One choice.
That was the rule.
But I didn’t want rules anymore.
I wanted truth, and truth wasmessy.
It wasn’t one road. It was the whole, twisting, beautiful map of experience, life, and the choices that came with it.
“I don’t want to become a pillar of one path,” I said aloud, voice rising through the wind and the magic surging around me. “I want to become the bridge between them. The conduit.”
And just like that, the magic listened.
It didn’t agree.
It didn’t understand.
But itlistened.
And it moved.
The world folded inward. It didn’t collapse, it convergedas if realms were bending toward a common point, but the shimmer grew blinding.
My breath caught as magic exploded around me, and colors that had never existed bled into the sky.
The ground fractured around me, but not with destruction. Instead, it fractured like a puzzle, pulling apart and reassembling simultaneously.
I was lifted with willpower, resilience, magic, beautiful memories, and uncertain futures.
And I felt it.
All of it.
Celeste’s joy, her childhood hands wrapped around mine, along with her laughter.
Keegan’s grounding presence standing before me, the way he said little but meant everything. His steady faith in me is always there.
Gideon’s pain was haunting echoes of someone who had once believed in good, who had twisted it into fear and cruelty.
The Academy’s heartbeat and its long, lonely vigil with its hunger for connection and its purposeful mission.
The mission statement…
I pulled them all in, not like trophies, but like truth that would make me stronger.
Because they were allpiecesof myself that I refused to leave behind.
The ache twisted through me as the shimmer broke open above me and poured into me, while magic slammed through my veins.
My mark, the butterfly, flared bright against my hip, then split into mirrored wings, glowing with ancient sigils I had never seen before but knew by instinct.
And the shimmer spoke.
Not in words.
But in knowing.
You are not the chosen.
