“This is why it keeps repeating.” Her voice was steady despite the tears now streaming down her face. “We keep making the same fundamental choices, just with different details. We stay within what the loop allows. We play by rules we don’t even know we’re following.
“Until now,” Elle said, her grip tightening on the seed. “Because this seed just showed me what has to be done. Something no Elle before me has tried. Something that exists completely outside the loop’s framework.”
“What are you saying?” But I already knew. Some part of me had known since the moment Peeble produced that seed.
Elle stood, still holding the seed, and I rose with her, unwilling to let distance grow between us even as I felt her slipping away.
“The loop continues because we’re bound by time,” she explained, her voice taking on that echoing quality again. “Linear progression. Past to present to future. But what if someone could exist outside that progression?What if someone could step outside the loop entirely by existing in all moments simultaneously?”
“That’s impossible,” I said, but it sounded weak even to me.
“It’s never been tried.” She touched my face with her free hand. “Root and rot, Kaelren. Convergence is when they’re supposed to merge, supposed to create something new. But they’ve always fought each other. Always tried to dominate or destroy. But what if they could coexist? What if I corrupted my mark with both forces at once?”
Horror crashed over me as I understood. “That would tear you apart. The paradox alone—”
“Would untether me from linear time,” she finished. “Make me something that exists outside the loop’s ability to reset. I could see the pattern from outside it. Understand what needs to be fixed. Find the key to breaking it permanently.”
“And the seed?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“The Bloom needs to be freed,” she said simply. “It was never meant to be centralized, controlled, caged like this. The seed will let me release it properly before I go. Let it become what it was supposed to be.”
“Before you go.” The words tasted like poison. “Elle, what you’re describing—existing outside time, corrupted by contradictory forces—that’s not survival. That’s oblivion with extra steps.”
“It’s the only thing that hasn’t been tried,” she said, and her certainty was absolute. “It’s the only variable we can change. Everything else keeps us in the loop.”
“No.” I gripped her shoulders, corruption flaring around us protectively. “There has to be another way. We’ll find something else, some other variable—”
“There isn’t time.” She gestured at the chamber around us, at the Heartspire still convulsing, at reality growing thinner with each moment. “The Convergence is destabilizing everything. If I don’t act now, the whole realm collapses and we reset anyway. At least this way, there’s a chance.”
“A chance of what?” My voice cracked. “You’re talking about dispersing yourself across time itself. How would you even come back from that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and that honesty was somehow worse than false promises would have been. “But I have to try. Someone has to break the pattern, Kaelren. If not me, then the next Elle. And the next. Forever.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to find some logical flaw in her reasoning, some alternative she hadn’t considered. But looking into her eyes, feeling her absolute conviction through our bond, I knew there wasn’t one.
Sixteen iterations had tried everything else. This was the only untested variable.
And it was going to cost me everything.
Around us, the chamber had gone completely quiet. The rebels who remained alive were watching, understanding that whatever was about to happen, it was bigger than victory or defeat. Bigger than kingdoms or courts.
Mora stood nearby, tears streaming down her face. Bryx had gone completely still, his usual energy subdued into shocked silence. Even Peeble watched with something like grief in their alien features.
They all knew what was coming.
“There has to be another way,” I said, but it was weak, desperate, already defeated.
“There isn’t.” Elle stepped closer until we were nearly touching. “And you know it. Some part of you has known since the moment you felt what I’d become. Since you surrendered to your corruption to save me.”
She was right. She was always fucking right.
“I hate this,” I said.
“I know.” Her hands came up to frame my face. “But this is what breaks the cycle, Kael. Root and rot, coexisting in one person. It’s never been done because it’s supposed to be impossible. That’s exactly why it might work.”
“Might,” I repeated, the word tasting like ashes.
“Look at yourself,” she said gently. “Your corruption is spreading. You’re dying by inches, and we both know it. When I go, when I pull the rot with me through our bond—”
