The sky was broken.
Jason stood on a cliff's edge, overlooking a horizon that no longer obeyed the laws of time or space. The sun flickered, shifting between dawn and dusk like a struggling heartbeat. Pieces of the sky floated above the land like shattered mirrors. Somewhere between those fragments, the gate pulsed—alive, but unseen.
He could feel it now. The Gate. Its heartbeat had become his.
Nyra limped beside him, her silver eyes dull with exhaustion. "The Gate's influence is spreading," she said, voice brittle. "This is no longer just our journey. The world is unraveling."
Jason's fingers tightened around the pendant his father had left. His reflection shimmered in its surface—not his face, but a younger version. Young Jason, the specter of an alternate self born from a corrupted timeline, now roamed freely beyond the cracks of time.
"We need to reach Kaelis," Elias said, adjusting the weight of the ancient scroll strapped to his back. The old man had aged more in the last week than in the past decade. "The Ghost City may hold the answers."
They began their descent.
---
Kaelis was not a city.
It was a memory trapped in stone, suspended over a void. Towers twisted into clouds, their roots anchored in illusion. Shadows walked its streets, but none cast reflections.
As they entered, Jason's mark burned red.
"This place... it remembers me," he whispered.
"Not you," Elias corrected. "Your blood."
They passed murals etched in glowing script—scenes of Watchers standing atop the world, sealing something monstrous beneath a tree of silver fire. Jason's gaze lingered on one panel. A figure identical to him stood before the Gate, arms spread wide, darkness behind him.
"That's not me," he muttered.
"It's who you might become," Nyra said. "Or who you already were."
---
Inside Kaelis's central dome, they met Kaelis-Kin, spectral beings trapped between memory and existence. They welcomed Jason not with reverence, but fear.
"You bring the echo," said the eldest ghost, her eyes like fractured glass. "The Bloodline Gate was not meant to open. And yet you carry its song."
Jason tried to speak, but the ghost raised a hand.
"Your father made a choice here once. So must you."
And then, the Archivist returned.
His form had grown thin, barely human. Cloaked in tattered memories and shadow, he pointed a crooked finger. "You opened the Gate a crack, boy. Just enough for me to see."
Jason stepped forward. "This ends here."
But the Archivist laughed. "No. This begins here."
He vanished, but not before dropping a shard of something impossible—a time anchor. A sliver of reality fractured from a doomed timeline.
---
That night, Jason dreamed of fire.
He stood in the center of the Gate. Seven figures stood around him—Anchors from the past. His father was among them. So was Elias. But so was Young Jason, smiling with broken eyes.
"Choose," the dream-Jason whispered.
"Choose what?" he asked.
"To be the gate. Or the key."
---
The chapter ends as the Kaelis-Kin offer Jason one final revelation—there is another Anchor alive. One believed long dead. Her name was Vaelra, and she lived beyond the rift—beyond the fractured sky.
And if they were to stop the unraveling of the world, they would need to find her.