She did not knock.
She didn't need to.
Mirielle appeared like a ripple in my bloodstream—sudden, hot, unwelcome, inevitable.
The child from the siege, silver-haired and void-eyed, was now… older. Or younger. Her shape twisted between moments like her body couldn't decide what century to exist in.
She stepped into my private sanctum within the Astral Library—my sanctum—without hesitation. The air bent around her like stars trying to avoid her shadow.
And in her hands, she held the paradox.
A single page.
Torn from a book that should not exist.
"You're late," she said.
I didn't speak.
Not at first.
Because the moment I looked at the page, I couldn't breathe.
Not because of what was written.
But because of what it wasn't.
Let me explain.
The page was blank.
Utterly blank.
And yet… I knew what it said.
Because it wasn't made of parchment or ink or magic.
It was made of memory—scraped from the flesh of an abandoned timeline.
Mine.
"I tore this from a future that never happened," she said, voice delicate as glass warping under pressure. "A version of you who chose the light. Who chose not to kill the Starborn King. Who refused Elyndra's crown."
My throat was sand.
"And?"
She smiled.
And flipped the page over.
This side wasn't blank.
It burned.
Letters scorched across the surface, vibrating in multiple scripts at once. Celestial. Void-tongue. Old Human. Chrono-Scriven.
And one word kept rewriting itself.
Aetherion.
Aetherion the Savior.
Aetherion the Doom.
Aetherion the Godflame Uncaged.
My knees nearly buckled.
Because this wasn't prophecy.
This was consequence.
"The war begins in eight nights," Mirielle said. "And they're coming for you first. The Sevenfold Conclave has declared you a temporal aberration."
"How do you know that?"
"I dreamed it."
"Who gave you the dream?"
She smiled.
"You did."
My skin itched.
Not from fear.
From memory.
Somewhere—somewhen—I had already stood in this room, held this page, seen this girl.
But then I'd burned her.
Didn't I?
Or saved her?
Or buried her beneath the snow of the Twelfth Moon?
The timelines trembled.
Mirielle pressed the page into my hands. The moment I touched it, I fractured.
Suddenly—
I was standing over a battlefield.
Dead gods lined the skies, their bodies strung between stars like crucified constellations.
My blade was black and alive, made of a scream I had forged myself.
A chorus of angels wept at my feet.
I was…
King.
And alone.
Another blink—
I was dead, impaled on the spear of the Rift's Mouth, my face frozen in terror as Mirielle—older now, lips bloodied—closed my eyes with a whisper:
"You weren't supposed to see this ending."
Then—
One more vision.
This time, I was not Aetherion.
I was a farmer.
Simple. Mortal. Content.
And beside me, a woman laughed. I couldn't see her face—but I knew she was peace itself.
I died old. Happy.
Forgotten.
Safe.
And when I returned to myself—gasping, sweating, the page still hot in my hand—Mirielle said nothing.
She just watched.
"You showed me three endings," I rasped. "Why?"
Her eyes, black and starless, blinked once.
And her voice came not from her lips—but from inside my mind.
"Because you must now choose which one you'll betray."
There are moments that don't feel like time. They feel like doors. Like blinking is a risk. Like fate is watching with a blade behind its back.
This was one of them.
I looked down at the page again.
Now it read only a single phrase.
And it was my own handwriting.
"The cost of saving everything is becoming the thing they must destroy."
"Mirielle," I said. "What are you?"
She paused.
Smiled.
And answered in a language I don't remember knowing.
"I am your final witness."
Then she was gone.
Like steam retreating from thought.
Like a prophecy that changed its mind mid-sentence.
And I was left standing there.
Alone.
In a library of infinite truths.
Holding the lie I had written in a future that didn't happen.
And knowing that I would have to become it anyway.
Far beneath the Astral Library, a bell tolled.
Only once.
But I heard it in every timeline.
And it whispered:
"The Rift is no longer sealed."