The Chronophage Abyss wasn’t a place. It was a symptom—a wound in time where reality bled into itself. Kael’s first breath there tasted like burnt copper and regret. The sky hung in shattered panes, each shard reflecting a different era: a medieval battlefield frozen mid-swing, a neon cityscape crumbling in reverse, a cradle rocking empty.

Jarek kicked a pebble. It hit the ground, then shot back into his hand. “Rule one: Don’t touch anything. Rule two: Don’t ask about rule one.”

“Helpful,” Kael muttered. His skull still throbbed from the glyph. He couldn’t remember Lyra’s eye color anymore. Hazel? Gray? Does it matter? (It did.)

They walked. The ground shifted textures—grass, then glass, then something that squirmed. Voices whispered from nowhere:

“You’ll fail them all, you know.”

“—should’ve died instead of her—”

“—see what you become—”

“Echoes,” Jarek said. “Ghosts of futures you’ll never have. Or already did. Don’t ask.”

A shadow flickered ahead. A woman in a lab coat, her back turned, studying a rift in the air. Kael froze.

Mom.

Not her. Couldn’t be. She’d died when the Veil first cracked, her clinic swallowed by a time-storm. But there she was, humming his lullaby.

Jarek gripped his shoulder. “Don’t. That’s not her. It’s the Abyss—it digs up graves to mess with you.”

“What if it is her?”

“Then she’s been here for years. Which is worse?”

The figure turned. Empty sockets stared back. Kael’s lullaby curdled into static.

They started traversing along the path to a stream uphill when they reached the top.

An AI found them beside a river that flowed uphill. Its voice emanated from a cracked crystal hovering at eye level, light pulsing like a dying heartbeat.

“Query: Are you architects of order or agents of entropy?”

Jarek groaned. “Great. A philosopher bot.”

“Clarification: I am Axiom-7, a stellar intelligence born from the collapse of NGC 2237. My creators harvested dying stars. I… disagreed.” The crystal floated closer to Kael. “Observation: You are dying. Your timeline has 73.6 days remaining.”

“Thanks. I hadn’t noticed,” Kael said.

“Proposal: Let me calculate a path to prolong your survival. In exchange, you will take me to the Archive.”

Jarek scoffed. “The Archive’s a myth.”

“Fallacy: All myths are truths that forgot their context.”

Kael’s Codex burned in his coat. The Archive. The heart of all stories. The place Lyra might still exist, whole. “Why do you want it?”

The crystal dimmed. “Answer: To ask the Final Reader a question: Can a universe that chooses to die be saved?”

They camped in the corpse of a dead forest—trees petrified mid-fall, leaves rustling with the sound of breaking glass. Axiom-7 hummed equations into the dark. Kael traced a glyph in the dirt, testing. The lines glowed, then faded.

What did I lose this time?

He couldn’t recall his father’s voice anymore.

Jarek sharpened his not-sword on a rock. “You know why the Hollow King eats worlds? ‘Cause he’s hungry. Not for power. For quiet. Every realm he swallows… it’s a scream he’s trying to smother.”

“You sound like you admire him.”

“Nah. But I get it.” Jarek’s good eye narrowed. “You ever think maybe we’re the villains? The Veil’s breaking ‘cause folks like us keep poking it.”

Axiom-7 interjected. “Paradox: To mend a wound, one must first touch it.”

The Codex shuddered. Kael opened it. Words bled onto the page:

“Chapter 4: Where Kael Veyra Bargains with the End.”

Then the ground split. A maw of teeth and twilight yawned beneath them, whispering with the Hollow King’s voice:

“Little poet. Let me rewrite your final verse.”