The battlefield trembled beneath Sam's new form. The air hummed with dangerous energy, warping with every calculated step he took. Karya stood frozen, her kampilan inches from his neck, but something had shifted in the fight—something beyond mere power.
Sam wasn't fighting to survive. He was fighting to reshape the future.
"You... you're not him," Karya whispered, her voice cracking.
But Sam—no, he—only smiled. A smile that was both familiar and alien, full of the weight of knowing what was coming.
And Karya understood.
The man before her wasn't just a hero—he was the catalyst for a new age. An age that she had been trained to prevent.
The kampilan's edge shimmered, and in a blink, time itself seemed to stall. But instead of freezing, Sam's form blurred—flickering between versions of himself, each one older, stronger, colder than the last. His body shifted, pulled apart, as if the very fabric of his existence had fractured.
Karya's eyes widened.
"Impossible," she muttered, shaking her head. "You can't access the Echoform like this. It's not supposed to—"
But Sam—no, he—was already several steps ahead. The battlefield twisted with the weight of shifting timelines, realities blending together in a cacophony of light and shadow. He surged forward, his movements a blur as he closed the gap between them in an instant.
Karya barely had time to react, raising the kampilan in a desperate defensive arc, but it was too late.
His hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her blade mid-swing, and with a twist, he disarmed her, sending the kampilan clattering across the shattered stone.
The look in her eyes was pure shock—a flicker of fear, of realization.
"You've made a mistake," Sam said, his voice unnervingly calm.
Karya's chest rose and fell with a sharp breath, and she tried to summon the residual energy from the Rift around them. Her fingers trembled, tracing complex symbols in the air, but Sam—he—watched in silence, feeling the space between them stretch thin.
"You're not the one in control anymore," Sam's voice echoed. It was not his, not fully, and yet it was. "You never were."
The ground beneath them began to rumble, the Rift's pulse shaking with violent resonance as if to protest the disruption. Sam's eyes burned with an intensity that was both familiar and terrifying—an unholy combination of his past selves fighting for dominance.
And then, in a movement that was nothing short of breathtaking, Sam reached into the fracture of his mind, pulling out a new power, something darker, stronger than anything he'd touched before. His Vein, the one that bound him to those who came before him, shifted—twisting into something alien.
Suddenly, Karya gasped.
The air was thick with tension as Sam raised his hand. A long, bone-chilling wind began to howl around them, time swirling in unpredictable chaos. For a moment, everything slowed. The crackling tension in the air, the winds of the Rift, the sound of their breaths—all of it faded into a soft hum.
"You've rewritten enough," Sam said, his voice impossibly deep, echoing from every timeline he was connected to. "Now it's my turn."
The ground beneath them split open, and from the void of the Rift, endless chains surged—ancient and pulsing with dark energy. They coiled and twisted in mid-air, like serpents seeking their prey. They wrapped around Karya's limbs before she had a chance to react, binding her as though the very fabric of reality had turned against her.
"Stop!" she shouted, struggling against the chains, but Sam was already in control. His aura was a storm, a vortex that distorted the air around them.
"No," Sam said, his voice void of mercy. "This is where your draft ends."
In an instant, the Rift's chaos grew. Time bent and twisted, reality itself shattering as the power Sam had unlocked surged forward—blinding, all-encompassing.
And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over.
Karya lay unconscious on the ground, the chains disintegrating into nothingness.
Sam stood there, breathing hard, eyes glowing with a deep, unnatural fire. His Echoform—a duality of power, of self—had consumed him, reshaping him into something he couldn't entirely control.
But before he could catch his breath, the ground trembled once more, and the air grew thick with the presence of something far more dangerous.
Rael and Valencia approached cautiously, both watching Sam with a mixture of awe and concern.
"What the hell just happened?" Rael asked, voice low.
Sam didn't answer immediately. His head snapped toward the horizon, where the very atmosphere of the Rift seemed to shift. Something was coming. Something darker than Karya.
Something that had been waiting for this exact moment.
The world itself seemed to groan under the weight of what was to come. And then, a voice—deep, ancient, and filled with an unfathomable malice—echoed through the Rift.
"Do you really think you can stop this?"
The sky cracked.
A figure emerged from the darkness.
It was tall, impossibly tall, its features shifting like liquid shadow. Its eyes glowed with the faintest light, casting an eerie glow over the battlefield.
The Rift's true architect.
The one who had been pulling the strings all along.
And as it raised its hand, the world trembled.
"Welcome," it said softly, "to the end of time."