Elisa fell.
She couldn't see the sky. There was no sky. Only fragmentation existed. Pieces of the universe hung suspended like floating shards of glass, each vibrating at a different frequency, impossible to touch, impossible to ignore. The battle against the Guardians had ended weeks ago, yet its consequences still echoed wildly through space and time.
The final shockwave had brought down the structure of the multiverse like a sandcastle. In that moment, Elisa had caused a multidimensional disaster without even realizing it. The Guardians, defeated not with rage but with the sorrowful determination of someone unable to stop the inevitable, vanished in flashes of light. It had been a universal battle where galaxies themselves were wielded as weapons, where constellations were erased from existence simply to carve paths of attack.
The hat, still worn and smoking from the battle, floated beside her. As though it too had fought. As though it understood.
Elisa put it on. The instant the hat touched her head, a dull hum flooded her mind. It wasn't pain. It was something else. A resonance. Something coming from the deepest corners of everything—and nothing.
At that moment, a dimensional rift opened beside her. Not violently, but like a wound bleeding slowly. Not light. Not darkness. Something worse. The absence of both.
"Another one?" she muttered to herself, her voice dry with the exhaustion of someone who had lost too many times. During the weeks that had passed, rifts had begun appearing throughout different parts of the universe.
The hat responded with a faint vibration. By now, she already knew: the hat could seal those rifts. She didn't understand why, but she knew it. It felt almost instinctive. All she had to do was think, focus her will… and close the opening that ultimately swallowed her whole. Elisa fell into another universe. Yet, just like with the rifts, she wasn't surprised by the fact that she had been sent somewhere else. She didn't understand why she wasn't surprised. Normally, the first thing she would've done after being sucked into a portal was scream, but… it was as though every time she used the hat, even unconsciously, Elisa gained knowledge of everything, as if the hat whispered things into her subconscious that she didn't even know existed.
The first jump took her to a place that had once been a stellar city. Now it was a distorted reflection: inverted towers floated above dried seas, and beings made of radio static crawled across the surface. In the sky, stars could be seen dying and space itself fading away—a truly tragic yet beautiful spectacle. There was a rift there. She knew it the moment she arrived.
Elisa stretched out her hand. The hat glowed. Invisible lines emerged from her palm, wrapping around the rupture in reality she had found. She closed her eyes. A faint pain, like nostalgia, spread through her chest.
The rift disappeared.
But the nostalgia didn't. That stayed.
"Every time I seal one… it feels like I forget something," she whispered.
And the worst part was that she didn't know what.
Hours later—or whatever passed for time there—Elisa walked along a path where the sky itself seemed warped. The sun hung overhead but gave no light, while the heavens remained dark and full of stars. After a short walk, she saw her for the first time:
Astrid.
Just like with the rifts, Elisa didn't understand why she felt like she knew her, but… the moment she saw her, she knew her name, and she knew Astrid was there for a reason. Still, she tried to ignore it. She convinced herself she didn't know who that girl was, that she had never seen her before. But as she looked at her for a few moments longer, the feeling of familiarity only grew stronger. She even felt that Astrid radiated an energy similar to her own.
She has a hat too, Elisa thought at first.
But no. It was a brooch. Round, golden, with a blue core pulsing like a heartbeat.
Astrid looked at her as though observing a broken version of herself. There was something sad in her eyes. Something Elisa couldn't tell was pity or warning.
"You're wearing yourself down," Astrid said emotionlessly. "Every rift you seal brings you closer to losing yourself."
"And you… what are you doing then?" Elisa asked cautiously, though there was genuine curiosity in her voice as well.
"What you don't dare to do. I'm joining realities together. I'm stitching them. Not sealing them."
"That's insane. Do you know what that would do to the balance?"
Many years ago, Elisa had read in a book—whose title she no longer remembered—about the multiverse, and how dangerous it would be if two different worlds ever merged, or even merely touched.
"Balance? Balance is dead, Elisa. The multiverse has already collapsed. All you're doing is sweeping through ruins."
"Wait… how do you know my name and what I'm doing?"
"The moment you arrived in my dimension, I could feel the energy coming from your hat. I don't know why, but when I touched my brooch, I came to know you. I saw your life and your memories as if I had been there myself. I suppose the two objects must be connected somehow. And by the way, I know you already know my name too, even if I understand why you're pretending otherwise. Sometimes my object makes me feel strange as well. So let me introduce myself properly. My name is Astrid Evershine. Nice to meet you… and farewell for now, Elisa Holdstar."
Silence followed.
Elisa wanted to scream at her. But she had no energy left. She simply watched Astrid walk away, disappearing into a portal she opened before vanishing completely. In her wake, Elisa saw another nearby rift bend and merge with a second one. She could feel the universe she stood in fusing with another at that very moment, and how the rift closed as those two worlds became one.
A knot formed in Elisa's stomach.
That fusion… wasn't natural. It felt as though reality itself cried while it happened.
And within that cry, Elisa felt a gaze.
Not Astrid's. Something else.
Something behind the rifts. Something that had been waiting for a very long time.
A whisper came riding on the nonexistent wind.
"Seal enough of them… and you'll learn what we are."
Elisa didn't answer. She only hugged her hat like an old friend and leapt toward the next rupture.
Because if she didn't do it, no one would.
And maybe… just maybe… there was still something left to save. She didn't know why, but she had the feeling that if she didn't seal the rifts, something far worse was going to happen.
Note: Chapters will be uploaded weekly, so the next chapter will be released next Friday.
(I updated the chapter)