The tremor faded, but its echo lingered in the walls of the safehouse like a breath held too long.

Riven lit a strip of dried plasma tape and pressed it to a cracked map spread across the table—one of the few remnants of pre-Rift intelligence. Roads, sectors, fault lines… most of it was irrelevant now. Time had twisted the landscape into a jigsaw that changed daily.

He circled a point marked "Zone Black: Rift-37" with a blunt piece of graphite.

Auren peered over his shoulder. “What is that?”

“Where you came through,” he said. “The thirty-seventh known Rift in this region. But that one’s different—it’s growing.”

Auren’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t travel here by choice. Something… pulled me. I was investigating a ripple back home, and the next moment—light, wind, voices I didn’t recognize—then I fell.”

Riven nodded slowly. “You were pulled because it wanted you here.”

“It?” she asked.

He met her gaze, and for a second, there was silence.

“The Rift isn’t just a crack,” Riven said. “It’s a mind. Or maybe... a will. It wants something. Or someone.”

Auren’s hand unconsciously drifted to her chest, where a faint blue glow pulsed beneath her armor. “In my realm, we called it the Veil. They say it was once a bridge between stars. A gift. But the elders… they feared it. They sealed it after the Skyfall Wars.”

“Too late,” Riven muttered. “Here, we tore it open trying to access time travel tech buried under the Core. We thought it was just science.”

“And?”

“We were wrong.”

---

Auren stood by the shattered window, moonlight from another universe casting silver across her features.

Riven approached her cautiously, holding a steaming cup. “Synth-chai. Closest thing to tea we’ve got. Sorry it smells like batteries.”

She smiled slightly. “Better than shadowbeast guts.”

He chuckled, then leaned against the window. Below, the city glowed in fragments—patches of power still clinging to life, flickering like dying stars.

“Back in your world,” he asked, “were you important?”

Auren sipped slowly, then replied, “I was... royalty. Heir to the Moon Court. But I never belonged there. They saw me as a weapon.”

“Same,” he said quietly. “Except they didn’t give me a throne. Just orders and a target.”

They were quiet for a moment—two broken pieces from different puzzles, trying to find an edge that matched.

Then Auren looked at him. “You said we might’ve known each other… before. In another life?”

Riven nodded. “Every time the Rift pulses, I remember flashes. You and I... together. Not in battle. In peace. Laughing. Dancing under stars that don’t exist here.”

Auren’s voice was barely a whisper. “I remember… your voice. Calling my name.”

A silence fell again—but this one was heavier, charged.

Then, the wall behind them exploded.

---

Riven tackled Auren to the ground as shadow tendrils whipped through the air, slicing metal like paper. He rolled, firing blind, before dragging her into a corridor.

“How did they breach the shielding?” Auren gasped.

“They’re adapting,” Riven said grimly.

They sprinted, boots echoing on concrete as Null entities phased through walls. One reached for Auren—

She turned mid-run and sliced its arm clean off.

They burst into the emergency exit shaft. Riven keyed in a code and the floor opened beneath them.

They fell.

Down, into a chamber none but Riven knew existed.

---

Dim lights flickered on. The room was filled with transparent cylinders—each holding floating fragments of crystal, metal, or even memory.

In the center stood a device: a globe of pulsing light, surrounded by rings inscribed with symbols from dozens of languages—some lost to history.

Auren gasped. “What is this place?”

Riven stepped toward the device. “It’s where the first Rift was recorded.”

And then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of glowing stone—a fragment he’d carried since childhood.

It pulsed in sync with the device.

The rings began to spin.

And from the globe, a voice whispered—hers and his, layered over each other: