Part 23: Through the Gate of Echoes

Calren stood amidst the ruins of an old time spire—a place once radiant with golden light, now reduced to a graveyard of shattered bricks and rusted gears, swallowed by the dust of forgotten centuries. The light here obeyed no rule; it flickered, pulsed, as if the world’s very heartbeat faltered in this realm. But to Calren, it was a beginning.

“We don’t have much time,” he said, spinning the time-compass—a battered device that only functioned within fractured pockets of history. Luminous veins spread from it like light-born arteries, connecting to gateways sealed for eons. “But we don’t need much.”

Behind him, shadows began to form—one by one, survivors from destroyed timelines stepped forward. A woman with a brass arm and eyes that ticked like vintage clocks. A child who could freeze moments with a whisper. Twin brothers erased from history, now carrying the knowledge of two broken worlds.

They called themselves The Nameless.

Calren raised a hand and drew a spiral into the air. A fissure opened—small, but deep—revealing flickers of memories from cut-out histories: events that never happened, yet echoed in the dust.

“Beyond that rift lies the Central Gate—where Lyn and Du Hao merged the time streams. But they missed something…”

A soldier asked, voice muffled through a dark mask, “Are you sure we can enter without being detected?”

Calren turned. “We’re not entering. We’re dismantling. They think they patched time. But time isn’t cloth—it’s rhythm, it’s motion. And once we touch the core—the Dimensional Pivot—we’ll reverse its flow.”

“And then what?” asked the girl with clockwork eyes, both skeptical and intrigued.

“Then we choose again. No mistakes. No fate. Each of you was erased from history—but I’ll give you a place in the new reality.”

A murmur of agreement swept through the crowd. Calren knew: this was the moment.

They entered the fissure—one by one, slipping through time’s veins like ghosts ascending a broken river. With every step, every glance at the trembling temporal walls, the time stream began to stir. And far away—within the Clocktower—Lyn and Du Hao felt the shift.

At the heart of the Time Gate, warning lights flickered.

“Someone’s opening the side-branches. But we sealed everything…” Lyn muttered, adjusting the brass controls. The monitor displayed strange signals—a fractured pulse, misaligned from any known timeline still in existence.

Du Hao stepped closer. “No, it’s not that we forgot to seal them. It’s that someone… remembers how to open them.”

Lyn’s hand clenched. “Calren.”

She knew he had never truly vanished. Only… they had hoped.