The sky pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
Above the ruins of fractured Present Core City, time convulsed—collapsing in on itself, then expanding like a lung gasping for air. The Seed-Eater's blade carved open existence, and in its path, timelines bled.
Kael stood with the obsidian shard glowing in his hand, Aeris by his side, and between them—hovering inches above the cracked ground—stood the child with storm-grey eyes and a presence that silenced the world.
"You summoned me," the child repeated, her voice both ancient and new, echoing across every version of time. "You called me from the Fold."
Kael stared, hollow and whole. "What… are you?"
"I am the convergence of your choices," she said. "The one fate you both never chose... yet always hoped for."
Aeris' breath caught in her throat. Her voice trembled. "Are you... ours?"
The child tilted her head, eyes softening. "If you let me be."
Behind them, the Seed-Eater roared, his blade dragging trails of memory across the air. Each step he took shredded timelines, dissolving possible futures like paper in flame.
"You don't have a choice," he growled. "Give me the Seed, or I will erase your beginning. Your child. Your every 'what if.'"
Kael looked down at the shard, then at the child—their child. And then at Aeris.
"I planted the Rift," Kael whispered. "But this... this is what bloomed."
He stepped forward, holding the shard to the child.
"No," Aeris cried. "You'll vanish. You'll cease to exist."
"I was never supposed to exist," Kael said gently. "But she... she can."
The child reached out—and placed her hand over Kael's.
Not to take the shard. But to return something.
A surge of golden light erupted. Not destruction. Not restoration. But choice.
The Rift stopped pulsing. The Seed-Eater stumbled, howling as if burned by the possibility of hope.
"You cannot make this choice," he bellowed. "The loop must remain closed!"
The child turned to face him. "The loop is not a prison. It was a cradle. But we've outgrown it."
And then... she stepped into him.
Not to fight. To rewrite.
The void screamed. Time twisted violently—but instead of shattering, it healed. The Rift behind them folded inward like silk, closing—not by force, but by understanding.
Kael fell to his knees, exhausted, the shard now dull in his hand.
Aeris caught him. "Is it done?"
"I don't know," he whispered. "But I think... we've finally let go."
The sky settled. The light dimmed into something soft. Real.
And the child was gone.
No remains. No trace. Only a memory of something better.
As Kael and Aeris walked away from the edge of the collapsed rift, the camera pans up to the Chrono-Star, long dormant in the sky—now glowing.
And in the final flicker of starlight...
A flicker of the child's laughter echoed—somewhere in the threads of time.