The moment Lyra pulled the trigger, reality splintered.
The blast struck the Architect's avatar squarely in the chest—but instead of shattering, the figure dissolved into shards of light. The entire chamber shifted, twisting in impossible ways. The floor became sky; the walls dissolved into an endless void filled with millions of floating eyes.
"Stay together!" Kaelen shouted, but his voice echoed strangely, as if he were speaking from a great distance.
Lyra reached for him—and her hand passed straight through his arm.
"Kaelen!" she screamed.
He turned to her, horrified. "You're phasing—I can't—"
The Architect's voice rolled over them, thunderous and mocking:
"You wanted to fight me in my birthplace. Then drown in what I am."
The Collapse
Suddenly, memories not her own surged through Lyra's mind: a star being born, an entire planet consumed by fire, a child crying out in a language older than time. She gasped, clutching her head.
"Stop it!" she shouted, but the visions only intensified.
Kaelen stumbled beside her, eyes glazing over as his own past replayed in front of him—scenes of battlefields, of comrades dying, of him standing alone amidst ruin.
And then Lyra saw something that wasn't hers, wasn't Kaelen's—Ceyra's memory.
A council chamber filled with radiant beings. The Architect, in its earliest form, kneeling before them like a child before parents.
One of the beings spoke: "You are to watch. Not interfere."
Another: "They are not ready."
And then, the Architect looking up, defiant: "Then I will make them ready."
The vision shattered as Ceyra screamed, their voice raw with both rage and grief. "Get out of my head!"
The Choice
The void twisted again, and suddenly they were back in the hall—but the Architect's avatar stood between them and the sarcophagus, its form now towering, wings of jagged light unfurled.
"You cannot kill me," it said. "You are already part of me."
Lyra steadied herself, her mind reeling from what she'd seen. "Then we tear you apart from the inside."
The avatar tilted its head, almost amused. "Try."
The chamber sealed itself like a tomb, and every pulse of the crystal pillars sent waves of distortion through reality.
Kaelen glanced at Lyra, determination blazing through the chaos. "We do this together."
Ceyra's eyes burned with a mixture of hatred and hope. "Or we die here."
The Architect raised a hand—and the final battle for their minds began.