The stars in the sky were wrong.
They shifted like rivers, not constellations—moving, shimmering, reforming into symbols Rin couldn't identify but recognized she'd once sketched in the margins of forbidden books.
She could sense them push against her head.
Forcing. Recalling.
The cloaked man stood at the rim of the floating platform, threads of gold hanging from his hands like strings on puppets, each one disappearing into a separate memory hovering about him.
Some glowed with light.
Some seeped shadow.
Kael stepped forward with sword in hand. "Who are you?"
The man did not reply.
Instead, he lifted his hand—and a memory fell from the stars above, crashing onto the platform with the crash of shattering glass.
Rin gasped.
It was her.
In memory.
Younger. In robes that were lined with violet. Crowned in silver leaves. Her eyes were empty,Blank.
She was standing beside a throne constructed of thorns. Blood streamed down her arms. The stars in the background were burning.
She was smiling.
Kael stepped back, "What is that?"
"A possibility," the hooded figure replied.
His voice was layered—childlike, male, female, ancient. And beneath it all, Rin's own voice.
" This is who you were becoming."
Rin shook her head. "I never—"
"But you could've," he said. "And still might."
He held up another thread.
This time it was a memory of Kael.
But not as Kael.
This version of keal have white hair, Black eyes. A burning red blade. He stood over the dead, his armor blackened, the symbol of the Void Guard on his shoulder.
Rin's breathing caught.
"You were… one of them?"
Kael gazed, shocked. "I don't recall this. I don't."
The hooded figure spun around to him.
"You were not always Kael Renjou.
Before the curse, before the threads, before your name—
You were the one who set fire to the sky to restore her."
Rin stepped backward. Her heart pounded.
"No… he would never—"
"But he did," the figure breathed. "For you."
A new strand fell.
Rin, on a glass coffin, deceased. The world devastated.
And Kael—no, not the man he was—knees on the ground, bloody hands, bellowing at the stars.
Then… flames.
A decision.
The strands of destiny being severed.
Time collapsing to relive the world.
Reika glanced away. Her voice quivered. "He was the one who broke the first Mirror Gate."
The hooded figure nodded.
"He ruined the pattern.
And in the process, doomed every version of you."
Silence.
Rin's fingers shook.
She turned to Kael. "Did you know…?"
No," he breathed. "I promise you—I didn't know any of this."
The figure drew closer.
"You loved each other before the threads. Before fate stepped in. But love, when it's made desperate, becomes hazardous. You ripped holes into time to save her. And the world paid for it."
"I didn't want this," Kael declared. "If I did that—if I became that one—then I'd rather die."
"You already did," the Watcher replied. "Lots of times.
The golden strands encircling the figure started to turn faster. The stars convulsed.
"Now the question remains…"
He addressed Rin.
"Will you forgive him?
Will you save him again?
Or will you become the one who completes what he began?"
Rin looked at Kael.
And for a moment of sheer terror—she saw it.
Not the boy with haunted eyes.
But the man who burned the sky for her.
She said nothing. She just went to him, cupped her hand on his cheek, and whispered:
"I don't care who you were…
I care who you are now."
Kael's eyes fluttered closed, briefly. The burden of it all—his lost transgressions, his shattered past—it curved his shoulders. But her words corrected him.
He took her hand.
Then I'll keep choosing this," he said. "Every version. Every thread. Only you."
The figure observed them in silence.
Then he raised his hand—
And released the threads.
The sky broke apart.
All memory, all fractured timelines, all possibilities of them disintegrated inward—pulled into a glowing shard of starlight that drifted towards Rin.
> "Take it," said the Watcher. "This is not an answer. It's a key."
She extended her hand.
The shard burned as it contacted her skin.
Pain shot through her skeleton.
Kael grasped for her—but it was too late.
Light enveloped her.
And she fell—
Into herself.
---