The ritual chamber. The platform. The wood binding her while she was still injured from the guard’s beating. Her cracked rib screaming. The frost burns from the guards’ hands.
Then Auradelle, clinical and detached, pressing his hand to her collarbone andpushing.
I felt it all through her senses, and then started getting glimpses of othertimelines.
Me, storming the Heartspire so corrupted I looked more shadow than man. Cutting through guards, destroying everything in my path. Reaching Elle just as Auradelle completed his ritual. Watching her dissolve into the Bloom while I screamed and the corruption consumed me.
Another version: Elle making a different choice, sacrificing herself to save me. The realms collapsing anyway. Both of us dying as reality tore itself apart.
Another: Me arriving too late. Elle already gone. My corruption eating the Heartspire itself in rage before it consumed me too.
Sixteen failures, each slightly different but all ending the same way. A wheel turning endlessly, grinding us both to dust.
When the memories finally released me, I realized I’d destroyed the entire garden. We stood in an empty void now, nothing left but Elle and me and the all-consuming rage threatening to tear me apart.
“Kaelren.” Her voice was distant. “Come back to me. Stay present.”
I was shaking, my whole dream-form vibrating with fury so intense it was rewriting what little reality remained around us. Not just fury at Auradelle, though that burned hot and bright. Fury at Eltrien. At the healer who’d been guiding us, advising us, watching us, all while knowing we were repeating a pattern that had failed sixteen times before.
“He knew,” I snarled, and my voice made the void itself shudder. “Eltrien knew about the iterations. About the failures. About all of it. And he never told us. Never warned us. Just watched us stumble toward the same ending like we were pieces in a game he’d already lost sixteen times.”
“I know. Maybe that’s the only way he’s stayed sane through sixteen iterations of watching everyone he cares about die.”
“I don’t care about his sanity.” The words came out cold and vicious. “I care that he’s been playing puppet master while pretending to help. I care that he’s known the exact shape of the trap we’re walking into and he’s been letting us walk anyway.”
“What if he thinks we need to walk into it?” She grabbed my face, forcing me to focus on her. “What if the only way to break the patternis to understand it first? To see how it fails so we can change it?”
“That’s too fucking convenient—”
“Or it’s the truth.” Her eyes searched mine. “Kaelren, I know you’re angry. I’m angry too. But think—if Eltrien could just tell us how to win, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Maybe the pattern doesn’t work that way. Maybe we have to figure it out ourselves, or the wheel just keeps turning.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to reject the idea that Eltrien’s deception might serve a purpose. But she was right—if there was an easy answer, sixteen iterations wouldn’t have failed.
“I’m going to have words with him when this is over,” I said darkly. “Extensive words. Possibly involving my hands around his throat.”
“Get in line.” She managed a weak smile. “But first, we have to survive. And that means you can’t come charging in like every other Kaelren in every other iteration.”
“Then what do I do?” The question tore out of me. “How do I break a pattern that’s been repeating for—what, centuries? How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know. But I know what doesn’t work—you, corrupted and desperate, storming in exactly when Auradelle expects you. That’s the pattern. That’s what fails every time.”
“So I wait.” The words tasted like ash. “I wait while he tortures you again. While he pushes your marks further. While he breaks you down piece by piece.”
“One more day,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “Give me one more day to find his weakness. To understand what he’s really planning. To figure out how to sabotage it from the inside.”
One more day. Which meant waiting while she was tortured again, while I was too far away to help.
“You’re asking me to let him torture you,” I said, the words like broken glass in my throat. “I’ll feel it through the bond—muffled, but there—and I won’t be able to reach you.”
“I know.” Her hands tightened on my shirt. “But in every other iteration, you arrive early and walk right into his trap—exactly when he expects youto do. That’s the pattern, Kaelren.”
“And if I wait?”
“You strike at dawn on Convergence day when he’s preparing for the ritual.”
She was right. I hated that she was right, but she was. The tactical part of my mind could see it—arriving early meant fighting through his full defenses. Arriving the night before meant catching him mid-preparation.
But it also meant leaving her there longer to be tortured.
