortion—ghostly outlines. And then… a fourth.
Dray.
She flinched.
The sight of him conjured a thousand emotions—none of them pure. He had once sworn he would burn down fate to protect her. Now, he wielded it like a weapon, a master of fractured truths and forgotten futures.
The storm above crackled louder.
Her reflection in a puddle twisted, splitting into dozens of versions of herself—some young and bright-eyed, others older, worn, scarred, or corrupted. All staring back.
"All of you failed," she whispered to them.
With a snap of her fingers, she activated her exosuit's hoverfield. Her boots lifted from the scorched ground, energy forming beneath her in quiet pulses. Her cloak wrapped tighter around her, adapting to the time distortions sweeping in from the west—a storm where lightning reversed and thunder fell upward. Time here wasn't just broken. It was angry.
"System, prepare jump gate. Mark coordinates."
"Gate initialization in progress. Chrono-stability marginal. Warning: 41% risk of mis-jump."
"I'll take it."
A fracture peeled open before her—a rippling vortex of color and distortion, spinning with the fury of a collapsed galaxy. Inside, glimpses of other moments flickered—Kael in combat, the Beacon flickering, Dray smiling before bloodshed. She exhaled and stepped forward, vanishing into the light.
At the same moment, chaos reigned in the Beacon chamber.
The room, once a sanctum of stability, had become a storm of fractured time. Walls pulsed with energy, flickering in and out of past and future states. Machinery snapped between pristine and ruined with each heartbeat. The floor twisted under Kael's boots, warping like hot glass.
Kael's blade clashed violently with Carth's massive pulse-axe. Sparks erupted, but these were no ordinary bursts of energy—each spark spawned ripples in reality. Shadows of Kael's possible futures flickered and vanished around him. One version fell in battle. Another turned against his allies. A third knelt at Dray's side.
He fought harder to silence them all.
Across the chamber, Velis moved like a specter, her cloak trailing ribbons of darkness. She twisted time into cruel illusions—Kael saw the corpses of loved ones, heard Aeris screaming, felt the cold betrayal again and again.
And Dray?
He stood still, arms folded, watching like a god inspecting a failed creation.
"You look tired," he said. "Still pretending this matters?"
Kael roared and struck again. "You destroyed everything!"
Dray's voice was calm. "I rewrote everything."
The Beacon behind them pulsed again—unstable. The air screamed.
Then—A rift tore through the chamber like a sword slash.
Aeris landed in the center, her boots slamming into fractured steel, a shockwave of lavender energy blasting outward. The walls groaned. Carth stumbled back. Velis recoiled, eyes wide with recognition.
And Dray… smiled.
But it didn't reach his eyes.
"Hello, love," he said. "You're late."
Aeris's face was steel. "You broke the oath, Dray."
He took a step forward. "I gave us freedom."
She drew her blade—pure light, humming with harmonics of the past and future. "You gave us a nightmare."
He raised his hands, conjuring fire that shimmered like molten time.
"You know what's next, then," he whispered.
"Yes," Aeris said. "Judgment."
And then the Beacon cracked—one final pulse.
Reality shattered like glass.
The war began.