The Chronolith burned cold against TF's palm.
Then the world dissolved.
---
He stood in Piltover. Five years ago. The factory district job—the one where everything went wrong. Or right, depending on perspective.
Younger TF—he could see himself from outside somehow, watching like a ghost—stood at a crossroads. Literally. One street led to the docks and escape. The other led back to the warehouse where Graves waited, trusting his partner would return.
In the original timeline, younger TF had chosen the docks. Had run with the score, leaving Graves to face Piltover enforcers alone.
In this vision, he chose different.
Younger TF turned back toward the warehouse. TF watched himself make the choice he'd regretted for five years. Watched himself become the person he'd wished he'd been.
The timeline shifted. Reality reorganized around that single decision.
---
He saw the arrest. Both of them, together. Enforcers surrounding the warehouse, no escape possible. Graves fighting, taking three enforcers down before they subdued him. Younger TF using card magic, creating illusions, buying time they didn't have.
They lost anyway. Cuffs on wrists. Marched to Piltover prison. Two years of cells and guards and slowly corroding hope.
But together. That was the key difference. Together meant they kept each other sane. Meant Graves's anger had an outlet. Meant TF's guilt never formed because he'd stayed.
Two years passed in accelerated flashes. Release day came. They walked out together, still partners, still bound by shared suffering.
TF expected to see them thriving. Expected growth, redemption, all the things he'd imagined.
Instead, he saw stagnation.
---
The vision showed the next three years in brutal detail.
Same jobs. Same cons. Same patterns. They were good together—excellent even—but comfortable. Neither pushed the other to be better because neither had been broken enough to need rebuilding.
TF watched himself run the same card tricks, pull the same cons, make the same mistakes. Watched Graves settle into patterns of violence, never questioning why, never growing past being muscle.
They made money. Survived. But survival wasn't growth.
The TF in the vision was skilled but hollow. Still running from things, just with Graves beside him now. Still scared of connection, just hiding it better. The betrayal would've forced him to confront himself—to look at what he'd become and decide if he wanted to be different.
Without that moment, without that catalyst, he never changed.
And Graves never learned to trust again because he'd never lost it completely. Never developed the armor that made him selective about loyalty. Never became the man who could choose to forgive because forgiveness required first experiencing deep betrayal.
The vision crystallized around a specific moment three years in the future—one year ago from present.
---
A job gone wrong. Ionian separatists, dangerous people, a score neither of them should've taken. But they did because they were comfortable, and comfortable made you sloppy.
TF watched himself die.
Not dramatically. Not heroically. Just stupidly. A knife in the dark, poison on the blade, vision TF collapsing while Graves roared and killed everyone in the room.
Too late. Always too late.
Graves held younger TF while he died. And TF felt it—the Chronolith let him feel what that timeline's Graves felt. The rage, the grief, the crushing realization that partnership wasn't protection. That staying together hadn't saved either of them from the darkness they carried.
Graves buried him in Bilgewater. Drank himself half to death. Never recovered. Became the exact kind of broken man TF had feared becoming.
---
The vision shifted again.
TF saw his actual timeline. The one where he'd run.
Saw Graves in prison, alone, angry, hardening into someone different. Someone stronger. Someone who learned that trust was earned, that loyalty was precious because it could be lost.
Saw himself running scared. Score after score, never settling, always moving, accumulating guilt like stones in a coat pocket. Getting heavier. Getting desperate. Until desperation forced him to borrow from the Broker, to use power he couldn't repay, to put himself in a position where he had to become better or die trying.
Saw this crew. Ekko, brilliant and broken. Samira, skilled and scarred. Seraphine, empathic and exhausted. Graves, angry and alive. All of them damaged. All of them growing.
All of them here because TF had run five years ago.
The vision showed him assembled this crew because he'd learned to see potential in damaged people—learned it by being damaged himself. Showed him making choices that protected them—learned that by failing to protect Graves before.
Every skill that let him succeed at this heist. Every instinct that kept them alive. Every moment of growth that made him capable of honesty.
All of it required the betrayal.
All of it required the running.
All of it required becoming someone he hated so he could learn to become someone better.
---
The vision reached present moment. Showed two paths forward from here.
Path One: He used the Chronolith. Changed the past. Erased the betrayal. Created the comfortable timeline where neither he nor Graves truly grew. Led inevitably to that knife in the dark, that death in Ionia, that broken ending.
Path Two: He accepted the past. Carried the guilt. Became the person shaped by mistakes. Faced the Broker's debt without the Chronolith. Lived or died based on who he'd become, not who he wished he'd been.
The Chronolith asked without words: Which timeline do you want?
---
TF pulled his hand back, gasping.
He was in the safehouse again. Morning light through broken roof. Four people watching him with varying expressions. The Chronolith sat on the crate, patient and knowing.
"What did you see?" Seraphine asked gently.
TF's hands shook. He looked at Graves—alive, angry, growing, real.
"I saw us," TF said. "Saw what happens if I change it. We stay partners. We stay comfortable. We both end up dead or broken." He turned to look at each of them. "I saw what the betrayal cost. But I also saw what it bought. Everything that happened after. Everything I learned. This crew. This moment. All of it required me running."
"So you don't want to use it," Ekko said.
"I don't want to lose what came after." TF looked at the Chronolith. "The past was terrible. But it made me capable of this—of assembling you, of planning this heist, of caring enough about people to risk honesty. If I erase the betrayal, I erase the growth."
Graves was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You'd choose the timeline where you screwed me over? Where I did two years?"
"I'd choose the timeline where we both survived. Where we both became stronger. Where you learned to be selective with trust and I learned trust was worth earning." TF met his eyes. "The other timeline, we're dead. Both of us. That's what comfortable costs."
Graves processed that. TF watched emotions war across his scarred face—anger, understanding, grief for what might've been, gratitude for what was.
"Hell," Graves said finally. "I hate that you're right."
"Me too."
Seraphine stepped forward. "So none of us use it? All four of us choose the pain over the comfort?"
"What about you?" TF asked. "You touched it first. What did you see?"
"I saw my parents alive. Saw myself cancel the concert, go to them, survive the chem-spill together." Her voice was steady despite tears. "Saw us rebuild in Zaun. Saw myself never become famous, never build the foundation, never help thousands of people who needed someone to see them. My parents died so I could rise. They chose that sacrifice. The Chronolith would let me undo their choice."
"And you won't?" Samira asked.
"I won't disrespect what they gave me." Seraphine touched the artifact one more time, briefly. "They wanted me to fly. Using the Chronolith would clip my own wings."
Four people standing around an artifact that could rewrite their lives. Four people choosing not to use it.
"So what do we do with it?" Ekko asked.
TF thought about the Broker. About the debt. About the deadline three weeks away. Without the Chronolith, he had no payment. Without payment, the debt would be collected.
He'd die. Probably badly.
But at least he'd die as someone who'd grown. Someone who'd assembled this crew, pulled off the impossible, and chosen honesty at the end. That was worth something.
"We destroy it," TF said.
Everyone stared.
"You have a debt," Graves said. "Without this, you're dead."
"Maybe. Probably." TF pulled a card—Death, transformation through ending. "But I'd rather die having grown than live having stayed the same. The Chronolith is dangerous. It shows you the cost, but desperation might make someone use it anyway. Better to remove the temptation."
"The Broker will kill you," Seraphine said softly.
"Then I'll die. But I'll die having done something right." TF looked at the Chronolith. "How do we destroy it?"
"Temporal artifacts are unstable," Ekko said. "Force too much conflicting magical energy into it, it should shatter. We'd need multiple sources simultaneously—"
"I got card magic," TF said.
"I got sonic manipulation," Seraphine added.
"Graves, you got explosives?" Samira asked.
"Always."
"Then we surround it. Pour energy from all sides. Overwhelm the containment." Ekko's tactical mind worked the problem. "Might explode. Might create temporal backlash. Might erase us from the timeline."
"Or might just break," TF said. "One way to find out."
They positioned themselves around the Chronolith. TF held his strongest card—the Magician. Seraphine prepared her voice. Graves set a shaped charge. Samira and Ekko added what magic they could—her weapon enchantments, his residual temporal energy.
"On three," TF said. "One—"
"Wait," Graves interrupted. "Before we do this. Before you throw away your life for principles. I need to say something."
Everyone paused.
Graves looked at TF. "I forgive you. For what it's worth. For the betrayal, the prison, all of it. You're still an idiot. You're still probably going to die stupidly. But you've grown. And that matters."
TF felt something break open in his chest. "Thanks, Malcolm."
"Don't thank me. Just survive the Broker somehow. I'd hate to miss your funeral."
"I'll try." TF raised the Magician card. "Everyone ready?"
They nodded.
"Three. Two. One. Now."
Power erupted from five sources. Card magic, sonic energy, explosive force, weapon enchantments, temporal distortion—all converging on the Chronolith simultaneously.
The artifact resisted. Fought back. Temporal energy flared, trying to stabilize, trying to survive.
TF pushed harder. Felt the magic drain him. Beside him, Seraphine's voice hit notes that shattered glass. Graves's explosive detonated with surgical precision. The crew poured everything into destruction.
The Chronolith cracked.
Light erupted. Not blinding—transforming. TF saw timelines fracture and collapse. Saw every possible future the artifact had contained disperse into probability. Saw the past solidify into permanence.
Then the Chronolith shattered.
Pieces scattered across the floor, inert, powerless. Just crystalline fragments now. Pretty rocks with no magic.
They'd destroyed it.
"It's done," Ekko said, awed.
TF stared at the fragments. The thing he'd risked everything to steal. The thing that could've saved his life. Gone.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "It's done."
Outside, morning continued. Birds sang. Wind moved through broken roof. The world kept turning, indifferent to one artifact's destruction.
Inside, five people stood in the aftermath of an impossible choice.
They'd stolen the power to change the past.
And they'd chosen to let the past stay broken.
Because the breaks had made them stronger.