Back in the heart of the Sanctum of Infinite, Sylah stood alone beneath the impossible light of the Chrono Sanctum. She had done the calculations. If this was ever going to stop, she had to go back, back to wherever the Golden Light originated, and destroy it before it began destroying their realities.
The chamber buzzed, deep and alive, like it could feel her hesitation. Threads of raw time spiraled around her, glowing and twitching like living wires. The air danced. The floor vibrated beneath her boots.
In front of her, the core pulsed, huge, unstable, beautiful. A swirling storm of memory and matter. One wrong move, and it could unmake her on the spot.
She reached out anyway, placing both hands against it. Heat surged into her palms. Reality rippled, twisted. The walls groaned like they were holding back a flood.
Then came the voice.
Low, ancient, and far too close.
"You stand at the edge of irreversible fate, Sylah."
She didn't move. "Good. That means I'm getting close."
"Your realities are collapsing."
"I know," she said. "I've seen them tearing at the seams. If we don't act now, there won't be anything left."
"And so, you would defy time itself?"
There was a pause, like the universe was holding its breath.
Then the voice returned, darker this time.
"Many have tried. None returned."
Sylah exhaled slowly. Her jaw tightened. "Then they weren't strong enough."
"Strength won't save you. This path isn't a test of might. It's survival. Adaptation. Pain. To cross the boundary, you must endure seven trials across seven fractured realities. Each worse than the last. Each designed to break you."
She said nothing.
"You will face what was never meant to be seen. Fight what cannot die. Those who fail aren't just lost, they're erased. Forgotten. Like they were never born."
Sylah swallowed hard, but her hands didn't leave the core.
She thought of the timelines she'd watched fall apart, empires consumed by greed, alliances shattered by betrayal. Ruzan's war. Orion's hunger. Aquilanor's desperation.
She thought of the Golden Light, that creeping anomaly deconstructing everything they once believed was stable. It wasn't just a threat. It was the end of cause and effect, of time itself.
Her voice came out steady. Quiet.
"I'll walk the path."
For a second, the core went still. Silent.
Then a Crack.
A jagged line split across the air in front of her. The Sanctum screamed, metal and time warping in ways they weren't meant to. Light bled from nowhere. The floor dropped out beneath her feet.
And Sylah fell.
Darkness.
Then light.
And then—pain.
Sylah hit the ground hard. Cold, wet stone slammed into her back, knocking the air from her lungs.
"Ugh… ouch," she groaned, rolling to her side. For a second, she just lay there, blinking up at a sky that didn't quite look right, clouds moving too slowly, light bending in strange ways.
Her body ached. She pushed herself up slowly, brushing grit and rain from her armor. Everything around her felt… off. Like waking up in a dream where everything seems real until you look too closely.
Then she really looked around and forgot how to breathe.
Tall, elegant buildings stretched high into the sky, their glassy surfaces catching the light in shimmering patterns. Sleek, floating cars zipped past overhead, completely silent. Market stalls lined a wide plaza, their canopies a riot of color. Somewhere nearby, music drifted on the air, soft, strange, Melody.
People bustled through the streets, laughing, talking, haggling over fruit. No one seemed alarmed. No one looked at her twice.
A little kid ran past her, dragging a glowing kite behind him. The kite whipped up into the sky like a spark, dancing on the wind.
Sylah blinked. This place didn't match anything she had seen in the alternate reality archives.
She wandered a few steps into the plaza, still trying to get her bearings. That's when she saw the fruit vendor, a woman standing beside a cart, polishing an odd, softly glowing piece of fruit. Her sleeves were rolled up, arms covered in intricate, glowing tattoos that pulsed like they were alive.
Sylah approached her.
"Hi. Sorry," she said, her voice a little hoarse. "Can you tell me where I am?"
The woman glanced at her, gave her a quick once-over. She didn't seem surprised to see someone like Sylah, armored, dusty, clearly not from here.
"You're not local," the woman said, stating the obvious with a small smirk.
"No," Sylah said. "I just… landed here.
The woman nodded like she'd heard this before. "You're in AeonFall. Center of the Loopwake. Capital of… well, everything, depending who you ask."
"AeonFall," Sylah repeated. The name echoed strangely in her chest. Then, out of nowhere, pain shot through her skull, sharp and sudden.
She gasped, grabbing the cart to steady herself.
And then, She saw a version of herself standing in a hall of fire and gold. Another, running through rain and rubble, covered in blood. A third, dressed in black, watching stars collapse.
It was her, but not. Different lives. Different versions.
She staggered back, heart pounding. "What the hell was that?"
The woman behind the cart didn't even flinch. "Ah. You'll get used to it."
"Used to it…?" Sylah stared at her, but the woman had already turned her attention back to her fruit, wiping it down like nothing happened.
Sylah shook off the last flickers of pain. "I need to leave. Now. Where are the exits?"
This time, the vendor looked at her with something like pity. "There aren't any."
"What do you mean there aren't any?"
"Exactly what it sounds like," she said. "You can walk for days, circle the skies, dig through the roots of the city, it all brings you right back here. That's the beauty of AeonFall."
Sylah's stomach turned. She looked around again, this time seeing the people differently, they move like clockwork, laughing, shopping, shouting across stalls as if nothing was out of place. But something was.
She turned to glance back at the fruit seller, the woman with the glowing tattoos.
But She's Gone.
The cart, the fruit, the woman herself… just gone.
She blinked, walked a few steps around where the cart had been. There wasn't even a scuff on the ground, no sign she'd ever stood there at all. Like someone had erased her from the scene without a trace.
She looked around again, a little faster now. Was anyone else noticing this?
But Nobody seemed to care. Or could care.
Then she walked to the other side. Looking around to find someone who isn't overly joyous to ask more questions, then she froze.
At the edge of the street, maybe 100 meters away, stood a woman.
Her, Another her. Staring straight at her.
Same face. Same eyes. But wearing different clothes, no armor, just a long cloak and travel boots caked in some kind of red dust. This Sylah looked tired. And sad.
"What the hell…" she muttered.
She stepped forward, quickening her pace. "Wait!"
But just before she reached her, the other Sylah vanished. Clean. Silent. One second there, the next gone like she had never been.
Sylah stopped dead in her tracks, heart pounding in her ears.
That was real. I saw her. I know I did.
The city around her felt quieter now. Like something was waiting.
Then, a voice at her shoulder:
"Empress Sylah?"
She turned fast, hand twitching toward the blade at her side, but she didn't draw.
Standing next to her was a tall man in a sleek black uniform. Military, maybe, but not from her world. The armor was light, practical. Worn. He looked maybe a year or two older than her, with short black hair, and eyes that had definitely seen too much.
"You are Sylah, right?" he asked, like he already knew the answer.
She nodded slowly. "Yeah… I am."
"I'm Drek," he said. "From Azaren."
That name. It rang a bell. A minor realm? Industrial, war-torn. Far.
"You must be trying to find a way out of here," Drek said casually, like he was asking if she needed directions to the train station. "If you're open to it… I think we can help each other."
Sylah gave him a long look.
She didn't trust him, not yet. But he wasn't surprised to see her. And right now, he was the first person in this city who hadn't vanished or glitched out of existence.
"…Alright," she said, slowly.
They moved through the winding streets, side by side. Sylah didn't say much at first. She kept glancing around, half-expecting another version of herself to appear, or maybe for the buildings to vanish like the fruit cart had.
But everything stayed… normal. Or at least, looked normal.
"So," Sylah finally said, side-eyeing Drek as they walked, "how long have you been stuck here?"
He smirked faintly. "Long enough to stop keeping count."
"That's not comforting."
"I didn't mean it to be." He paused, then glanced at her. "You really don't remember anything before landing here?"
She shook her head. "I remember the Sanctum. The anomaly. I was trying to reconstruct fractured realities. My goal was to cut off the source of a Golden Light that's destroying my realm before I was pulled here.
Drek nodded slowly, like that actually made sense to him.
"And you?" she asked. "How did you end up here?"
"Azaren sent me to investigate a multiversal spike. Same thing, probably. Next thing I knew, I was walking through that plaza… again. And again. And again."
He stopped walking and turned to face her, more serious now. "AeonFall isn't a place. It's a loop. It resets. Not all at once, but in pieces. You'll notice it. A kid falls in the same way. A bell rings at the exact same moment. A street resets while you're still walking it."
"I already noticed," Sylah said quietly.
"Then you're ahead of most," Drek replied.
They passed a café. Two people sat by the window, sipping coffee and laughing. Across the street, a man sold glass birds from a velvet-lined cart. A few steps later, those same people. Same café. Same laugh.
Sylah slowed. "We just passed this street."
Drek didn't even look. "Yeah. It does that."
"Are we trapped?"
"Sort of." He looked around, then lowered his voice. "But you're different. I saw what happened back there. Your other self. You've started to merge."
"Merge? I've never been here before." Sylah pressed
Drek glanced over at here, then stopped walking "Well, you've been to AeonFall, not in your current form, but across infinite branches of you that tried and failed to fix time"
He watched her closely trying to if she understood before continuing "Each time you've attempted to stop the Golden Light anomaly across different realities, a version of yourself ended up here. AeonFall is where failed realities collapse in on themselves, a dumping ground for every version of who didn't make it. Not quite dead, not fully alive, just stuck in the loop"
Sylah looked at him and turned to keep walking, her voice quieter now. "That's strange."
"Yeah," Drek said, falling into step beside her. "It is."
Sylah walked in silence, her mind spinning.
The Golden Light. The loop. Other versions of herself.
She couldn't escape the feeling that she was drowning in it all, lost, tangled in the threads of failed realities, all of them converging here.
"Drek," she finally spoke, breaking the quiet. "If this place is a loop… how do you break it?"
He stopped walking, turning to face her fully. The usual mask of indifference slipped away for a moment. "You have to do the one thing none of the others could."
Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
He met her gaze, his eyes darker now, as if he were staring into something even darker than AeonFall itself. " First of all, You have to kill every version of yourself trapped here ."
Sylah froze.
"What?"
Drek's voice softened. "Not kill. Absorb. You'll need to take their memories, their strength, until you become the one who survives. The one who doesn't fail."
She swallowed, but the lump in her throat wouldn't go away. "You're telling me to destroy myself?"
Drek didn't flinch. He didn't look away. "Not just you. Every version of you that failed. Every one of your alternate selves who couldn't fix time. You'll have to become them all."
Sylah's mind reeled at the thought. But before she could respond, the air shifted.
A ripple, like a crack opening in the very fabric of reality itself. The world seemed to freeze, just for a moment. The people around them stopped—frozen in place, mid-step, mid-laugh.
And then…
A sound like thunder. But no storm. No rain. Just a deep, echoing crack that split the sky above them.
Sylah's heart skipped.
"What the hell was that?" she muttered, looking up.
Drek's face turned ashen. "He's waking up..."
She didn't know what he meant, but the chill in his voice said enough. "Who?"
Drek's eyes didn't leave the sky. "The Chrono Tyrant."
Just then, the crack in the sky widened. A massive, twisted shape, dark and shadow, moved through the tear, its presence suffocating, like the weight of a thousand lost souls. Sylah felt a pull, something primal and dark, gnawing at the edges of her mind.
Before she could react, the sky screamed.