Years had passed.
The Comandos Base had become not just a home, but an extension of Kael himself.
Since the truce with LIGA, he had completed dozens of missions.
He crossed time like pages in a book:
Ancient Rome. The Aztec Empire. The Silk Road. Feudal Europe. The Industrial Age. Early Lunar Colonies.
Kael had become a legend in LIGA reports — efficient, precise, unseen.
There was no doubt anymore.
He was truly the Pedra.
---
That morning, the panel in the command room lit up in a different shade.
Not blue.
But deep red — the code for an absolute summon.
Kael approached.
Mister's hologram appeared with a look he hadn't worn in years: tension.
"We have a situation... unique."
"Where?" Kael asked.
"It's not where, Kael. It's when."
The hologram spun, revealing a glowing point in the timeline.
"Year 2020. Earth."
Kael froze.
"That's my origin point."
"We know. But the Portal of the Pedra reactivated on its own, precisely in that period.
There is unauthorized activity."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Someone crossed?"
"We don't know. But there's interference.
And we can't access the portal's core.
Only you can."
Kael was silent for a few seconds.
Returning to his origin...
After all this time…
This wasn't just a mission.
It was fate, circling back.
"Prepare the gate," he said. "I'm leaving by dusk."
---
18:47. The Portal of the Pedra activated.
Its energy pulsed, unstable — as if time itself hesitated.
Kael stepped through.
---
Year: 2020. Location: Central Europe. Outskirts of Brussels.
The world was on pause.
Pandemic. Fear. Empty streets. Urban silence.
But Kael hadn't come for that.
He came for a temporal void.
One that appeared near the place where his mortal body had been buried.
Wearing plain clothes, surgical mask, and a discreet LIGA tablet,
Kael descended into the sublevels of an old cemetery.
There, he found it:
A dimensional tear — still, open, swirling in black spirals.
And within it…
someone stood.
Not another immortal.
But a version of himself.
---
It was Kael, age 32.
Months before his death.
Trapped.
Watching.
The portal had somehow pulled a living memory from the past —
A reflection that shouldn't exist.
Kael approached.
"Can you see me?" he asked.
The reflection nodded.
"I'm you... before all of this."
Kael knew the risk.
Two versions of the same being, face to face, could collapse timelines.
He couldn't interact.
But he couldn't leave him either.
---
Mister's voice came through the comms.
"You must seal the portal, Kael."
"Will it erase him?"
"It will return him to what he was:
a memory."
Kael exhaled.
Placed his hand on the energy field.
And said softly:
"You don't understand yet.
But one day... you will."
He pressed the stabilization device.
The portal closed.
---
The next day, back at the base, Mister appeared on the screen.
"The mission was successful.
No dimensional damage. No rupture.
Your reflection... is gone."
Kael looked at his own reflection in the dark glass.
Same face.
But now… carrying the weight of centuries.
"He's not gone," he murmured. "He just… returned to the place he never really left."