The light of the Eternal Garden was fading. The trees, once weaving the threads of reality, now stood as silent silhouettes, their branches cracking under the strain of disintegrating time. A wind swept through them, carrying fragments of voices belonging to those long erased from existence.
Emiren stood amid the ruins of the Silver Tree, staring into the endless fog that swallowed the horizon. He knew this was not merely the destruction of a place—it was the collapse of the essence of Eternity itself.
The trees shuddered under tension, as though trying to hold together the crumbling structure of time. His mind struggled to grasp the scale of the disaster when Flamen’s voice broke through:
“Have we lost?”
His voice was muffled, as if coming from beneath a layer of water, distorted by the instability of reality.
Emiren slowly shook his head.
“No. We’re still on the edge. But for now, Eternity holds on.”
He stretched out his hand and touched a fragment of the Silver Tree’s bark. The warm surface felt like the touch of a living organism, even though the tree should have been dead long ago. But beneath his fingers, a faint spark of energy ran through.
“It’s still alive,” he whispered.
Poreng stepped closer, his usually cold, detached gaze now filled with something resembling curiosity.
“This isn’t just remains,” he said. “It’s an opportunity.”
Emiren looked up.
“If we can find support in these fragments… if we stabilize even a part…”
But he didn’t finish. The space trembled.
The sky, once a blurred patch of ash-colored haze, suddenly cracked, and through the fractures in the fabric of reality, other worlds began to emerge.
The sensation was as if someone had lifted the veil between possibilities and reality. Silhouettes emerged from the darkness.
Flamen froze.
“Is it… them?”
Before them stood those erased from reality long ago—figures that should have vanished with the destruction of Eternity.
“They’re not dead,” whispered Watery. “They’re suspended between moments, lost in oblivion.”
The silhouettes swayed like shadows on water, not fully materialized. In their eyes flickered the reflections of hundreds of possible futures that never came to be.
“It’s the echoes of shattered time,” Poreng whispered.
Emiren felt his own body tremble under the weight of all these unfinished moments. Time no longer had form, no direction. Everything could dissolve at any moment.
“We must find an anchor,” he said.
Poreng grimaced.
“Or we’ll become as much of a ghost as they are.”
Flamen glanced at the fragments of the Silver Tree.
“But what if…”
Emiren cut him off.
“We have little time. The choice will either be ours, or we will become part of the chaos.”
He closed his eyes, listening to the heartbeat of Eternity.
Either they would find a way to restore it, or they would vanish with it.