The stars above the Divide shimmered like old scars, silver and wide, etched across the endless dark. Riley stared up at them as her breath steamed into the frigid night. Each inhalation was shallow, not from exhaustion, but from something deeper: the anticipation that laced the air with static. A storm was coming. But not of wind. Not of rain.
Of memory.
Of fire.
Daphne sat beside her on the remains of an old rail spine, recalibrating her gauntlet with a surgeon's precision. Sparks clicked against metal, the rhythm hypnotic. Riley could feel the pulse of their soul link thrumming quietly between them, not speaking, but present.
"You're doing it again," Daphne said without looking up.
"Doing what?"
"Staring like you're trying to remember something that hasn't happened yet."
Riley managed a small smile. "Maybe I am."
She turned her gaze downward, across the broken valley that stretched far below. The ruins of three timelines overlapped in what once was called Hollowreach. Buildings partially formed, half-dissolved by echo collapse. Fire-twisted spires jutted up like bone shards from the land. It was beautiful. Terrifying. Like time itself had suffered trauma.
And somewhere in that fracture, the Ash King's new node had been seeded.
They called it the Spiral.
It wasn't just a relay or hive or conduit.
It was something new.
Alive.
Three hours earlier, they had met with Brael in a submerged enclave known as the Ember Vault—a hidden outpost beneath the fractured skin of the Wastes. The Echo-Born had gathered there, tense and wordless, clustered around burning scry-wells and whisper maps that changed with every breath.
"We have confirmation," Brael had said, his voice low but hard. "Velrax has begun constructing the Spiral beneath Hollow Reach. It's designed to collapse and rewrite every surviving echo into a single, controllable timeline. One where he wins."
Riley's fingers had clenched at the word. "How long?"
"Maybe two days. Maybe one. Once it activates, the fire won't just remember. It will obey."
Daphne asked the question Riley had avoided. "Is it protected?"
Brael nodded grimly. "More than any Skuldrith structure we've seen. Layered defenses. Echo phantoms. Chrono-knots. Things that don't exist until they kill you."
Riley had stepped forward then. "Then we hit it first. Before it's finished. Before it breathes."
"And how do you propose we do that?" someone asked.
Her answer had been simple. "Together."
Now, perched at the cliff's edge, she reviewed the plan again, every step etched into her mind like fire-branded iron.
Team Alpha would strike the outer parameter—disrupt the echo shells and draw out the phantom guards. Team Beta would descend the left spire and disable the Spiral's memory anchors, nodes that rewrote cause and effect like tangled threads. Riley and Daphne, with a trio of Echo-Born elites, would enter the Spiral core and trigger a full burn cleanse.
The tactical risk was astronomical.
The emotional risk, worse.
Because Riley knew this wasn't just a battle.
It was a reckoning.
They moved at dawn.
The sky above burned violet and gold as sun and echo-light battled for dominance. Each ray that pierced the cloudline cast a ripple of time distortion over the battlefield. As they descended through the canyon ridges, Riley felt the fire within her begin to stir, sensing the Spiral like a heart feeling its twin.
They encountered the first chrono-knot thirty feet from the first node gate. A ripple in the air like a glass lens—and then a creature stepped out. A Skuldrith not built from flesh, but from fragments: helmet shards, memory echoes, bone that shimmered like old regrets.
Riley didn't wait.
She launched her fire in a spiral pattern, wrapping the creature in heat not meant to burn, but to reveal. Its scream wasn't vocal. It was psychic. Images crashed through her skull: children taken, soldiers twisted, cities that died before being born. She staggered, but Daphne caught her wrist.
"Focus. Anchor. Me."
Riley breathed through the pain, the flame, the flood. She could feel Daphne like a signal tower in the storm. She remembered why they were here. Who they were.
She burned it.
The node gate collapsed into itself, and the path cleared.
Inside the Spiral was not a chamber. It was a spiral staircase without walls, suspended over nothing. Each step flickered in and out of phase. Riley's boots hit the stone, and immediately her mind fractured.
She was twelve again.
She was no one.
She was the flame.
Daphne reached her first, eyes blazing. She wrapped the gauntlet around Riley's wrist and activated the soul anchor. A shimmer of fire passed between them, sealing their connection, tethering Riley to the now.
"Hold on," Daphne said, voice shaking. "We're almost through."
The core came into view—a spiraling helix of gold and ash, swirling with tethered sparks, each one a rewritten moment. As they approached, the Spiral spoke.
Not in voice.
In memory.
A hundred versions of Riley stepped forward. Some dead. Some victorious. Some monstrous.
She trembled.
"This is what he wants," Daphne said, fury in her voice. "To make you forget which one you are."
Riley took a breath.
She didn't need to remember.
She needed to choose.
And so she did.
With her flame, she touched the Spiral.
And willed it to remember.
Not the war.
Not the destruction.
But the bond.
Her and Daphne.
Fire and mind.
Hope and choice.
The Spiral screamed. A shriek of metal and myth. Light erupted from the core, blasting out across the battlefield in waves.
Above them, the sky twisted. The timelines fractured again—but not into chaos. Into harmony. The echo-storm recoiled.
And the Ash King's presence, for the first time, retreated.
They emerged from the Spiral broken but intact. Their comrades regrouped. The Echo-Born gathered in silence, watching the flames rise like dawn over the Divide.
Riley stood at the edge of the Spiral's collapse, feeling the fire inside her settle.
"You didn't just stop him," Daphne whispered.
"No," Riley replied.
"You rewrote him."
But she knew it wasn't over.
It never would be.
Because memory doesn't die.
It waits. Burning.