The morning air was sharp, charged with a tension that even the sky seemed to hold its breath for. Evelyne stood on the balcony of the ancient tower, watching the horizon ripple with distant violet light. Below, the city stirred uneasily, aware that something old and unfinished was crawling back into their world.
Alaira joined her, silent but steady. Her presence was Evelyne's gravity.
"Chron confirmed it last night," Evelyne said. "The Timewrought isn't just a creature. It's a sentience born of everything we erased. Every version of us, every mistake, every timeline I chose not to save."
Alaira's eyes narrowed. "And it blames you?"
"Not just me," Evelyne murmured. "The vow. The act of sealing the Rift—the promise that gave this world form. That vow destabilized the contradictions it fed on. It can't exist unless we fall apart."
Chron appeared moments later, dragging a map etched in pulsating runes. "It's been sighted in the Shrouded Wastes," he said without preamble. "But it's not walking. It's… unraveling time. Locations, memories—they're vanishing. People are forgetting who they were."
Evelyne clenched her fists. "It's not just an enemy. It's a storm. And it's rewriting without mercy."
Later that day, a council of allies convened in the Library's sanctum. Idrien, the scarred mercenary cartographer, spread her maps across the table.
"It's moving toward the site of the original Rift," she said. "If it reaches that nexus, it can fracture the vow entirely."
Alaira turned to Evelyne. "You made the vow to anchor this world. Can you reinforce it?"
Chron shook his head. "No. The vow is fixed in paradox. If she tries to rebind it, it may collapse. But... if we anchor more people to it, those willing to carry its resonance—like adding chords to a melody—"
"Then the vow becomes a harmony instead of a solo," Evelyne said softly. She looked to Alaira. "Would you?"
Alaira didn't hesitate. "Always."
Others volunteered. Idrien. A young mage named Linne who had been saved from a vanishing timeline. Even Chron, despite being a temporal anomaly himself.
They began the ritual at twilight. Beneath the library's dome, Evelyne chanted the vow again—this time not as a seal, but as a song shared among hearts. Threads of magic, glimmering like constellations, wove through each of them.
And then, reality screamed.
A tear ripped across the sky. The Timewrought appeared—not as a beast, but as a shifting mass of half-formed faces and broken timelines. Voices cried out from within it: versions of Evelyne who had failed, who had surrendered, who had died.
It hovered at the edge of the city like a collapsing star.
"We're out of time," Chron said. "It's challenging the vow."
Evelyne stepped forward. Her voice did not tremble.
"Then we answer."
And the ground itself began to bend, as if time had decided to fight back.
End of Chapter 46