Location: Cradle Gorge – Riftborn Origin Vault
Time: [Core Status: Overheated / Vital Sync: 43% / Visual Reality: Fragmenting]
Ren's knees trembled.
His side throbbed.
His vision blurred.
He should've stayed down.
But this wasn't just about fighting.
This was about being seen.
GATEWATCHER (calmly):
"You walk in pieces.
You bleed like a code not meant to run.
And yet you still choose to fight?"
REN (hoarse, raising Snarksteel):
"I don't need to be perfect.
I just need to finish this."
The Gatewatcher didn't attack.
It projected.
The space between them twisted — and a hundred stars flared to life.
One step forward, and the entire room shattered into a battlefield of the past.
The First Strike: The Riftborn's Fall
Ren swung.
Steel met shadow.
And behind the clash—
The walls melted away, revealing a massive war-torn sky.
Thousands of Riftborn fell in sync.
Kael — young, undefeated — screamed orders as half the Core shattered above his head.
BLAZE (whispering):
"This… this is Kael's last battle…"
The scene flickered. Reset.
Second Clash: Echo-Ren's First Rebellion
The Gatewatcher struck back — not with blade, but with memory.
Ren flew backwards—
And landed inside a ruined lab.
A younger version of himself, half-formed, floated in a glass pod.
Another stood outside, snarling.
ECHO-REN:
"They lied to us.
We weren't born. We were programmed."
The pod shattered.
Ren came back to reality with blood in his mouth and more questions in his head.
REN (growling):
"Stop showing me half-truths!"
GATEWATCHER:
"I show only what's burned into the Core."
The Mid-Fight Collapse: The Space War Replay
Aetherium Core flickered.
Override Core tried to restart.
But the damage was done — the system was seeing too much. Processing too fast.
Reality couldn't keep up.
Ren dashed forward — blade glowing, Core pulsing.
They clashed again.
Boom.
The room exploded in light—
and became the void.
Thousands of ships.
Planets torn in half.
Watchers, Riftborn, Core Constructs — all battling in a cosmic graveyard.
This was the Space Wars.
FROST (gasping):
"I'm seeing... timelines we've never touched…"
TIME (whispers):
"Welcome to where we all broke first."
Final Phase: The Memory Crack
Ren fell. Again.
This time not from injury — but from raw overload.
His brain couldn't hold the images.
The Aetherium Core began to crack at the edges, glitching wildly.
AETHERIUM CORE:
> MEM-CACHE OVERFLOW > SYNC RATE: COLLAPSING > IDENTITY THREADS UNSTABLE > BACKUP MODE: INITIATED
GRAVITY (screaming):
"REN. YOU MUST END THIS.
YOU AREN'T MEANT TO CARRY IT ALL YET."
Ren stood up, barely.
His sword trembled in his grip.
The Gatewatcher raised its hand — summoning one final strike: a construct made of erased timelines, a weapon formed of broken memories.
GATEWATCHER (softly):
"If you survive this…
You don't just inherit truth.
You become it."
Ren didn't hesitate.
He threw everything forward — blade, body, Core, pain, power.
He hit back with the weight of everything he'd seen.
A shockwave.
Silence.
Smoke.
Glitches.
Ren lay on the ground.
Blood from his mouth.
Hand barely gripping Snarksteel.
The Gatewatcher was gone.
No explosion.
No death cry.
Just… vanished.
Like its duty had ended.
Ren looked up.
The path ahead opened — finally.
And through the smoke, a gate of light hummed, waiting.
BLAZE (rushing to him):
"You idiot. You absolute broken, beautiful idiot."
FROST (smiling, kneeling next to him):
"You saw it all, didn't you?"
REN (smiling, barely):
"I don't know what I saw.
But I'm still here."
AETHERIUM CORE (softly):
> PATH UNLOCKED > NEXT SECTOR: OUTER DRIFT—REAL COORDINATE REVEALED > WARNING: YOU'RE NOT DONE YET