Elisa landed in a world without touch.
There was no ground, no gravity. Only a surface made of solidified thoughts, where emotions formed structures: towers of guilt, bridges of anxiety, seas of nostalgia.
It was a mental dimension, a collapsed reality where time flowed backwards and memories were entire worlds. A rift floated at the center, slowly spinning like an open wound in the nonexistent sky. From within came a dense hum, a vibration so oppressive it made her stomach twist with anguish.
The hat, as though it understood the atmosphere, became heavier. Elisa fell to her knees.
"No… I can't do this anymore," she whispered, feeling for the first time that the burden was greater than her soul.
Images emerged from the rift before her. Her childhood. Her home planet. Aetheris. Her mother laughing. Her father showing her constellations. Her first love. Her ship… the Cosmic Pieces. Everything she had once been.
Elisa reached toward them helplessly, as though trying to return to those moments and failing. Despite being so close, they were impossibly far away. She collapsed completely for a moment, tears pouring down her face as she covered her eyes while her memories materialized into an entire planet made from those recollections.
Elisa cried until she heard a voice.
Her own, but younger.
"Look at yourself. When did I become… that?"
Her younger self stood there with blue eyes and blonde hair, staring at her current self with brown hair and purple eyes.
"You always said that once you left your planet and explored the universe you admired so much, you'd finally be happy. But now… the only thing I see on your face is sadness and regret."
"I…" Present-day Elisa tried to speak, but she didn't even know what to say. "You're right. There isn't a single day where I don't miss my planet or think about it. I just wanted to be accepted… to be loved. I thought I'd find that recognition in another world, but instead I became the infamous Traveler of Catastrophes, the one who even endangered the universe by using the Cosmic Pieces… all because of a selfish desire to keep exploring the cosmos no matter the damage."
Her younger self said nothing. She only stared at her.
"I'm a horrible person, aren't I? Everyone was right about me."
Tears would not stop falling from present-day Elisa's face.
"I hate myself too."
"I can't believe you still don't understand," the younger version replied. "How do you expect anyone else to love you if you don't even love yourself?"
She stepped closer.
"Are you really going to let all those years of loneliness be meaningless?! I always looked at the stars with hope and excitement, so don't you dare take that away from me!!!"
Young Elisa grabbed the older one by the shirt and kept shouting.
"If you hate yourself so much, then change! If you have enough time to sit here crying, then you have enough time to seal these damn rifts and become better! So get up already and become the person I always dreamed of being!!!"
Present-day Elisa's eyes widened with light, though sadness still lingered within them. But the younger Elisa wasn't finished.
"Elisa Holdstar is the person I dreamed of becoming! So make that dream come true!!! …Please, make it come true."
Tears began falling from the younger Elisa's face as well.
"Please, Elisa… fulfill it. Don't forget me. Don't forget my dream."
The planet of memories began dissolving as it was absorbed into the rift, leaving the entire place like a dead rock drifting in emptiness. Elisa remained kneeling there for a while, her expression frozen in shock and tears.
After some time, she finally stood up slowly and raised her hat.
This time, she didn't just seal the rift.
She cleansed it.
She purified the memories trapped inside it, returning them to the natural flow of time—but not before seeing them one last time and shedding a final stream of tears.
The place fell silent.
A pure silence.
As though the dimension itself had exhaled after holding its breath for centuries.
"I promise I won't," Elisa whispered softly.
Later, Elisa traveled to another universe and found an anomaly.
It wasn't a rift.
It was a scar.
Like the kind left behind after surgery. There was no doubt about it: this was one of Astrid's dimensional unions.
Elisa touched it.
And the world changed.
A flash. A roar. The light was sucked away. The hat shone intensely, trying to stabilize the incoming jump.
But it failed.
She fell…
She fell again.
She awoke inside a room.
It was small, cylindrical, made of dark crystal. Everything rotated slowly. There were no doors. Only a window overlooking a sea of dead stars.
Completely confused, Elisa simply asked where she was.
And a voice answered her.
"You're in my little dimension. A place I created to escape the world sometimes."
Elisa turned around and saw Astrid. Even more unsettled than before, she immediately asked how she had ended up there.
"Because you tried to erase the scar and did it wrong. Honestly, even I was surprised when you suddenly appeared here out of nowhere," Astrid said, sitting on the other side of the room. "But like I said, that wasn't a rift. It was a poorly made stitch."
"You stitched it?"
"I tried. Failed. That happens sometimes when you're joining universes."
Elisa stepped closer, but Astrid raised a hand.
"I don't want to fight. Not yet. I want to talk."
"Why are you doing this?" Elisa asked, her voice cracked with the exhaustion of someone who no longer understood the world.
Astrid sighed.
"My dimension was the first to fall. Not because of war or natural collapse. It was a design flaw. The fabric of reality was unstable. The laws of physics danced without rhythm. We existed by mistake. And everything I loved was erased."
"I'm sorry…"
"No. Don't be. That's why I'm doing this. If all dimensions were united… if they became one single, stable reality… maybe it would never happen again."
"But that would destroy the individuality of every world. Chaos is part of order."
"And how many more have to die before you stop justifying that 'chaos'?"
A tense silence filled the room.
"Your hat closes. My brooch unites. We're opposite extremes of the same purpose," Astrid said, lowering her gaze. "Maybe that's why we're destined to fight."
"What if we don't fight?"
Astrid smiled sadly.
"We already are, Elisa. Every rift you close is another world I'm trying to create."
And at that moment, the room cracked.
Not the walls.
Reality itself.
Astrid touched her brooch. Elisa grabbed her hat. Time stretched, and both of them vanished into another jump.
Elisa emerged inside an ancient forest.
One she had dreamed about before.
She recognized it.
But she didn't know from where.
The moon in the sky was scarred. And in the air, she could smell the smoke of collapse.
A rift opened in the distance.
Massive. Pulsating.
Elisa swallowed hard.
She knew what it meant. She didn't understand why, but she knew what that rift was.
That rift was an entrance to that failed existence.
Where the things waited.
Things without names.
Things without light.
She shouldn't go near it.
And yet… it was her duty.
She was the only one who could.
And someone had to stare into the abyss, if no one else would.
Note: I changed my mind. I know this is my first story and everyone (including me) hates waiting, so now I'll upload chapters much more often, at least every 3 or 4 days.
(I updated the chapter)