The land beyond the ravine was wrong.
It shifted underfoot. Not like mud or broken stone—but like memory. Each step forward was a pull through a thread not meant to be walked. Zeeler could feel it—the hum of fractured time pressing against his bones. The fracture on his chest pulsed in rhythm, drawn forward by something it couldn't resist.
Kael was quiet beside him.
His eyes were open now, but distant. Still pale from the surge, still echoing with things he hadn't said. Zeeler didn't press him. He just walked. Rythe followed behind, blades holstered, scanning every broken tree and shimmering patch of air.
Ahead, the forest gave way to stone.
Pillars rose like roots torn from beneath the world—twisting upward into the clouds, each one etched with shifting glyphs. They bled light. Not gold. Not shadow. Something between.
Zeeler stared up at them.
"This is it?"
Kael nodded slowly. "The Temple of the Root. It remembers everything… even things that haven't happened yet."
Rythe muttered, "Great. Another place that wants to eat my memories."
Kael touched one of the stone roots.
It responded.
A pulse shot through the temple. Trees bent. Clouds scattered. Light peeled backward—revealing a staircase carved from the marrow of time itself. It spiraled down into the earth. Endless.
"Let's go," Kael said quietly.
Zeeler followed, hand never leaving his staff.
---
The air grew colder with each step.
Not in temperature—but in intention. The walls flickered with moments Zeeler remembered but never lived: His mother's voice, gentle. His father's laughter. Rythe dying in his arms. Kael alone, forgotten in a cage of glass.
And then—stranger things.
A world with no Fractureborn. A world where Zeeler never existed. A child named Eliah standing in his place, holding a blade made of silence.
He gritted his teeth and kept walking.
"Don't trust what you see," Rythe said beside him. "It's just old pain."
"No," Zeeler replied. "It's warnings."
---
The stairs ended in a vast chamber.
Black water covered the floor—shallow, still, perfectly reflective. Stone arches rose above, reaching toward nothing. In the center of the chamber stood a monolith.
No carvings.
No light.
Just a presence.
Kael approached it slowly. "This is where the echoes gather."
Zeeler frowned. "What does it want?"
Kael hesitated.
Then placed both hands against the stone.
It screamed.
Not with sound—but with pressure. A wave of memory exploded from it, slamming into the chamber. Zeeler staggered back, catching Kael as he collapsed. Rythe drew his blades—but froze.
Figures rose from the black water.
Not monsters.
People.
Fractureborn.
Some were old. Others young. Some were warped, their limbs twisted by unstable timelines. One had wings of ash. Another had no skin—only glass threads pulsing with bloodlight.
They stared at Zeeler.
At Kael.
One stepped forward.
She was tall, draped in ribbons of fractured night. Her hair flowed like liquid smoke. Her eyes were hollow, but kind.
"You've come to unmake the end," she said.
Zeeler held Kael tighter. "I came to protect him."
"Same thing," she replied.
More of the figures gathered. Some knelt. Some wept. One just pointed upward—where time itself seemed to crack.
And then, from the monolith—
A twist.
It shimmered.
And opened.
Inside it was not Kael.
Not Zeeler.
But another Fractureborn—the first.
A child.
Tethered to the root by chains of memory. His body glowed with every echo ever lived. His face… was Kael's.
But older.
Colder.
The Kael that would be, if they failed.
He opened his eyes—and the temple shook.
"You brought him here," the chained Kael said, voice hollow. "Now he knows. Now he can reach us."
Zeeler stepped forward. "Who?"
The chained Kael looked at him with grief.
"The one beneath the echoes. The one who feeds on possibility. The Hollowborn."
Behind them, the stairs collapsed.
Above, the cracked moon bled again.
And below, something woke in the water.
Not an enemy.
Not yet.
But something that remembered everything Zeeler had ever feared.
To be continued…