The storm began without warning.
One second, the sky above the Silent Expanse was calm its static-stitched clouds drifting lazily over jagged hills.
The next, a jagged line of light tore through the sky, vertical and violent. It wasn't lightning. It didn't flash or burn.
It unraveled.
And from that tear descended a new entity, its body made of shifting glass and black flame, bound in silver code chains.
[SYSTEM ALERT: NULLKEEPER DESCENT]
Authority: Thread Severance
Target: Fatebreaker | Level ??? | Time Unstable Zone Triggered]
Violet's breath caught.
She felt the pressure first.
Like the very air was being rewritten around her body threads tightening across her skin, spine prickling, eyes burning with invisible data.
Tyler grabbed her arm before she collapsed.
"It's here."
"I know."
They didn't run.
They couldn't.
The Nullkeeper landed without a sound, its feet never touching the ground. The earth cracked below it anyway, as if time itself rejected its presence.
It didn't speak.
It didn't need to.
A wave of force rolled across the field. Trees withered. Stone turned to dust. System icons began glitching skills blinking on and off like corrupted lights.
[WARNING: Local Zone Thread Entropy Rising]
[Map Fragmentation Detected – Entry into Temporal Rift Imminent]
Violet clutched her staff.
"We can't fight it here. The terrain is collapsing."
Tyler was already pulling up his map, jaw tight. "There's an old tower ruin nearby one of the ancient patch rifts. It's shielded from direct system overwrite. We make it there, we might survive."
"We?"
He glanced at her, a flicker of dry amusement. "Shared thread, remember?"
She didn't argue.
They ran.
The landscape was collapsing as they moved.
Not in the physical sense but in sequence.
One moment, the path beneath their feet was clear. The next, it was the shattered remains of a battle they'd never fought. Then a city plaza with flickering banners overhead.
Memories.
Not theirs.
But someone's.
The Nullkeeper was corrupting local time.
Violet fought to stay upright as her HUD glitched violently.
[Thread Integrity: 42%]
[You are in a TEMPORAL ECHO ZONE – Memories will leak into your path]
Up ahead, the tower came into view a crooked spire of obsidian and rusted code, half collapsed into itself.
Tyler stopped at the threshold, palm flat against the surface.
"Override token active."
A ripple passed through the door, then opened.
They slipped inside and time broke.
The moment they stepped across the threshold, everything shifted.
Not visually.
Not even physically.
But mentally.
Violet's thoughts stuttered. She blinked and suddenly she was ten years old, standing in front of a hospital room.
Her sister lay in the bed beyond the glass.
Machines hummed.
She remembered this.
The day she was told her sister wouldn't wake up. Not without a neural link.
Not without Violet giving up something.
She stepped back.
And the vision faded.
Tyler staggered beside her, hand to his head. "I saw my squad. The Null Wastes. They were screaming."
Violet turned sharply. "We're in a loop."
He nodded. "The tower is a temporal fracture site. The system is using it to disorient us. Keep us from stabilizing long enough to escape."
"So what do we do?"
Tyler's gaze hardened.
"We find the anchor. Every time-rift dungeon has one. A relic or moment that binds the loop. We stabilize it we break the zone and we can fight back."
"Or we die here," she added.
He smirked. "There's that."
They began to descend.
The tower had no stairs only platforms suspended in midair, shifting with each step. Time flared around them in waves.
Violet's memories blurred with Tyler's.
She saw flashes she couldn't possibly know:
A dark-haired boy kneeling beside a grave.
Tyler's fingers on a glowing interface, typing "I ACCEPT."
Blood in a white hallway.
A system god whispering, "You could've been more."
Tyler jerked back from her, his face pale. "What did you just see?"
"Your memory."
His jaw clenched. "The Shared Thread is syncing too hard. It's leaking."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said. "Just survive."
At the base of the tower, they found the anchor.
A throne of glass and code, shattered in half.
Atop it sat a figure.
A woman.
Hooded.
Flickering.
Violet's heart nearly stopped.
It was her.
But not her.
Her face was older, her hair streaked silver. Her eyes cold and glowing with data met Violet's without emotion.
[ANCHOR PROJECTION DETECTED: FATEBREAKER PRIME]
The projection stood.
Spoke.
"You were never supposed to reach me."
Violet stepped forward.
"Then why do I exist?"
"To finish what I could not."
"Which is?"
The projection lifted a hand.
Behind her, a fractured sphere floated in the air pulsing like a heartbeat, covered in rues and broken threads.
"The Core Timeline. Corrupted. Fragmented. Hidden by the gods to protect their control. You are its last living echo."
Tyler inhaled sharply. "You were created to reset it."
"No," the projection corrected. "She was created to choose."
The ground trembled.
The Nullkeeper had found them.
A hole in reality tore open at the top of the tower. The entity descended like a storm, code chains slithering through the air, its face now a twisted version of Violet's own.
"The timeline must remain broken," it said. "Anomalies must be severed."
Violet raised her staff.
Tyler drew his blade.
Together, they stood between the Anchor and the entity.
[BATTLE INITIATED – NULLKEEPER: PHASE ONE]
[Zone Effect: Temporal Drift – Actions may repeat or reverse]
[Shared Thread Bonus: Stagger Immunity Active]
The Nullkeeper struck first.
Reality bent.
Tyler moved to intercept but his sword passed through a past version of the entity.
Too late.
A chain wrapped around Violet's leg, yanking her forward. She twisted mid-air, activating False Fate a decoy version of herself appearing in place.
The chain shattered the illusion.
Tyler shouted: "Left three seconds back!"
She trusted him.
Moved left.
The real attack struck where she'd been.
[HP: 66%]
[RP: 6/8]
She retaliated channeling a thread rupture, pulling lines from the projection's echo behind her.
Time buckled.
The Nullkeeper stuttered its movement desyncing.
[THREAD OVERWRITE ACTIVATED]
Manual Rewrite Option: UNLOCKED
Choose one:
– Sever Temporal Lock
– Revert Zone to Original Event
– Collapse Anchor Projection
Violet stared at the options.
"I can end this."
Tyler gritted his teeth, blocking a chain strike. "At what cost?"
"If I collapse the anchor, the tower dies. We lose everything."
"What about revert?"
She hesitated.
"Reverting might restore the original Core Timeline… but we don't know what that even looks like."
Tyler stepped beside her, blade up.
"Then we sever the lock."
She touched the icon.
[SEVERING TEMPORAL LOCK…]
[SUCCESS: NULLKEEPER ROOT ACCESS DENIED]
The entity screamed not in pain, but in static.
It flared once then exploded into a swarm of broken symbols and code.
The world stilled.
The tower groaned.
Cracks appeared in the walls.
The projection Fatebreaker Prime looked at Violet one last time.
"You've only delayed it."
"I know."
"Then choose carefully. Next time… you won't be given options."
She faded.
The sphere shattered.
And the tower collapsed.
Tyler and Violet emerged from the wreckage, coughing, bruised, but alive.
The sky above the Silent Expanse had stopped glitching.
No more storms.
No more timeline tears.
Just silence.
Until a ping.
[QUEST COMPLETED: Anchor in Time]
Reward:
+1 Rewrite Point
Memory Fragment (Prime)
New Skill: Chronothread (Passive – Allows minor delay/reflex replay)
Violet looked at Tyler.
He looked back.
"Still not going anywhere?" he asked.
She smirked faintly.
"Still holding the scissors."