The Anchor wasn't a tower.
It wasn't a fortress, a temple, or a floating citadel.
It was a tear in the sky—an open wound where time had once bled through, now sealed shut by ancient force and divine engineering. Five monoliths of silver-black stone hovered in perfect orbit around it, humming with a rhythm deeper than any spell, any science, any will.
It was the Axis. The Latch. The Last Lock.
And if the Harbinger shattered it, we wouldn't just lose this war.
Time itself would collapse.
Mobilization
The Valkyris flew like a blade through the clouds, trailing bursts of mana-boosted propulsion. Beneath us, the landscape rippled with temporal distortion—flickers of the past and future overlapping in fractured fragments.
We saw images from other timelines, other versions of this moment—me, Elara, and Kieran charging into ruins that no longer existed. Cira shouting orders to soldiers that hadn't been born yet. A city crumbling beneath a sky that shouldn't be falling.
The Harbinger had already begun his assault.
The Anchor was fracturing.
"Elara," I said over the roar of engines, "how many on the ground?"
She scanned the readouts. "Two full battalions of corrupted. Aberration-class."
"And the Harbinger?"
Kieran answered grimly. "Already inside."
Descent
We touched down just beyond the orbit of the Anchor's containment field.
The air was wrong—thick with echoes. Every breath felt like it might be your last… or your first. Even our words lagged slightly behind our lips, like the world was unsure if it had happened yet.
Soldiers deployed from the flanking ships, establishing a perimeter, but it wouldn't hold long. I could already feel the field collapsing—spacetime warping like liquid.
"This place is unraveling," Cira muttered. "The closer we get, the worse it's going to get. Reality doesn't want us here."
"Then we remind it we've never belonged anyway," I said.
We pushed forward.
Guardians of the Anchor
They emerged from the distortion like memories given shape.
Tall, armored, radiant in a way that didn't reflect light but consumed it.
Three beings. Not quite gods, not quite machines.
Anchorbound.
Created to guard the rift from intruders. Even us.
They didn't speak.
They didn't hesitate.
They attacked.
"MOVE!" I shouted, diving behind a broken arcstone as the first Anchorbound struck the ground with a spear of pure temporal energy. The shockwave bent gravity, hurling two of our scouts into the air where they froze mid-fall—paused in time.
Elara dashed forward, her fists glowing with compressed mana. She leapt, striking the first Guardian with a double impact to the chest. The creature reeled—but didn't fall.
Kieran blinked behind the second one, slashing upward with his twin blades. They sparked against the guardian's shimmering armor, but again—no blood, no response.
"These aren't alive!" he shouted.
"They're memory constructs!" Cira called back. "Hit them with raw will—not just mana!"
I clenched my fist.
The Crown flared.
Golden light surged from my core, wrapping my arms in radiant fire. I struck the nearest Guardian—and this time, the blow landed.
It cracked.
It screamed.
It broke.
Inside the Anchor
With the Guardians defeated, the Anchor's gate parted for us—not with sound, but with a wave of understanding. We didn't walk through.
We arrived.
One moment, we stood outside.
The next—we stood at the heart of the temporal core.
A platform of woven light floated in an endless void of shifting events—past, present, and future folded together like a tapestry mid-unraveling.
And in the center of it all… stood the Harbinger.
He wasn't cloaked.
He wasn't shadowed.
He was human.
More human than I had ever seen him.
Younger.
Tired.
Sad.
He turned to me as we approached. "You made it."
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He raised a hand—and a ripple spread through the threads of time around us. I saw versions of myself die, kill, cry, rule, beg, burn. All the possibilities. All the paths.
"I'm giving you a choice," he said.
The Offer
He stepped aside.
Behind him, the Anchor core hovered—cracked, bleeding golden light. Its stabilizer floated inches above its socket, trembling.
"Pull it out," the Harbinger said. "Let it all collapse. Let time free itself."
"And destroy the world?"
"No," he said. "Set it right. Time was never meant to be this rigid. Every moment is chained to the gods' design. Every outcome... predetermined."
He looked at me, pleading.
"You've felt it. Every time you've changed something, the Crown has pushed back. You're not shaping the future. You're fighting the script."
I hesitated.
Because he wasn't wrong.
The Fracture
"Elara?" I asked.
She stepped beside me, breathing hard.
"I don't know," she said. "I want to believe we can fix things without breaking them. But... what if this really is the only way?"
Kieran spoke next. "You know what I think. Letting him win means we lose everything."
Cira's eyes were on the Anchor core. "Sylas, if you touch that thing—it'll fuse with the Crown. The feedback could kill you."
I looked at the Harbinger.
And for a moment, I saw myself.
Not just in another life.
In this one.
If I'd made different choices.
If I'd lost a little more.
The Choice
I stepped toward the Anchor.
The light was blinding.
The voices were deafening.
So many futures.
So many failures.
Pull it.
Let go.
Burn it down.
Reset it all.
Be free.
I raised my hand—
And sealed it.
Golden chains shot from the Crown, wrapping the stabilizer, forcing it back into place.
The platform screamed.
The void cracked.
The Harbinger's face contorted—not in rage.
In sorrow.
"You just delayed the inevitable," he said.
"Maybe," I whispered.
"But I delayed it on my terms."
Collapse
The Anchor stabilized—but not without cost.
The backlash knocked us unconscious.
When I woke, I was lying on the edge of the cliff, wind howling around us. The Anchor above us pulsed weakly but held.
Elara stirred beside me, bleeding from the temple. Kieran groaned, sitting up.
Cira's equipment had been fried.
And the Harbinger?
Gone.
Vanished again.
But the damage was done.
Not just to the Anchor.
To time itself.
Because as we stood and looked around…
The stars were in the wrong place.
Final Scene: Elsewhere
In a library beyond the reach of time, a child walked barefoot through halls lined with books that wrote themselves.
At the center sat a figure with no face—shrouded in shifting scripture.
They looked up as the child approached.
"He sealed it," the child said.
"I know," said the figure.
"Shall we begin then?"
The figure nodded.
And the book before them closed.
Only to reopen on a new page.
Marked with a single word:
Judgment.