The room pulsed with living memory.

Riven and Auren stood motionless, caught in the breath of something ancient. The glowing rings around the Rift Core spun faster now, pulling dust into orbits. Light bent and twisted, reflecting symbols in the air like fractured mirrors—some legible, others forgotten.

“Return the pieces… restore the path…” Auren repeated. “What pieces?”

Riven opened his palm. The shard he'd carried since he was a child—glowing, humming—was no longer inert. The core reacted to it like a heartbeat found its twin.

“I think these shards are… memory anchors,” he said, voice slow, awed. “They remember what was before the Rift. Before the fracture.”

Auren stepped closer to the glowing globe, her eyes scanning its orbiting runes. “Then there are more.”

“Yes,” Riven whispered. “And we need them to fix everything.”

“To fix time itself,” she murmured.

A soft tone chimed from the core. Suddenly, a holographic projection burst from the center—blue light painting the room in sharp arcs.

A map.

But not just any map.

It was layered. Realms upon realms. Overlapping planes like slices of folded fabric. In the center, a jagged crack glowed violet.

Lines radiated outward—paths, anomalies, fragments. Some led to worlds marked in green. Others blinked in red. One was encircled in gold.

“There,” Auren said, pointing. “That world—do you recognize it?”

Riven narrowed his eyes. “Sector Delta-V… that's off-limits. Sealed after a timeline collapsed. No one goes in.”

“It holds the next fragment.”

Before he could answer, the projection flickered, distorting.

A figure appeared.

A woman—her eyes silver, her dress shifting between time periods. She was young and old at once. And she was crying.

“Who is that?” Auren breathed.

Riven’s heart pounded. “That’s... my mother.”

---

A scientist with half-metal eyes adjusted dials on a console buried in vines. All around her, reality blinked like a broken broadcast. She didn’t flinch as her skin rippled between ages.

Behind her stood a throne made of gears.

On it, a man with a face carved in shadows leaned forward. “How many shards remain?”

“Three,” she said without turning. “And one of them… has just activated.”

His fingers curled into the throne’s arm. “The timelines are realigning. That cannot happen. Not yet.”

“Then we hunt them.”

---

Auren turned away from the projection, her expression taut. “If someone else is seeking the shards, we’ll be hunted.”

Riven nodded. “And trust me… the ones guarding the remaining fragments aren’t exactly friendly. I've seen what happens to the uninvited.”

Auren’s fingers traced her blade’s hilt. “Then we’ll just have to invite ourselves.”

A small smile tugged at his lips. “You’re very dramatic for a royal.”

“And you’re very calm for a man with a collapsing universe on his shoulders.”

Riven powered down the console, took a breath, and met her eyes.

“Let’s go steal time back.”