Aven climbed shakily down the ladder, every muscle in his body screaming in protest. His hands were raw, blistered from tearing at cables and fighting the black tendrils. But he barely felt the pain—his mind was still reeling from what he'd seen inside the globe, the faces, the ruined futures dissolving into static as the core was destroyed.
Rhea met him at the base, slipping an arm under his shoulder to steady him. Up close, he saw the exhaustion etched into her pale features, the dark circles under her eyes, the thin line of blood at the corner of her mouth.
"You did it," she whispered, glancing at the dead globe overhead. "You tore out its heart."
Aven tried to smile, but the muscles wouldn't cooperate. "It doesn't feel over," he murmured, looking around at the shattered hall. The echoes were gone, but the museum itself still loomed above them—vast, silent, waiting.
Rhea followed his gaze. "It isn't," she said softly. "The museum was never just the core. It's… a labyrinth. A nest of interlocking futures, stacked on top of each other, feeding into each other. We broke the first lock, but the deeper structures are still there."
Aven sagged against her. "How do you know all this?" he asked.
She hesitated, eyes flicking to the empty doorway leading into the next hall. "Because… I helped build them," she whispered. "In my timeline… I was one of the architects."
Aven stared at her, stunned. "You… built this?"
She nodded, shame in her eyes. "Not exactly this version. But a museum like it. A project meant to preserve our future, to capture and study possible timelines before they collapsed. We thought we were doing something good… but we were wrong."
She swallowed hard, looking away. "When my timeline died… I ended up here. And I realized… the museum is bigger than any of us. It feeds on us. On every version of us."
Aven felt the blood drain from his face. "So… there's no way to stop it?"
Rhea squeezed his shoulder gently. "There's always a way," she said. "But it means tearing up the blueprints, destroying every trace of what we built. And that means going deeper."
She pulled a small map from her coat—hand-drawn on yellowing paper, lines and scribbles crossing it like veins. She spread it on a broken display case, pointing to the center.
"This," she whispered, tapping a point marked with a jagged star, "is the Central Archive. The place where the museum stores its most powerful artifacts. If we can reach it… we can find the plans for every failed future this place holds. And maybe… erase them."
Aven felt a flicker of hope through the numbness. "Erase them… and end the museum?"
Rhea nodded. "Or at least… cut off its ability to feed on us."
A distant rumble shook the hall, dust drifting from the cracked ceiling. Somewhere in the shadows, the faint crackle of static rose again, a soft chorus of whispering voices.
"They're coming back," Aven breathed.
Rhea folded the map, slipping it into his hand. "Then we don't have much time," she said. "We head for the archives. And we destroy the next cage."
Aven swallowed hard, gripping the map. He looked once more at the shattered globe, at the ashes of the echoes drifting across the marble floor.
Then he turned to Rhea and nodded. "Lead the way."
Together, they moved into the dark, following the faint glow of her crystal as the echoes began to stir once more behind them, their whispers coiling through the hall like smoke.