The descent into the unknown felt like a free fall, though Ethan's feet never left the stairs. The mist curled around him, weightless but whispering, brushing his skin with fragments of voices he couldn't quite hear. Each step downward echoed like a heartbeat, ancient and synchronized with the shard nestled in his palm.
He didn't dare speak. Not here.
The staircase opened into a colossal chamber, spherical and impossibly vast. Time itself seemed to bend across the walls. Murals danced—some in static paint, others animated with motion like tapestries woven from memory. Thousands of years of history—no, realities—wrapped around the inner dome like a living museum of the multiverse.
The First Engineer walked ahead, her staff glowing dimly. "This is the Chronicle Chamber," she said, voice low. "Every major convergence is recorded here. Some remain unwritten."
Ethan scanned the walls.
He saw the fall of Atlantis—not myth, but memory. He saw a war in the year 3091, fought in orbit, humans against a splintered AI hive. He saw Marcus—again. Younger, furious, stealing a prototype gate from a lab Ethan recognized as his own.
"I didn't see this before," Ethan whispered.
"You weren't meant to. Until now."
The shard pulsed.
The First Engineer pointed to the center of the chamber—a platform with twelve embedded pillars. In its core was an hourglass. But instead of sand, the grains shimmered like stardust. Time suspended, flowing in both directions.
"That is the Anchor of Ages," she said. "The device that holds this world in balance. But it is cracked."
Ethan approached it cautiously. The closer he drew, the more his thoughts wavered. Memories collapsed into flashes—his childhood, his first experiment, Lily's laughter, Marcus's betrayal, the Gatekeeper's riddle.
"What happens if it breaks?" he asked.
"The multiverse will fragment. Realities will blend—past into future, fiction into fact. You'll meet the man who kills you before you're born. You'll forget which Ethan you are."
A chill ran through him. "Then we fix it."
"You can't fix it here. You must find the Tether. And for that, you need the Vault Map."
She reached beneath her robe and drew forth a strange key. It shimmered like liquid silver and spun slowly in her palm.
"It will show you the original convergence point—where the first fracture occurred. That's where you must go."
Ethan took it.
Instantly, pain tore through his head. Images flooded in—of prehistoric temples, of astronauts screaming in zero gravity, of Marcus laughing in a realm of shifting color. One place repeated more than any other: a black mountain rising from ocean mist, inscribed with runes no civilization had claimed.
The map embedded itself into the shard.
The Engineer watched him with ancient eyes. "You have the key. You have the will. But do you have the courage to walk where even time forgot its name?"
Ethan straightened. "I guess we'll find out."
The ground trembled. A sound like a thousand clocks collapsing filled the chamber. Ethan turned.
A new door had opened.
Beyond it—his next destination.