The world fell away like breaking glass.
Ethan felt the twist of dimensions—a pull behind his navel, a pressure against his temples. Then silence. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of time. No tick. No breath. No heartbeat.
The Null Zone.
He and Lily stood on a fractured platform floating in absolute void. Around them, gravity was subjective. Directions blurred. The concept of "down" no longer applied. Colors bled into sound. Thought flickered across the air like static.
Lily's voice came through his shard, not her lips. "We've crossed beyond the timelines. We must stay tethered."
Ethan nodded. He could feel the anchor points weakening. The shard glowed dimly in his palm, its pulse syncing with his thoughts. He'd tied a fragment of his consciousness to it before they jumped. It was the only way they could navigate the Null.
Shapes drifted in the dark—ruins of failed timelines. Dead civilizations caught mid-collapse. Skeletons of ships that never sailed. Worlds that never were.
They moved across the space not by walking, but by will. Each thought propelled them forward. The Vault, Memory had said, existed here.
A tremor rocked the void.
Then—laughter.
It was low, ancient, and full of hunger.
Out of the darkness emerged a massive figure—cloaked in the void, eyes burning like collapsed stars.
A Shadow.
Ethan raised the shard instinctively. Lily summoned her blade.
"You dare follow echoes into my dominion?" the creature rasped. "You chase fictions across the bones of time. But this is where all stories end."
Ethan spoke firmly. "We're here for the Vault."
"The Vault?" the Shadow hissed. "There is no Vault. Only unfulfilled promise. Broken intent. Orun showed us that."
"We're not like Orun," Lily said.
"No," the creature snarled. "You are worse. You hope."
It lunged.
The void shattered into lightning as Ethan deflected the blast with his shard. Lily soared through the air—carried by thought and conviction—and struck the Shadow's chest with a flash of burning resolve. The creature howled.
The Null rippled.
A fissure opened beneath them.
Ethan felt himself falling—not physically, but existentially—through his own memories. Through every choice he never made. Every moment he never lived.
And then: clarity.
A light in the shape of a door.
He grasped Lily's hand. Together, they pulled free of the collapse and hurled themselves toward the light.
They crashed onto cold stone.
Before them stood an obsidian archway, framed in silver fire. The door was not carved—it was remembered into being.
"The Vault," Lily whispered.
Symbols swirled over its surface: equations Ethan had seen only in dreams. Concepts of balance, entropy, forgiveness.
He stepped forward and pressed the shard to the door.
It opened.
Inside, the Vault of Beginnings pulsed like a living star.
The code of time itself, still uncorrupted, waiting to be rewritten.