Not the soft kind—the shimmering rivers you stare into when your thoughts drift above the clouds—but the jagged kind. Cracked-glass constellations. A sky torn at the seams, leaking silver.
I stood again at the edge of the void. Alone. Except for the shadow behind me.
I turned—
And she was there.
Eyes like fractured lavender moons. Twin daggers reversed in her grip, dripping gold ichor. Her cloak fluttered in a wind I couldn't feel.
She didn't speak.
She just moved.
One second I was standing. The next—I was falling. My throat open. My breath gone. The last thing I saw was her face twisted in something that wasn't hate, wasn't joy… but something worse:
Regret.
I woke with a gasp, not of panic—but recognition.
I'd seen her before. Not here, not now, but before the chains, before the throne, before the Rift's first tear clawed its way through my soul.
I had died by her hand.
And I wasn't sure if I hated her for it.
The frost still clung to the trees. The pale sun bled weak light through skeletal branches as I sat against the ruin-stone pillar we'd taken shelter under. Kael had gone to scout the ridge. Lyra was working her usual morning ritual—talking to relics like they were lovers. Aeris dozed in a coil of wings and starlight, one tiny claw twitching as he dreamed.
And Seris… stood across from me.
Her back to me.
But I knew she wasn't just looking at trees.
She was remembering.
So was I.
"I saw you in my dream," I said.
No preamble. No warmth. Just truth.
Her shoulders didn't flinch, but her fingers did. A single twitch on the hilt of her dagger, like a nerve remembering what it had once done.
"To dream of me," she murmured, "is rarely a kindness."
"I died," I said. "You killed me."
She turned.
Slowly. Like someone stepping into their own trial.
And for the first time since she joined our ragged group, Seris Nightbloom didn't wear her mask of irony. Her face was a mirror—haunted, old, carved by something heavier than years.
"Not you," she said. "Not yet."
My throat tightened.
She stepped closer, boots soundless against the frost-bitten grass.
"It was another Rift. Another cycle. Another thread in the weave. You were called something else then. But you looked like this. You sounded like this. And when I killed you…" Her voice cracked. "You thanked me."
I felt the cold creep up my arms, not from the morning air, but from the memory trying to claw its way to the surface.
"You stabbed me in the dream."
"I slit your throat in reality."
Her voice was steady. Too steady. She'd killed before. But not like this.
"Why?"
"Because I was told to." She looked away. "And because I loved you."
I stood.
The world swayed like it had lost its axis. Something buzzed in my ears—rage or revelation, I couldn't tell which.
"You loved me?"
"In that life," she said. "And maybe in this one. But it doesn't matter. That version of me… she thought mercy meant death. That ending your suffering was a kindness."
She stepped closer now, face unreadable but eyes wide open.
"You were being devoured from the inside. The Rift had cracked you in half. Your mind… wasn't yours anymore. Your voice bled prophecy. Your body leaked starlight. You begged me to kill you before the Rift consumed the world through you."
I swallowed. Hard. My hands trembled. Not with fear. But with… memory.
"Then I saw it," I whispered. "In the dream. I looked at you, and I smiled. Even as I bled."
"Yes."
"Why would I smile?"
Seris closed the last of the distance. She stood before me, cloak fluttering like shadow-smoke.
"Because you remembered. In that last second. You knew it wouldn't be the end. You knew you'd return. That the Rift couldn't be sealed. That one day…"
Her hand hovered over my chest—then rested lightly above my heart.
"…you'd become it."
Silence fell between us.
Not awkward. Not charged.
Just deep. Like the Rift itself.
"I'm not angry," I said at last. My voice came out hoarse. "But I should be."
"I know."
"I remember hating you in another life."
"I remember hating myself in this one."
We stood like that—haunted things—wrapped in truths that felt like lies.
Then I asked the question that had clawed at me since the dream.
"Do you regret it?"
Seris' eyes flickered. A single breath. Then:
"No."
I blinked.
"But I do regret… that it had to be me."
She turned, as if that sentence had cost her more than the blade ever did.
"Would you do it again?" I asked. "If the Rift took me once more?"
She didn't answer.
But she didn't say no.
The sun cracked over the mountains like a wound reopening. Lyra called out that she found a Relic Beacon still active. Kael returned with blood on his gauntlet. Aeris yawned fire.
The world moved on.
But I stood there… marked.
Not by hate.
Not by love.
But by a death that still hadn't finished happening.
And as Seris walked past me, she paused only to whisper:
"When the time comes, Aetherion…
…don't thank me again."
That night, I dreamed once more.
But this time, I was the one holding the dagger.
And she was the one smiling.