The void collapsed, and reality rushed back in like a tide reclaiming the shore. The being that had been Selena and Dante tumbled through layers of existence, through the spaces between thoughts and the fabric of the eternal flame, falling toward manifestation with the inevitability of rain returning to earth.
But something happened during the fall. Something neither of them—neither the merged consciousness—had anticipated.
The boundaries began to reassert themselves.
It started as a tremor, a hesitation in the unified consciousness. A thought emerged that couldn't be attributed to the whole: *I don't want to disappear.* And immediately, another thought answered it: *Neither do I.*
The eternal flame, woven through the fabric of reality and carrying the merged being back toward the world, felt the resistance and responded. Not with force or compulsion, but with a question that wasn't quite words: *What do you choose?*
