Inside the shattered Lumina complex, reality bent with quiet malice. Corridors extended far beyond their physical limits before snapping back into place. Footsteps echoed twice, sometimes before they were made. Reflections lingered in broken panels long after the crew had passed, replaying movements that had already happened.
Lyra moved carefully, her datapad projecting layered schematics that refused to stay still. Past and future bled into one another, creating a maze that responded to intention as much as motion.
"I am detecting active temporal loops," she said, her voice tense. "The Nexus is replaying fragments of its own activation cycle. It does not know that it is broken."
The absence of Zephyr was felt most keenly here. This was the kind of place he would have navigated effortlessly, his illusions dancing through broken space as laughter echoed behind him. Instead, the corridors felt narrower, the silence heavier.
Without warning, Jax stopped.
He stared at his hands, confusion and fear crossing his usually impassive face. The scars that marked decades of war were gone. His fingers were smaller, steadier, untouched by battle.
"I am young," he said quietly. "Before Gorok burned."
Kaito reacted instantly, gripping Jax's forearm and anchoring him.
"This is not truth," he said firmly. "This place feeds on memory."
The illusion shattered, leaving Jax gasping, shaken by the sensation of a life that could never be reclaimed.
At the heart of the complex, they found the remains of the Temporal Nexus. Suspended within a lattice of fractured light was a single stabilized fragment, a crystalline core pulsing with restrained power. The moment they approached, the air thickened, and a presence emerged from the distortion. A construct shaped by paradox itself took form, shifting endlessly between soldier, scientist, and child. It was not alive, yet it resisted death with ferocity.
The battle tested them all. Kaito's Astro Blade carved through frozen moments and unchosen futures. Jax shattered echoes of timelines that had never reached completion. Lyra rerouted collapsing time fields with trembling precision. When the construct finally fell, the fragment dimmed, settling into a fragile equilibrium.
Lyra secured it carefully.
"This is all that remains," she said. "And it may be all we get."