Part 25 : Visions from the First Beat

The chamber dimmed as Lyn and Du Hao placed their hands on the pedestal. The Chrono-Seed pulsed once—then burst with radiant silence. Time didn’t stop—it thinned, stretching like silk drawn across eternity.

A hum filled the air, not mechanical but melodic—like the heartbeat of something ancient and aware.

Then the room vanished.

Lyn found herself floating—not in space, but within memory. Around her spun threads of time: golden strands for choices made with love, crimson for those made in rage, and shadow-black lines marking regrets too heavy to speak.

A voice echoed.

“You seek salvation in truth, yet have feared it.”

The vision shifted.

She stood in a quiet village where she had once lived—before the Tower, before the timelines shattered. Her mother laughed in the distance. A younger Lyn sat beneath a tree, sketching. It was a world that had never fallen. A world that could have been.

Then, another shift.

A battlefield. Calren stood at the center, screaming, not in rage but grief. Around him, timelines collapsed—twisting like broken rivers. And behind him, a younger Du Hao walked away, leaving him to bear the weight alone.

Lyn reached toward them—only to be pulled into another current.

This time, she stood in the Clocktower… but it was decayed. Silent. Forgotten. Dust hung like fog. No heart. No Seed. Just echoes.

A whisper drifted: “This is what happens… if you choose fear.”

Elsewhere, Du Hao saw his own truths.

He walked through halls of former selves—some cold, some heroic, some monstrous. One knelt in front of Calren, a sword at his throat. “I should’ve stayed,” the version said. “But I feared your fire more than I trusted your vision.”

The Chrono-Seed wasn’t showing futures—it was offering them. Doors of possibility carved from past choices.

A final image burst between them: the three of them—Lyn, Du Hao, and Calren—standing side by side before the Gate of Time. But only one version of Calren stood at peace. In all others, war consumed him.

Lyn whispered, “He must remember who he was…”

“And we must face what we’ve become,” Du Hao said.

As they returned to the chamber, the Seed dimmed—its message given.

And outside, the winds of time changed direction.