Story Title :- idle guy
Chapter 28: The Other Side of Fire
When Kael touched the stasis chamber, reality folded.
Not bent. Not warped.
Folded.
Like a page in a book turning in reverse—except the ink ran backward, the paper bled, and the story whispered as it rewrote itself.
His feet lost the ground. His breath froze in his chest. Time became syrup—slow, thick, impossible to navigate.
And then—nothing.
Awakening
Kael gasped as if surfacing from drowning. But the air he inhaled wasn’t real—it burned cold and sweet, like frost laced with fire.
He opened his eyes.
The world had changed.
The desert, the tower, Lira, Jorin—gone.
He stood in a city made entirely of light and crystal. Skyscrapers reached into black clouds that sparked with violet lightning. Floating platforms carried cloaked figures across impossible bridges. In the sky, a second sun spun in reverse, its light casting elongated shadows that moved independently of their owners.
This was not his world.
It was not any world he’d known.
And yet... it felt familiar.
Kael looked down.
He was wearing the obsidian robes from the mirror.
On his back—the sword.
He gripped its hilt instinctively. It pulsed—alive, warm, sentient. It whispered a name into his mind: Nullfang.
Before he could process more, a voice echoed behind him.
“You’re early, Variant.”
Kael turned.
A tall woman in bone-white armor approached. Her eyes were mechanical, rotating like gyroscopic lenses. One hand held a staff made of memory threads—shimmering like water trapped in time.
“Who are you?” Kael asked.
“Executor Varis. And you're not supposed to be here yet.”
Kael frowned. “Where is here?”
She studied him.
Then sighed. “The Axis Crucible. One of the last convergent zones between timelines. This is where broken variants are contained.”
“I’m not broken.”
“Every version of you is. That’s why you exist.”
The Truth of the Eights
Varis led Kael to a spiraling tower of translucent stone. Along the walls, glyphs hovered—moments from other timelines frozen in loops.
In one, Kael watched himself slay a kingdom with a single breath of fire.
In another, he became the Harbinger, fused to the Riftgate like a god of annihilation.
And in yet another, he saw himself weeping beside a child’s grave—hands soaked in blood not his own.
“You’ve lived hundreds of versions,” Varis said. “You’re what we call an Axis-Tether. One of eight across the multiverse. You anchor potential... and catastrophe.”
Kael stared, fists clenched.
“I’m not a puppet.”
“No. You’re a catalyst.”
She pointed to a massive door—circular, etched with ancient runes.
“Behind this lies the Forge. A place where the eight shall decide the fate of all timelines.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You already didn’t.”
Council of Shadows
The door opened.
Inside—a round chamber, floating in space. No walls. Just stars.
Seven figures sat in hovering thrones, each dressed in unique armors of time, flame, shadow, and steel.
The Eight Points of Shadow.
One spoke—a massive figure of charred bark and lava.
“This is the Last Kael.”
Another, draped in living shadows, hissed, “He’s still bound to Nullfang. Dangerous.”
A third, wearing a crown of dying suns, leaned forward. “But he’s awake. That’s what matters.”
Kael stepped forward.
“Why me? Why any of us?”
The one in frost-blue armor replied. “Because we were the ones who broke the veil. Each of us killed a god. And in doing so, we tore the multiverse open.”
Kael swallowed. “Then fix it.”
“That’s why you’re here,” said the crowned one. “The Veilbreaker Protocol requires all eight to ignite the Endlight Forge. A singular spark to choose a final reality.”
Kael shook his head.
“No. This isn’t balance. This is erasure.”
Silence.
Until the shadowed one whispered:
“Then we have no choice.”
Betrayal and Fire
Kael felt it before it happened—the shift in the chamber. The shadows curling. The sudden drop in gravity.
One of the eight rose—the Kael from the stasis pod. His twin. His alternate. The one who had never left the void.
“Too soft,” the twin muttered, stepping forward. “This one still hopes.”
Kael drew Nullfang. The blade burned blue now—truthlight.
His twin’s weapon gleamed black—Duskbane.
The two blades clashed in a storm of light and shadow, cracking the very chamber. Sparks flew into the void, becoming stars.
“You don’t understand!” the twin shouted. “This is the only way we survive!”
“No,” Kael growled, spinning low, slashing. “This is how we lose ourselves!”
The others watched.
Testing them.
Judging.
In the end, Kael struck true—cutting through Duskbane, breaking his twin’s blade.
But he didn’t kill him.
He dropped Nullfang and stepped back.
“We are not enemies. We’re echoes. I refuse to kill myself for your broken dreams.”
The Fracture
The council murmured.
One by one, they stood.
And bowed.
“You’ve chosen mercy in the place of ruin,” the crown-bearer said. “The Endlight has chosen.”
A pillar of pure energy rose between them.
Kael reached for it—and for a moment, all timelines were visible. A thousand versions of Tareth Kai. A million choices.
And at the center, the sword.
Nullfang.
And something beyond it.
A scream from the darkness.
A third blade.
Waking.
End of Chapter 28
