The landscape changed with every step.
The path toward the Threshold wasn't a straight road—it was a maze of fragmented timelines, stitched together by memory, regret, and possibility. The world warped around Orion and his companions, shadows of lives unlived flickering at the edges of perception.
One moment, they walked through a shattered garden under a blood-moon sky. The next, they passed beneath towers of living glass, where faceless echoes knelt in endless prayer. It was as if the multiverse itself remembered Orion—and now whispered every version of him into being.
"We're not in any one reality anymore," Kael said, adjusting the warped crystal strapped to his back. "This is the edge."
"The edge of what?" Lyra asked, watching a mirror version of herself vanish in a shimmer of starlight.
"The edge of coherence," Orion replied. "Where meaning begins to die."
They arrived.
The Threshold.
A vast expanse of emptiness stretched before them, broken only by a monolithic archway of black stone and memory-light. The sky above was a canvas of dying stars, some blinking out even as they watched.
And beneath the arch, a lone figure waited.
He wore no armor, bore no weapon. But his presence twisted the air around him. His eyes were not eyes at all—just spirals of unraveling time.
Orion stepped forward, heart pounding.
The figure spoke. "You've come farther than most."
"Who are you?" Lyra asked sharply, sword at the ready.
Kael narrowed his gaze. "No… not who. When."
Orion's breath caught.
The figure inclined his head. "I am the first Orion. The original. The one who failed."
Silence fell over the group like ash.
The first Orion stepped forward. "I opened the way. I made the choice that shattered the weave. I tried to steal power from the Nameless… and instead became its Herald."
"You're lying," Orion said, though his voice faltered.
"I wish I were." The first Orion smiled, bitter and hollow. "You came here to learn how to stop what's coming. But the truth is—you are what's coming."
Behind him, the arch pulsed. Visions bled from its frame—versions of Orion crowned in ruin, cloaked in Hollow flesh, commanding armies of light and shadow.
"Each version of you either dies… or becomes the End."
Lyra stepped forward, eyes fierce. "Then we break the pattern."
The first Orion looked at her, and for the first time, his smile softened. "You always tried."
Kael tensed. "This isn't over. What is the Threshold really for?"
"To choose," the first Orion said. "To decide which version of yourself becomes real. Which future becomes true."
Orion stared at the arch. The visions within it rippled in response.
Kael turned to him. "Are you ready for that?"
"No," Orion admitted. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
He stepped toward the arch.
The others followed, and as they crossed the invisible line into the space beyond time, something vast turned its gaze upon them.
The Nameless Presence had noticed.
And it was waiting.