The platform beneath his feet finally shattered. The cracks widened, breaking into fragments that slowly sank into the bottomless void. The world around Emiren was shifting—not smoothly and gradually as before, but in sudden, jarring ruptures, as if someone were tearing apart the very fabric of reality.
The figures in the mist, blurry and ghostly, were becoming clearer. He saw the silhouettes of beings that should not exist—echoes of those whom the Garden had long erased from memory. Some of them seemed familiar, but Emiren could not recall from where.
One figure, tall and cloaked in darkness, stepped forward. Its face was indistinct, but golden lights glowed in its eyes.
— You have crossed the boundary of what is permitted, — a voice resounded, deep and multilayered, as if spoken by many beings at once.
Emiren felt his heart clench. He did not know who this was, but the presence emanated a power that felt strangely familiar.
— Who are you? — he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
— We are those who once were. We are the lost branches of time.
Ghosts of Eternity
Emiren realized that these were echoes of the Creators who had broken the laws of the Garden and had been erased from reality. Their shadows wandered between the branches of time, doomed never to return to the flow of existence.
— What is happening to me? — he asked, staring at the faceless figures.
— You stepped where you should not have. Influencing the past creates fractures. And now you stand on the edge.
The figure stepped closer, and the air around became heavier.
— Ardalys has changed his future. He had no right to do so.
— Then why hasn’t the Garden corrected the mistake?
— The Garden always corrects mistakes. The only question is the price.
At that moment, space trembled. The shadows of the Creators vanished like dust carried away by the wind, and once again, Emiren was engulfed by a vortex of light and darkness.
The Crossroads of Choice
He awoke amidst ruins.
Before him stretched a shattered corridor, resembling those that led to the Archive. But something was different. There was no ceiling—above his head was a starry sky, but the stars shone too brightly, too still.
Emiren stood up and looked around.
Carved into the stone floor, glowing golden symbols pulsed faintly. They were inscriptions in the language of the Creators, and he instinctively understood their meaning.
“The place where choice becomes fate.”
Far ahead, he saw a figure.
Ardalys.
But not the one he had known, not young as in the past, nor old as in the vision of his death. This was someone else—someone who stood outside time, someone who had already broken the laws of reality.
Emiren felt a chill.
Ardalys slowly turned, and in his eyes, two streams of time glowed—one golden, the other dark, nearly black.
— I knew you would come, — he said calmly.
Emiren did not answer immediately. He took a step forward, sensing how the space around his former mentor trembled, shifted, adapted to his will.
— What have you done?
— What I had to.
— You’ve broken the balance! You had no right to change your fate!
Ardalys smiled, and there was something unsettling in that smile.
— And who decides what we have the right to do and what we don’t?
Emiren felt anger rising within him.
— The Garden will not allow this. You’ve created a rupture, and now the consequences are inevitable!
— Have you ever considered that perhaps this is my path? That my decision was already woven into the structure of Eternity?
Emiren clenched his fists.
— You are playing with forces you do not understand.
— And do you understand them?
The next words Ardalys spoke were quiet, but they echoed through the space, making the very air tremble.
— I did not simply change my fate. I created a new branch of time. One where death is not inevitable. One where we are no longer tools of the Garden but its creators.
Emiren felt a cold shiver run down his spine.
This was not just a change in the future.
Ardalys was trying to make himself equal to the Garden.
And now, Emiren had to stop him.
Or the world would never be the same again.