Chapter 129: The Splintering

The white flash swallowed everything—air, noise, thought. When the world snapped back into focus, it was different. Warped.

Kai opened his eyes to a sky that shimmered with fractured hues, like a prism turned inside out. The chamber they’d been in was gone, replaced by a suspended void with floating platforms of broken architecture. It was as if reality itself had shattered, and the shards refused to settle.

Evryn was nowhere in sight.

“Elara?” Kai called out, his voice echoing into silence. “Aurex?”

No response.

He staggered forward, his boots crunching on debris that floated midair before slowly drifting away. Gravity was inconsistent here—pulling, shifting, rewriting itself. His implant blinked with a red error: Environment unregistered. Dimensional coordinates: Null.

This wasn’t the Inverted Flame, or even the Mirror. This was something… beyond.

A pulse sounded. Not heard, but felt. It throbbed against his chest like a second heartbeat.

Then he saw her.

Evryn—hovering on a platform across the chasm, cloaked in silver flame, her eyes glassy with static. She was levitating, arms outstretched, her body twitching as energies spiraled in and out of her form. She wasn’t alone.

Surrounding her were fractured versions of herself. Ghostly images. Evryns in battle armor. Evryns in chains. Evryns with wings, horns, white hair, red eyes. Hundreds. Thousands.

They circled her like a constellation collapsing inward.

Kai leapt across a floating slab, grabbing onto its edge before pulling himself up. “Evryn!” he shouted.

Her eyes snapped to him.

For a moment, she looked like herself again. “Kai…”

He reached out instinctively.

But the Shadow Kai stepped between them.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” the doppelgänger sneered. “She’s the gate, Kai. Not the key. Not the lock. The entire damn gate. And now, she's been unsealed.”

He lunged forward. Kai barely blocked the strike. Their bodies crashed through a floating pillar, scattering sparks as their fists collided again and again. Shadow Kai was faster, brutal, driven by something deeper than hate—possessive purpose.

“You weren’t strong enough to save her then,” he hissed. “You won’t be now.”

Kai growled, wiping blood from his lip. “You’re just a broken copy. And you forgot the most important part—she chose me.”

The air rippled violently as the alternate versions of Evryn began to merge into the original. Each convergence sent out a shockwave. She screamed with every integration, her voice cracked open by timelines she wasn’t meant to carry.

Suddenly, the platform cracked beneath them.

Aurex reappeared in a flicker of blue light, grabbing Kai by the collar and teleporting them to another floating shard.

“You idiot!” Aurex snapped. “You were about to get erased. This realm isn’t stable—it’s the Conflux Core. You’re witnessing a convergence anomaly.”

“What does that mean?” Kai asked, breathless.

“It means she’s absorbing herself. Every variant. Every path. If she completes the merge, she’ll become a singularity. She’ll collapse the continuum. Not even A.R.A.I.S. dared enter this place.”

Kai turned toward the glowing nexus where Evryn hovered, barely holding form. “We have to stop it. She’s not doing this on purpose—she’s trying to stabilize herself.”

“Elara’s signal went dark,” Aurex said. “She might be lost between layers. And I’m losing sync with my own anchor.”

Kai clenched his fists. “I’m going to her.”

Aurex placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then you’ll need this.”

He handed Kai a thin, triangular device pulsing with violet light. “It’s a dimensional sync shard. Link it to your neural signature. If you find her core self—the real Evryn—you can anchor her. Pull her back.”

Kai nodded, no hesitation. “And if I don’t?”

“Then we all splinter.”

With that, Kai launched himself toward the epicenter.

As he soared across the fragmented landscape, the platform beneath Evryn detonated. Light exploded. The last fragments of her variants fused into her chest, forming a symbol—a burning ouroboros.

And then—

She turned her head toward Kai, eyes glowing gold.

“Kai… I remember everything.”

She opened her palm.

Reality cracked.

And something ancient—older than their universe—began to wake up behind her.