They stood in a triangle of silence. Rain whispered somewhere beyond the ruins, but it never reached the ground.
Ilia didn't speak first. Neither did Rien.
Sevran lowered himself slowly onto a stone slab, as if gravity still meant something to him. He looked up at her with the faintest trace of a smile.
"Myel never trusted endings," he said. "She always wanted a way back. A failsafe."
Ilia remained still. "Tell me what happened."
Sevran's gaze sharpened. "No. Remember it."
"I'm not her."
"Not yet."
He ran a hand down his staff. The wood was etched with sigils that blinked and darkened, like they were breathing.
"When the fractures began," he said, "everyone assumed it was war. Shadari sabotage. Natural collapse. No one wanted to admit the truth: time itself had thinned. Not all of time. Just certain threads. Certain lives."
Rien frowned. "You're talking about temporal instability. That's decades-old theory."
Sevran looked at him, amused. "Then your decades are younger than mine."
He turned back to Ilia.
"Myel was the first to touch a fragment and survive it. Not just survive — resonate with it. It didn't show her the future or the past. It showed her versions. Lives she could've lived. One where she chose peace. One where she chose you."
Ilia's breath caught.
"What did she choose?" she asked.
"None of them," Sevran said. "She broke the pattern instead. She created a lock — a seal stitched through layered time. She used herself to do it."
"What was she sealing?"
Sevran looked up at the cloudless sky. "Me."
Rien's fingers tensed again near his blade.
Sevran saw it. He smiled, but there was sorrow behind it.
"Myel and I were... not born. Not exactly. We were made. Part of a series of attempts. To stabilize the fragment's memory. Give it form. Give it meaning. We were meant to be its avatars."
Ilia whispered, "Living keys."
"Exactly." Sevran nodded. "But something went wrong. I fractured. She held. She became the lock, I became the door."
"And now?" Ilia asked.
"Now?" Sevran's voice softened. "The door has been touched again."
Ilia felt the weight of the cube beneath her shirt, its warmth pulsing like a second heartbeat.
"You can't reseal what's already breathing," he said. "You can only prepare for the second opening."
She stared at him. "And you — are you trying to help me? Or finish what was started?"
Sevran smiled without humor. "Ask me again when you remember everything."
Then he stood, stepped back into the dark archway between ruined pillars, and was gone — not vanished, but folded, like paper slipping back into a book.
Ilia swayed slightly.
Rien steadied her.
"Do you believe him?" he asked.
"I don't know," she whispered. "But I believe myself."
And that was, somehow, worse.