Richard felt time slowing down as he weighed his options. Lancaster's gaze, a mixture of authority and genuine concern, contrasted with Elyndra's silver eyes, full of pain but also unbreakable conviction.
"Do you really know your guide, Richard?" Lancaster insisted, taking a cautious step forward. "The Sylvan are not the innocent victims they pretend to be. They were the ones who created the fragments in the first place, weapons designed to manipulate the very structure of reality."
Elyndra struggled to maintain the barrier as a third shot impacted it. A thin line of silver blood ran from her nose due to the effort.
"Richard..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Decide for yourself, but do it quickly."
Richard looked again at the reconstructed hexagon, which continued disintegrating, and the fluctuating pillar containing the fragment. Everything he had learned during his journey across the board—the eternal cycles of destruction and rebirth, the fractal nature of time, the interconnection of all events—resonated in his mind.
And then, with surprising clarity, the answer emerged.
"I won't choose sides," he declared, his voice firm and resolute. "If I've learned anything here, it's that simple dichotomies are illusions. The truth is always more complex."
Lancaster frowned.
"This is no time for philosophies, Richard. The temple structure is collapsing. We have minutes, perhaps seconds."
"Exactly," Richard responded, and in a move that surprised everyone, including Elyndra, he jumped toward the partially reconstructed hexagon.
The floor beneath his feet gave way almost immediately, but he didn't fall. He had learned his lesson well: the temporal currents supported him, allowing him to slide to the next hexagon as if surfing on invisible waves.
"Stop him!" Lancaster ordered, and two agents fired their energy weapons.
Elyndra, gathering her last strength, deflected one of the discharges. The other grazed Richard's shoulder, causing him to momentarily lose his balance in the temporal currents.
"Richard!" shouted Elyndra.
Recovering, Richard continued advancing. Each hexagon he stepped on disintegrated faster than the previous one, forcing him to move with increasing speed. The temporal currents grew more turbulent, as if the attack on the temple was destabilizing the very structure of time within it.
Meanwhile, the situation at the chamber entrance worsened. Elyndra's barrier finally collapsed, and she fell exhausted. The agents advanced, but something unexpected happened: the temple itself reacted.
The stratified walls of solidified time began to liquefy, forming a liquid barrier between the invaders and the center of the chamber. Lancaster shouted orders to his men, who deployed some type of advanced technological equipment to counteract the temple's defense.
Richard took advantage of this distraction to advance more rapidly. He was just one hexagon away from the central platform when the floor between him and his goal vanished completely, leaving an absolute void between him and the fragment.
"There's no path!" he exclaimed, frustrated.
Suddenly, the ancient voice of the temple resonated again, now with an urgency it hadn't had before:
*"The cycle breaks. The balance fades. The test must evolve."*
The pillar of light containing the fragment began to rise, moving away from Richard's reach. Simultaneously, the hexagon where he stood began to ascend as well, becoming a column that carried him upward, while the rest of the chamber transformed dramatically.
The ceiling, previously invisible in darkness, now revealed its true nature: a massive dome with the structure of concentric rings, similar to a cross-section of an ancient tree. Each ring glowed with a different tone, representing distinct geological eras.
"The Eternal Calendar!" exclaimed Elyndra, who had managed to stand up and now observed the transformation with amazement, despite her weakness. "The temple is revealing its core!"
The column continued elevating Richard until he reached a level where he could see the entire chamber from above. What had been a board of hexagons on the floor now reconfigured as a complex three-dimensional system of floating platforms, connected by temporal currents visible as luminous ribbons.
Lancaster and his agents were trapped in the lower part of the chamber, stopped by barriers of solidified time that continued forming around them. Richard could see his former mentor looking up, his expression unreadable at that distance.
"Richard!" Elyndra's voice reached him from below. "The temple has changed the test! Now you must navigate the Calendar!"
The fragment, still within its pillar of light, now floated at the exact center of the dome, equidistant from all points of the Eternal Calendar.
"What must I do?" shouted Richard, evaluating the floating platforms surrounding him.
"Follow the patterns! Each ring represents an era! You must synchronize your journey with the pulses of the Calendar!"
Richard carefully observed the dome above his head. The concentric rings were not static; they pulsed following a complex rhythm, as if beating in unison with some invisible cosmic heart. The floating platforms also pulsed, each in synchrony with a specific ring of the Calendar.
He understood the test: he had to jump from platform to platform following the exact rhythm of the pulses, synchronizing with the temple's temporal flow.
A new tremor, more violent than the previous ones, shook the entire structure. Massive fragments of the ceiling began to detach, briefly revealing the sky outside before some type of energy field sealed the breaches.
"We're running out of time!" shouted Elyndra, who had begun climbing one of the walls using the crystalline veins as handholds. "The temple won't resist much longer!"
Below, Lancaster had managed to overcome some of the temporal barriers. Richard saw him extract a small but complex device from his pocket and activate it. A wave of pulsating energy emanated from the apparatus, causing the barriers to visibly fluctuate.
"He's using a Temporal Disruptor!" exclaimed Elyndra, horrified. "That will destabilize the entire temple! Richard, you must hurry!"
With no more time to doubt, Richard evaluated the nearby platforms. He carefully observed the pulsation pattern of the Calendar's rings and, when the closest platform glowed in synchrony with his current position, he jumped.
The jump was perfect: he landed just as the platform reached its maximum brightness. Immediately, he felt a wave of knowledge invade his mind: visions of the first living cells forming in primordial oceans, the slow but inexorable evolution of simple organisms to complex ones, all compressed into an instant of pure understanding.
"The origin of life!" he gasped, assimilating the experience. "Each platform contains the essence of an evolutionary period!"
Now he understood the deeper purpose of the test: it wasn't simply to physically navigate between platforms, but to absorb and comprehend the complete history of terrestrial life, from its first moments to the present.
Observing the pattern, he jumped to the next platform when it pulsed in synchrony. This time, he experienced the Cambrian explosion: the sudden diversification of complex life forms, the development of shells and skeletons, the proliferation of strange and wonderful beings in ancient seas.
Platform after platform, Richard advanced through Earth's evolutionary history: the conquest of dry land, the reign of dinosaurs, their extinction, the rise of mammals...
Each jump brought him closer to the center where the fragment floated, but also exposed him to increasingly deeper and more complex knowledge. It wasn't just biological or geological information; it was the fundamental understanding of how time and earth interacted to create the conditions for life as he knew it.
Meanwhile, the battle below continued to intensify. The Organization's agents had deployed more Temporal Disruptors, creating zones where time itself seemed to violently distort. Elyndra had managed to reach an intermediate level of the chamber and was fighting with two agents who had intercepted her, using what appeared to be advanced magical abilities to counter their technological weapons.
"Elyndra!" shouted Richard, worried for her safety.
"Focus on the test!" she responded, deflecting an energy ray with a shield of bluish light. "You can't help me if you fail!"
Richard nodded reluctantly and returned his attention to the Calendar. He had completed approximately three-quarters of the journey, experiencing evolution up to the appearance of the first hominids.
He jumped to the next platform and was flooded with visions of the first human civilizations: the invention of agriculture, writing, architecture; the rise and fall of empires, the development of art and science, all in an overwhelming torrent of information.
But something else filtered through these visions: images of another world, a parallel reality where evolution had followed a different path. He briefly glimpsed cities built in harmony with nature, humanoid but ethereal beings manipulating energies that humans barely began to understand, and finally...
The creation of the fragments.
Richard gasped at the revelation. He saw how these beings—the Sylvan, he understood—had created the fragments as repositories of primordial knowledge, designed to preserve their accumulated wisdom in case of catastrophe. They weren't weapons, as Lancaster had suggested, but living libraries, time capsules of ancestral knowledge.
But before he could fully process this information, another catastrophic tremor shook the temple. Several platforms disintegrated, and Richard barely managed to jump in time to the next in the sequence.
This platform contained even more recent knowledge: the industrial revolution, the world wars, accelerated technological development... and the exact moment when the Veil had begun to form between the worlds.
He saw fragments of that cataclysmic event: a chain reaction initiated not deliberately, but as an unforeseen consequence of experiments conducted simultaneously in both worlds. The Veil had not been intentionally created, but had emerged as a natural protective barrier when the very structure of reality began to collapse due to mutually destructive interferences.
"Richard!" Lancaster's voice reached him from below. The professor had managed to elude most of the temple's defenses and now found himself on a lower platform, directly beneath him. "What you're seeing are manipulations! The Sylvan are distorting history in their favor!"
Richard looked down briefly.
"How do you know what I'm seeing?" he asked, suspicious.
"Because I too have experienced these visions," replied Lancaster, his voice softer now. "In another temple, years ago. That's how I was recruited by the Agency. But what you don't understand is that each temple shows a biased version of history, according to who built it."
A new burst of energy illuminated the lower part of the chamber: Elyndra had defeated the two agents and was now rapidly ascending toward Richard, jumping between platforms with supernatural grace.
"Don't listen to him!" she shouted. "The Organization has manipulated human history for centuries to maintain control over the fragments!"
Richard found himself once again at the center of contradicting narratives. But now he had something he didn't possess before: direct experience of the cosmic history contained in the Calendar's platforms.
He observed the last platforms separating him from the fragment. Only three jumps remained. The Calendar above his head pulsed more rapidly now, as if time itself were accelerating due to the temple's destabilization.
"The truth isn't in what they tell me," he murmured to himself. "It's in what I've directly experienced."
With renewed determination, he jumped to the penultimate platform before the center. This time, the visions that flooded him were of a possible future: he saw the Veil strengthening until becoming impenetrable, permanently separating the worlds. He saw humanity gradually forgetting the existence of the other side, relegating it to myths and legends, while the Sylvan slowly withered, deprived of the vital exchange with the human world.
And he saw something more: the fragments reunited, their energies combined creating a bridge between the worlds, restoring the balance that had been lost.
It was a possible future, not a certainty. But it was a future worth fighting for.
A final tremor, more violent than all the previous ones, shook the temple to its foundations. Enormous sections of the dome detached, falling toward the abyss. The remaining platforms began to disintegrate one after another. The Eternal Calendar was fracturing, its rings separating and breaking like glass.
"Richard!" Lancaster and Elyndra shouted simultaneously from different positions.
Richard looked one last time at the fragment, so close but still unreachable, and then toward his two possible allies. Elyndra was bleeding from multiple wounds, but continued ascending determinedly. Lancaster had managed to reach almost his level and extended a hand toward him.
"Time for decisions is over, Richard!" shouted Lancaster. "The temple is going to collapse! Come with me now or die here!"
"Don't do it!" counter-argued Elyndra. "If you go with him, everything you've learned, everything you've fought for, will have been in vain!"
The platform under Richard's feet began to disintegrate. The fragment, still in its column of light, seemed increasingly unstable, fluctuating violently.
It was then that the temple's voice resonated one last time, weaker but still powerful:
*"The test evolves with the seeker. It is not the destination but the journey that reveals the truth."*
And Richard understood. It wasn't about physically reaching the fragment. It was about internalizing its essence, truly understanding what it represented.
With a decisive movement, he jumped. But not toward the fragment, nor toward Lancaster, nor toward Elyndra.
He jumped directly toward the center of the abyss, toward the void between platforms, where temporal currents collided in chaotic patterns.
"RICHARD!" both shouted, horrified.
But Richard wasn't falling. He was floating, supported by the temporal currents he had learned to navigate. He extended his hands, not trying to physically grasp the fragment, but connecting with its essence at an energetic level.
"I understand now," he said, his voice resonating with unusual calmness amidst the chaos. "Earth and time aren't opposites, they're complementary. Permanence and change are two sides of the same coin. I can't possess this knowledge; I can only be its conduit."
Around him, the temple continued crumbling. But in that moment of perfect understanding, Richard experienced extraordinary clarity. He saw the patterns underlying all existence, the fractal structures connecting the microscopic with the cosmic, the past with the future, earth with time.
The fragment in its pillar of light responded to this understanding. It began to pulse in synchrony with Richard's heartbeats, establishing a resonance.
"It's working!" exclaimed Elyndra, who had managed to stay on a partially intact platform.
"No!" shouted Lancaster. "You don't understand what you're doing!"
Richard barely heard them. He was completely focused on the connection with the fragment, which grew stronger with each pulse. He felt he was on the verge of a fundamental revelation when...
A deafening explosion shook the base of the temple. One of the agents had activated what appeared to be a demolition device. The entire structure shuddered, and the few platforms that remained began to fall toward the abyss.
"Time's up!" shouted Lancaster, activating some type of device on his wrist. An energy field enveloped him, and he began floating toward one of the breaches in the ceiling. "Last offer, Richard! Come with me or perish with the temple!"
Richard didn't respond. He remained concentrated on the fragment, so close to establishing the complete connection.
"Richard!" This time it was Elyndra who shouted. "We can't maintain the connection here! The temple is collapsing at a quantum level! We must leave and find another way!"
Richard looked at the fragment, so close... but Elyndra was right. The entire chamber was folding upon itself in an impossible manner, as if space-time itself were fracturing. The temporal currents that sustained him were beginning to vanish.
With a heavy heart but clear mind, Richard broke his concentration and looked at Elyndra.
"How do we get out?" he shouted over the roar of the collapsing temple.
She pointed toward a small opening that had appeared in one of the walls, where the layers of time had separated.
"Through there! It's a temporal fault! It could take us to the surface!"
Richard nodded and, using the last functional temporal currents, propelled himself toward Elyndra. Together, they launched themselves toward the opening just as the central chamber completely imploded.
The temporal tunnel was chaotic, full of fragments of distorted reality. Richard and Elyndra clung to each other as they were dragged by wild currents toward an unknown destination.
"The fragment!" shouted Richard. "We were so close!"
"It's not lost!" responded Elyndra, her voice barely audible over the tunnel's roar. "The temple will protect its core! It will relocate! We'll find it again!"
Before Richard could ask more, they were violently expelled from the tunnel into the blinding daylight.
They landed painfully on a leaf-covered ground, in the middle of a forest Richard didn't recognize. The air was fresh and clean, and the sounds of nature surrounded them—a shocking contrast to the chaos they had just escaped.
Richard slowly rose, evaluating if he had serious injuries. Some cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. Elyndra was a few meters away, trying to stand with difficulty.
"Where are we?" he asked, helping her to her feet.
Elyndra observed their surroundings, orienting herself.
"Still in the Umbral Forest, but far from where we entered the temple." She pointed toward the sky. "Look."
In the distance, a column of green energy rose from the ground to disappear into the clouds—the last visible vestige of the Temple of the Deep Roots.
"The temple is relocating," explained Elyndra. "Seeking a new anchor in reality. It could take days, weeks or even months to stabilize again."
Richard observed the distant column with a mixture of frustration and amazement.
"We were so close..."
"But it wasn't in vain," responded Elyndra, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You experienced the temple's knowledge. You may not have physically obtained the fragment, but part of its essence is already within you."
Richard was about to respond when he noticed something strange: the temporal compass in his hand had changed. The metal seemed to have fused with some type of organic material, similar to the living wood of the Ancient Roots. The needle no longer oscillated erratically, but pulsed with a constant rhythm, pointing directly toward the distant column.
"The compass..." he murmured, showing it to Elyndra. "It has transformed."
She examined it with surprise and then nodded, understanding.
"The temple has marked you as a legitimate candidate. When it reestablishes, the compass will guide you directly to it. It's... extraordinarily rare for this to happen."
Richard felt a mixture of emotions: disappointment at not having obtained the fragment, but also a strange sense of achievement. The temple had judged him worthy, even if the test had been interrupted.
"What do we do now?" he asked, carefully storing the transformed compass.
Elyndra looked toward the distant column one last time before turning to the surrounding forest.
"We need to recover and plan our next move. The Organization knows we're after the fragments, and now Lancaster has seen us personally. The situation has become much more dangerous."
Richard nodded, the reality of their situation fully settling in.
"And we must talk," he added, looking directly at Elyndra. "About the Sylvan, about the fragments, about what really happened when the Veil was formed."
Elyndra held his gaze for a long moment before slowly nodding.
"Yes, it's time for some truths. But not here. This place is still impregnated with unstable temporal energy."
They began walking through the forest, moving away from the energy column. Richard cast one last glance over his shoulder toward that visible reminder of how close he had been to obtaining the third fragment.
"We'll return," he promised silently. "And next time, I'll be prepared."
The earth-time fragment would have to wait. But Richard knew that the knowledge he had gained in the Eternal Calendar—the true history of the fragments, the nature of the Veil, the potential future he had glimpsed—was almost as valuable as the fragment itself.
As they ventured deeper into the Umbral Forest, Richard reflected on the revelations of the last few hours. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together, but the complete picture remained elusive.
And somewhere behind them, the Temple of the Deep Roots continued its mystical migration, carrying with it the third fragment—a fragment that, Richard was now convinced, was eventually destined to be his.