Voyager Of Ages

The sky above was a heavy quilt of stars—too many, too close, as if time had drawn the constellations nearer in desperation. Ethan stood motionless for minutes, or hours—what did it matter anymore? Marcus had vanished into a vortex that sang with unnatural resonance, leaving Ethan with nothing but the sand and a fragment of ancient power.

Clutching the shard, he felt its pulse—a steady rhythm that beat counter to his heart. It wasn't just alive. It was leading.

With no time gate to guide him, Ethan turned inward. Closing his eyes, he allowed the shard to whisper. His mind plunged into memory, not his own but shared—a collage of lives touched by the system. Pharaohs, rebels, architects, strangers from futures not yet born. Time didn't show him a path—it screamed a wound.

The ground beneath him trembled. The winds shrieked. And the shard ignited.

With a violent lurch, Ethan was dragged backward through chronology—not cleanly, not like before, but ragged, chaotic, like being pulled through glass.

He emerged in darkness.

This time, there was no pyramid, no stars, no sky.

He was underground.

Stone pressed from every direction. Echoes bounced through the tunnels like ancient voices fleeing daylight. He rose slowly, groaning. His knees scraped raw on jagged floor tiles. His breath fogged in the cold.

Then—footsteps.

He tensed.

A flicker of firelight appeared ahead, rounding a curve. Then a figure. Cloaked. Hooded. Carrying a staff carved with unfamiliar sigils. Ethan ducked into a shadowed alcove and waited.

The figure passed—an old woman, her face half-lit. Eyes shut. Lips moving. Chanting.

As her footsteps faded, Ethan followed.

They descended through a spiral chamber that opened into a cathedral of stone. Candles floated midair. Symbols pulsed along the walls. Time shimmered at the edges of things.

This was not Earth as he remembered it.

This was somewhere far beneath history.

He approached the central altar.

The woman waited.

"I know you, Ethan Temporal," she said without turning. "You've broken what was sealed. You seek to mend the end with the past."

"How do you know my name?" he asked, though part of him already knew.

She finally turned. "Because I wrote it into the Vault of Beginnings."

He gasped. "You're one of the First Engineers."

She nodded. "The world before your world. We hid here—beneath layers of collapse—awaiting the one who would carry the Key."

She extended her hand. Ethan stepped forward and placed the shard into her palm.

It glowed with a golden pulse.

"You've come to learn," she said. "Not to conquer. Good. The path to the origin is not paved with dominance, but remembrance."

"What is Marcus trying to do?" Ethan asked.

She looked up. "Rewrite the source. Shape the timeline like a god. But that power has no master. It only consumes."

She turned and struck her staff to the ground.

The floor opened.

Stairs descended into glowing mist.

"Come, Voyager. To restore what was, you must first understand what was never meant to be."

Ethan swallowed hard and stepped into the past beneath the past.