The road back to the breach was empty.Even the wind refused to follow them.
The boy walked a few steps behind Riven, clutching a small handheld emitter — their only defense against the signal.The ruins ahead were silent skeletons of glass and steel, frozen mid-collapse, like time itself had decided to stop breathing.
"You built this place, didn't you?"The boy's voice trembled slightly.
Riven didn't answer at first. His eyes traced the crumbling skyline, the twisted towers like broken bones under the red-blue glow of the twin suns.
"I designed it," he said finally. "Before the Chrono-Gate. Before everything fell apart."
The boy frowned.
"Then why does it feel alive?"
Riven glanced at him. "Because it is."
The deeper they went, the more the city changed.
Light didn't move normally here. It bent in gentle curves, as though each photon remembered a different version of the world. Reflections in glass panels showed people who weren't there — men and women walking backward, laughing, dying, repeating endlessly.
When Riven brushed his hand along a wall, a ripple spread across its surface — and for an instant, he saw Lira.Her face, blurry, distorted, but real enough to make him stumble.
"Riven?" the boy asked quietly."Did you see her?" Riven's voice cracked. "Lira… she was—""Who's Lira?""The reason this world broke."
At the heart of the ruins stood the Gate.Or what was left of it.
A ring of metal fused into stone, humming faintly. Around it, the air shimmered — a scar between timelines. The sound wasn't noise, but whispers. Thousands of voices murmuring in broken patterns.
The boy covered his ears. "It's like they're screaming."
Riven knelt beside the remains, scanning the energy field. The readings spiked and twisted violently.
"It's remembering," he murmured."What is?""The city. Every death, every collapse. Every version of me that failed."
The boy stepped closer.
"Versions of you?"
Riven didn't respond. His wristwatch flickered — showing dozens of timestamps overlapping each other, every one of them today.
"The loops aren't gone," Riven said quietly. "They're stacked. All the timelines that broke… they're converging here."
Suddenly, the light changed.The red sun dimmed. The blue sun brightened.And the city moved.
Buildings shifted an inch to the left — simultaneously — as though the entire structure of reality had hiccupped.The boy gasped. "Did you see—?"
Riven grabbed him. "Don't look at it too long! The timeline's trying to stabilize itself!"
The air fractured like glass. Echoes of other Riven Solases appeared for seconds at a time — screaming, bleeding, laughing madly before flickering out again.
One of them locked eyes with him before vanishing.That version's face was burned, half-machine.And its voice, just before disappearing, whispered one word:
"Run."
The ground cracked open beneath them.From the split, a pulse of blue-white energy erupted — not sound, not light, but memory.Images flashed before Riven's eyes: his lab exploding, Lira reaching out, the Chrono-Gate collapsing into itself.
Then a new image — one he didn't recognize.
He himself, years older, standing beside a man in a mirror image.A perfect copy.Except the other Riven smiled.
"Who—who are you?" he whispered.
And the voice came, faint but clear, echoing from the breach itself:
[I am the one you left behind.][I became what you refused to be.]
The boy stumbled backward. "Riven, what's happening?!"
Riven's heart pounded. "It's not the algorithm. It's not the ghosts…"He looked up at the glowing breach.
"It's me. Another me. The one who didn't stop the loop."
As the world shook around them, a final surge of static filled the air — and from the shimmering gate, a hand reached out.
It wasn't human anymore.Metal, bone, and light.
And from the rift came that same calm, fractured voice:
"Welcome back, Riven Solas. You were never supposed to survive."
The screen on his wristwatch began to melt — showing the time fragment:03:03 A.M. — the same moment the loops always began.