The bell's pulse quickened as Kael stared into the newest rift—a jagged tear in reality that hummed with a discordant melody. It loomed over Elysion's ruins like a weeping eye, its edges fraying into tendrils of violet light. Lira tightened her grip on her lute, the repaired strings quivering as if sensing the danger.
"This one's different," she murmured. "It's… singing."
Kael didn't answer. The Ascendant Tier's storm raged louder today, the Thief's paranoia clawing at his thoughts, the Martyr's guilt tightening his chest. He pressed a hand to his temple, forcing the voices into a fragile silence. "We go in. Find the source. Seal it."
Lira's gaze lingered on the blood drying beneath his nose. "And if you lose control in there?"
"Then you drag me back."
They stepped through.
The rift spat them into a desert of black glass, the sky a swirling canvas of fractured memories—shattered cities, burning forests, a child's laughter echoing from nowhere. Heat rippled off the dunes, distorting the air. At the horizon stood a spire, its obsidian surface etched with glowing runes that mirrored the bell's markings.
"Trap," Aria hissed. "Every step is a trap."
Kael's Scholar-self calculated the angles, the Pyromancer's instincts flaring at the unnatural stillness. "Move fast. Don't touch the glass."
They'd made it ten paces when the ground splintered.
Shards erupted, forming jagged silhouettes—humanoid figures with mirrored faces reflecting Kael's own fractured selves. They moved silently, their glass bodies screeching as they lunged.
Lira's lute screamed, sonic waves shattering the first wave. Kael drew Aria's blade, but the Martyr's voice whispered: They're echoes. They're you.
He faltered. A shard-cut grazed his arm, and memories flooded in—Aria's first kill, the Scholar's loneliness, Selene's final smile.
"Fight, you fool!" Aria's blade seared his palm.
The bell chimed. Selene's voice cut through the chaos: "Break the spire. It's a beacon."
Kael surged forward, glass biting his legs, the Ascendant Tier's storm howling.
The runes pulsed as they reached the spire's base. Up close, the carvings told a story: Synergists kneeling before the Architect, Prime Cores being forged from starlight, a shadowy figure—Lira?—plunging a dagger into the Architect's chest.
"This… isn't possible," Lira breathed. "This predates Elysion. Predates us."
Kael traced the dagger's image. "You said the Architect's essence splintered. What if some pieces rebelled? What if you—"
The ground exploded.
A figure rose from the glass—a Synergist clad in ancient armor, her face obscured by a helm forged from void-stone. In her hand gleamed the dagger from the carvings.
"Thief," she intoned, her voice echoing with the Architect's resonance. "You carry the Core. You die with it."
She moved like lightning. The dagger clashed against Aria's blade, sparks raining onto the glass. Kael's alternates surged, but the woman countered each strike with preternatural precision—the Scholar's tactics, the Thief's agility, the Pyromancer's ferocity.
"She's one of the Originals," Aria realized. A shard of the Architect's first failure.
Lira's music faltered as the woman's helm cracked, revealing a face both familiar and alien—Lira's amber eye, Veyron's scar, Selene's silver hair.
"You're… a fusion," Kael gasped. "A merged alternate."
The woman laughed, the sound hollow. "We are the Balance. The Architect's mistake. And you are the infection."
She struck the bell with her dagger.
The bell's chime shattered the glass desert. Kael's mind fractured—visions of Selene trapped in a starless prison, the Architect's core regenerating in the void, Lira's lute dissolving into stardust.
"Kael!" Lira's voice was distant. "The spire! Now!"
He lunged, driving Aria's blade into the spire's base. Runes flared, the glass desert trembling as the structure collapsed. The Original hissed, her form unraveling.
"You delay the inevitable. The Architect's shadow grows. She waits."
The rift imploded.
They landed back in Elysion, the rift sealed. Kael vomited blood, the Ascendant Tier's storm now a maelstrom. Lira crouched beside him, her hands glowing with healing light. "You're burning up."
He shoved her away. "Don't. It's… contagious."
The bell pulsed weakly. Selene's voice was faint: "The rifts… are trials. Pass them, and you reach me. Fail…"
Her silence was worse than the storm.
That night, strangers arrived.
They emerged from a tear in the air—warriors in prismatic armor, their weapons forged from starlight and shadow. At their helm stood a man with Kael's eyes and Selene's smile.
"Hello, brother," he said. "We've been waiting."