The Forgotten Gatekeeper

"Time does not guard its secrets lightly. Every door has a keeper, and some doors are meant to stay closed forever."

Viraj barely had time to process their surroundings before the shadows moved.

At first, it was subtle—a ripple in the air, a flicker at the edges of perception. Then, the shifting darkness began to take shape.

Lucius stiffened. “Oh, that’s bad.”

The alternate Viraj exhaled. “You have no idea.”

From the void, a figure emerged.

It was tall, impossibly so, its form stretching and contracting like it couldn’t decide what it was supposed to be. Its body was not made of flesh but of shifting fragments of time itself—pieces of history stitched together in a living, breathing paradox.

A voice echoed, but not from the creature itself. It resonated through the air, through their very bones.

"You are not welcome here."

Viraj clenched his fists. “We’re here for Aditi.”

The figure’s head tilted, its face an ever-changing blur of past and future. One moment, it had the eyes of an ancient king. The next, the hollow gaze of someone who had never been born.

"She does not belong to you anymore."

Viraj’s stomach tightened. He had expected resistance—but not this.

Lucius frowned. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. What is that thing?”

The alternate Viraj’s expression was unreadable. “The Forgotten Gatekeeper.”

Viraj’s pulse quickened. He had read about this—a guardian of the deepest paradoxes, a being that existed outside of time itself. If the Gatekeeper was here, then Aditi wasn’t just trapped—she had become part of the Timeborne’s domain.

He took a step forward. “We’re not leaving without her.”

The Gatekeeper’s form rippled, shifting between thousands of versions of itself. It had been many things, many people, across infinite possibilities.

Now, it was their enemy.

"Then you will not leave at all."

The air collapsed inward.

Viraj barely had time to react before the world itself seemed to fold around them. The ground beneath his feet twisted, warping into shifting sands of time. The temple in the distance flickered—one moment fully formed, the next crumbling into forgotten dust.

Lucius cursed. “What the hell is happening?”

The alternate Viraj pulled him back just as the ground beneath them vanished.

Viraj moved on instinct. His training in time manipulation kicked in, his mind rapidly calculating the shifts in reality. The Gatekeeper wasn’t attacking in a traditional sense.

It was rewriting the battlefield itself.

Viraj grabbed Lucius and pulled him to solid ground. “We have to move!”

The Forgotten Gatekeeper raised a hand—if it could even be called that. It wasn’t a limb but a shifting mass of centuries, twisting into jagged, unstable possibilities.

And then—it struck.

Viraj barely dodged as the air itself ripped apart. A shockwave of raw time distortion erupted, shattering the space where he had just stood.

Lucius swore. “Oh, great! How do we fight something that’s literally made of history?”

Viraj gritted his teeth. He didn’t know.

But he did know one thing.

If they didn’t reach the temple soon, Aditi would be lost forever.

He locked eyes with his alternate self. “You said there’s always a way in. What’s the play?”

The other Viraj hesitated, watching the Gatekeeper with careful precision.

Then, he smiled.

A slow, knowing smile.

“The same way we got in,” he said. “We break the rules.”

And with that, he charged—straight toward the Gatekeeper.