Older Kael crumpled, Lyra's thorned hand buried in his chest. But instead of blood, time spilled out—a kaleidoscope of moments merging past and future. The palace walls dissolved, revealing overlapping realities: Lyra as a scarred child in Gideon's lab, Lyra as a queen, Lyra as a fading ghost.
"You see?" Lyra whispered, her voice fracturing into echoes. "Time is just a river. I am its dam."
Young Kael and Lira materialized behind her, dragged into view by rebels—Mira, her face half-rotted by time-plague, and Nyx, her assassin's gaze hardened by grief. Past Gideon lunged, his corrupted hands seizing Lyra's wrist. "Enough!"
Lyra's thorns lashed, flaying his flesh to bone, but he held fast. "The Crown… it's in her spine!" he roared.
Mira hurled Older Kael's shard to Young Kael. "Do it!"
The blade seared his grip, its edge poisoned with Older Kael's time-rot blood. He lunged, but Lyra's wings snapped forward, roses blooming into a shield.
"You're just a child," she sneered. "You don't know what you'll become."
Young Lira tackled her, aged hands clawing at the thorns. "And you're just a weapon!"
Older Kael's mother staggered from the crowd, her cobalt veins flickering. "My son…" She pressed her palm to his wound, her touch dissolving into golden dust. "I remember."
The hive-mind faltered. Citizens writhed, roses wilting from their mouths. Lyra screamed, her crown of thorns cracking.
"Now!" Nyx flung a dagger, piercing Lyra's wing. Young Kael drove the shard into her spine.
The Crown rose shattered.
Lyra's kingdom unraveled. Skyscrapers crumbled, hybrids disintegrating into ash. She collapsed, her scars fading as timelines splintered around her. "It's… quiet," she breathed. "Finally quiet."
Past Gideon caught her, his body crumbling. "I'm sorry. For all of it."
The void reclaimed them, spitting the group back into the original cathedral—now overrun with wild, uncorrupted roses. Older Kael's wound closed, but his hair whitened, his skin paper-thin.
Young Kael stared at his aged hands. "What did we do?"
"You saved us," Older Kael rasped. "And doomed me."
Lyra's body lay cold, her scars gone. At her throat, Lira's locket glinted. Inside, a new portrait: Lyra and Kael, siblings in a life never lived.