The morning after the rift's collapse dawned quietly, the sky painted in soft golds and faded pinks. The camp was stirring, but not in the usual rush of battle preparations or tense watch changes. Today, there was something else in the air—relief, yes, but laced with uncertainty. As if the world wasn't sure whether it could breathe freely again.
Caius sat apart from the others, at the edge of the valley where the fracture had once loomed. The ground there bore scars—charred grooves, shattered stone, and faint silver veins where raw time had bled into the earth. He traced his fingers along one such mark. It was warm.
Selene approached without a word. She sat beside him and handed him a flask of herbal tea—strong, bitter, grounding. Caius took it gratefully.
"You're quiet," she said.
"Still listening," he replied. "To see if… it's really gone."
She gave him a sideways glance. "And is it?"
Caius stared at the horizon. "It's quiet. But not gone."
They both knew what he meant. The Chronophage was defeated, yes—but what it had broken still needed mending. The wound in time had sealed, but time, like flesh, left behind scars. And scars could ache, twist, or worse—open again.
Behind them, Elias paced near the command tent, deep in conversation with Aldric and a handful of surviving strategists. They were debating next steps—whether to retreat and fortify, or press forward and find the source of remaining anomalies reported from distant outposts.
Selene stretched her legs in the grass. "Do you think there are more of them?"
"Chronophages? No." Caius shook his head. "But… anomalies? Splinters? Paradoxes? Definitely."
He stood, brushing dust from his cloak. "We disturbed the river of time. Redirected it, dammed it, burst through parts of it. There are eddies forming now—places where things might not make sense anymore."
Selene smirked. "So, more weirdness."
"More weirdness," he echoed, grinning despite himself.
Suddenly, a scout burst through the trees. "Urgent news," she said, breathless. "From the east. The city of Rellan's Watch—it's… it's vanished."
Caius's expression darkened. "What do you mean, vanished?"
"Gone," she said. "No smoke, no rubble. Just—meadows. As if it was never there."
Elias turned toward them from the tent. "Another ripple," he muttered. "The collapse of the rift must have erased a key event… or rewritten one."
Selene looked at Caius. "We need to go there."
He nodded slowly, already pulling on his gloves. "If something was erased, maybe something else was created in its place."
The journey to Rellan's Watch was unnerving.
Where once there had been paved roads and trade posts, there were now tangled forests and untouched hills. Maps were suddenly inaccurate. Old signposts stood in empty fields, pointing to places that no longer existed. Caius noticed inconsistencies in the stars overhead—constellations shifted by subtle degrees, as if the very heavens were realigning to match the new worldline.
The Chronomancer's Heart, though dim, throbbed faintly when they neared the outskirts of where Rellan's Watch should have been.
"Here," Selene said, slowing her horse.
They dismounted, stepping into a field of knee-high grass. There were no ruins. No evidence of battle or decay. Just wind and quiet. Caius crouched and placed his hand to the earth.
"It's fresh," he murmured. "Not just overwritten—this is new. Like the timeline reset this patch of land completely."
Elias knelt beside him. "But why here? Rellan's Watch was the site of the old resistance's turning point. If it never existed, what happened to those people?"
Caius didn't answer right away. Instead, he focused on the pulse of the Heart. It was stronger here, almost as if this was another anchor point—a place where time had been severely altered.
As the others searched the area, Caius walked deeper into the field. And then, abruptly, he stopped.
There, hovering inches above the ground, was a shimmering sphere—translucent, humming faintly. Inside it were flickers of movement. A woman teaching children, soldiers marching through a gate, banners waving atop towers. Moments—echoes—of a place that no longer existed.
"Selene!" he called.
She came running, her breath catching at the sight. "What is that?"
"A memory," Caius said softly. "A residue."
Elias stepped closer, his eyes wide. "It's holding the imprint of the city. Maybe… maybe we can restore it."
Caius narrowed his eyes. "No. We shouldn't."
"What?" Elias blinked. "Why not?"
"If we bring it back now, we risk destabilizing what we just repaired. Time needs to settle. Think of it like healing. You don't rip a scar open the day after stitching it shut."
Selene nodded in agreement. "So we leave it?"
"No," Caius said. "We mark it. We remember it. But we don't try to undo what's already done."
He pulled a time-sigil from his satchel—a small stone etched with runes—and placed it at the edge of the memory-sphere. Instantly, it pulsed in sync with the Chronomancer's Heart, anchoring the echo in place.
"There," he said. "If it begins to fade, we'll know. And if others appear, we'll find them."
That night, they camped beneath unfamiliar stars. The wind whispered through the grass, and though the world felt wrong, there was also peace in it. A strange, tentative peace.
Caius sat watch while Selene slept beside the fire. Elias was studying a revised map nearby, mumbling to himself about disappearing rivers and doubled moons.
And in the distance, beyond the reach of firelight, something shimmered in the dark—a glimmer of time out of place, waiting to be seen.
Caius breathed deep.
The battle was over.
But the journey?
The journey had only just begun.