The chamber breathed.
It was the only way to describe it. The vast hall stretched far beyond what normal architecture should allow, the air shifting like the lungs of a living creature. Countless giant hourglasses floated freely above a floor of obsidian mirrors. Each contained a swirling world—miniature timelines suspended in sand.
Kalo and Nox stepped inside cautiously, their footsteps echoing like ripples across a still lake.
Nox stared upward, jaw clenched. "All those… are versions of Meridian?"
Kalo nodded slowly. "Every path the city could have taken. Every life that could have been born. Every fate that never happened."
"And every version of me," Nox muttered, "that got erased."
Kalo didn't answer, but the silence spoke for him.
Nox took a slow breath, forcing himself to keep moving. The Gemini Verge pulsed faintly on both their arms, reacting to the chamber's impossible density of time.
One hourglass drifted lower than the rest, as if acknowledging their presence. The sand inside it flowed sideways like a river bending against gravity. A city flickered within—Meridian, but darker, wrapped in perpetual dusk.
Nox reached toward it.
The moment his fingers brushed the glass, visions surged into him—too fast to parse. A thousand Noxes, a thousand moments of almost living. Almost being chosen. Almost surviving.
He staggered back.
Kalo grabbed his arm. "Are you alright?"
"Just… crowded," Nox said. "Like someone stuffed a hundred lives into my skull for a second."
As they walked deeper, faint whispers trailed behind them—echoes of erased futures. Some were joyous; others screamed. The Archive carried everything Time had deemed unfit for reality.
Kalo paused at another suspended hourglass. Inside, he saw a boy who looked like him—but not him—standing atop a tower of silver gears. That version of him wore the insignia of a High Seer.
"That could've been me," Kalo whispered.
Nox stepped beside him. "Do you want that life?"
Kalo shook his head. "I want the one where we both get to exist."
Nox's expression softened slightly, as if those words anchored something inside him.
A deep hum rolled through the chamber.
The lights dimmed.
The hourglasses began to drift apart, creating an open path toward the center of the Archive.
Kalo frowned. "It's guiding us."
"Or trapping us," Nox countered.
Still, they followed.
At the center stood a pedestal of white stone, untouched by the dust of lost histories. Hovering above it was a singular hourglass—smaller than the rest, only the size of a human hand. Its glass was cracked. Its sand flickered between shifting colors: gold, black, white, and red.
Kalo inhaled sharply. "That's my hourglass."
Nox approached slowly. "The original or the rewritten one?"
"I… don't know."
Kalo raised his hand, but before he could touch it, the crack widened with a brittle sound. A thread of sand leaked outward, swirling in the air until it drew the shape of a faint silhouette.
A person.
No—half a person, the outline flickering like a dying flame. It looked like Kalo, but older. Worn. Eyes hollowed.
The apparition spoke in a distorted whisper:
"You… are the borrowed one."
Kalo stiffened. "What?"
The apparition pointed to Nox.
"He is the intended one."
The hourglasses surrounding them trembled.
"Your existence," the ghost continued, "is a correction. A replacement. A safeguard against what he was meant to become."
Nox's jaw tensed. "What was I meant to become?"
The apparition's form shuddered violently.
"A Sovereign Verge…"
The chamber lights died.
"…the one destined to choose which worlds deserve to exist."
Kalo's voice faltered. "A Sovereign? That's—impossible. No one since the Erasure Wars—"
"Yes," the apparition cut in. "Too powerful. Too dangerous. So they rewrote the timeline. They placed Kalo Renn where you were meant to stand."
Nox stepped forward, eyes burning. "And that version of me—they erased him too?"
"All erased," the apparition said softly. "To prevent the rise of a Sovereign."
Kalo's heart hammered.
"But now," the apparition finished, "the Gemini Verge has made that impossible. You are two halves of the same broken law."
Before either could answer, the entire Archive trembled. Sand inside the hourglasses exploded upward. Constellation patterns burned across the ceiling.
A chilling voice echoed through the chamber:
"Anomaly detected. Gemini Verge approaching Sovereign awakening. Deploying Sentinel."
A massive shadow emerged from the darkness—towering, armored, with a clockface mask etched into its head.
Its voice rang like a funeral bell.
"You should not exist."
Nox cracked his knuckles, smirking with a defiance sharpened by revelation."Yeah, everyone keeps saying that."
Kalo stepped beside him, white light gathering in his palm."Then we'll give them a reason to remember why we do."
The Sentinel charged.
They met it head-on.