The Awakening of the Temporal Storm
After their choice was made, the Eternal Garden seemed unshakable. The Silver Tree no longer trembled under the weight of the past; its branches, cleansed of dark veins, shimmered with soft light. The Lake of Time remained smooth, no longer reflecting shattered possibilities. The world stood frozen in harmony.
But in that silence, something else lurked.
Emiren sensed it first—a barely perceptible shift in space, like the whisper of a breeze. But in the Eternal Garden, the wind did not move on its own.
“Something is wrong,” he said, gazing into the distance.
Flamen stepped closer, resting his hand on the hilt of his sword. His instincts had never failed him.
“Is it just remnants of the old world?” he suggested.
“No,” Empty replied, his voice quiet but tense. “It’s something else.”
Watery stepped forward and dipped his palm into the Lake of Time. His body shuddered, as if he had been burned.
“The water is unresponsive. It’s freezing—not because it has stabilized, but because it’s… holding time in place.”
A deep unease stirred in Emiren. The Eternal Garden was meant to breathe, time was meant to flow. If that wasn’t happening, it meant balance had been disturbed.
Then they heard it—the first sound. A distant rumble, like thunder rolling through the fabric of reality.
“A temporal storm,” murmured the Entity, appearing beside them. Her face was calm, but her gaze was sharp.
“A temporal storm?” Flamen repeated.
“It’s a rare phenomenon,” she said. “It occurs when a new Eternity has not yet fully solidified, and echoes of the old seek a way back. It’s not just a wind in time; it’s a vortex that can pull everything into oblivion—or create new fractures.”
“What do we do?” Watery asked.
The Entity looked toward the Silver Tree.
“You must find its source.”
Into the Heart of the Storm
They moved deeper into the Eternal Garden, where the trees grew so thick that their branches intertwined, forming an almost solid barrier. As they stepped beyond it, the world around them changed.
The air became heavier, and space itself felt torn apart. Time did not flow evenly—some places were frozen, others accelerated, creating a chaotic rhythm like a broken mechanism.
Then they saw it.
At the center of the chaos stood a figure, radiating both light and shadow at once. It had no defined shape—only shifting contours, as if it was made of the storm itself.
“Is it… alive?” Watery managed to ask.
The Entity tilted her head.
“Not exactly. It is the embodiment of an unfinished choice.”
Flamen gripped his sword.
“So this is the consequence of us choosing to preserve the past within the new Eternity?”
“Exactly,” the Entity confirmed. “But it doesn’t yet know what it is.”
Emiren took a step forward.
“If it stays like this, it could destroy everything.”
Empty nodded.
“We must complete this choice.”
The Final Step in Shaping the New Eternity
Emiren felt something stir within him, responding to the chaos swirling around the figure. His abilities, which allowed him to perceive the fabric of time, now burned inside him, urging him to act.
“We must guide it,” he said.
“But how?” Flamen asked. “This isn’t just a fracture, not just a temporal knot. This is… something more.”
The Entity extended her hand, and before them appeared three visions—three forms the figure could take.
The first was pure light, stabilizing everything around it.
The second was darkness, consuming excess timelines, leaving only one.
The third was something in between—an entity that could shift and adapt to the flow of time.
“These are three possibilities,” the Entity said. “You must choose one.”
Emiren looked at the others.
“If we choose the first, the world will become stable but doomed to stagnation.”
“If we choose the second,” Flamen said, “we risk losing the variability of the future.”
“And if we choose the third…” Watery studied the chaos swirling around them. “We will allow something into Eternity that can change at any moment.”
Emiren felt time unraveling beneath his fingers again.
“We’ve made a similar choice before. And if we want Eternity to truly be alive…”
He reached out and touched the third vision.
The world trembled.
The Entity smiled.
“You have chosen. Now Eternity will be complete.”
Light and darkness around them merged into one. The temporal storm ceased its raging, space was no longer fractured. The figure standing before them began to take shape—not a fixed one, but something that could change.
The Silver Tree rang with a breeze that had returned to the Garden. The Lake of Time was still once more, but it was no longer the same.
Emiren felt something shift within himself.
“We are no longer just those who shape,” he said. “We are those who allow Eternity to be itself.”
Flamen nodded.
“The true balance.”
The Entity made one final gesture, and the new Eternity was finally secured.
“Now we will see what the future brings,” Watery said.
And they moved forward, leaving behind a shadow that had finally become one with the new world.