The rift pulsed like a living wound. Elisa watched it warily while the hat reacted, vibrating against her head as though trying to warn her of something beyond words. And then, like a vision—or a memory that was not her own—Elisa's mind was invaded by images.
Echoes of another life.
Astrid's life.
The name of the world was Velhara, a dimension whose physics flowed like music: gravity followed rhythms, time was measured in melodic cycles, and space bent according to the collective emotions of its people. It was a beautiful yet unstable universe, built upon a fragile harmony where every thought could influence matter and destiny.
Astrid was born beneath a rain of blue light, within the core of the cathedral-city of Caelum, the vibrant capital of Velhara. Her people were wise, but proud. They could shape space through equations of will and walk among the stars through the sheer force of collective thought. Astrid was a prodigy child, a composer of formulas and an architect of impossible geometries. She dreamed of creating structures capable of sustaining entire worlds.
But Velhara held a secret.
It was a draft.
A failed prototype of the universe—the very first universe created within the Second Existence—and like any first attempt… it carried flaws. A pilot dimension of the multiverse, designed with forces even the Guardians themselves could not fully comprehend. Velhara's internal structure possessed irreparable errors. Chaotic variables accumulated over the centuries, and the bonds holding reality together slowly began to tear apart.
It started with small slips: days repeating themselves, people disappearing mid-conversation, memories no one could confirm had ever existed.
Then came the collapses.
Entire regions of the planet began to vanish, replaced by inert voids. The sky split into silence. Seas froze into liquid fire. The music of the world lost its key.
The scholars and elders tried to contain the entropy. Some prayed. Others denied it. But all of them failed. The anomalies evolved into calamities, appearing only to leave destruction and emptiness in their wake. The luckiest planets were merely hollowed out into barren wastelands.
The unlucky ones…
Were swallowed whole alongside half their galaxies.
One tragic day, a rift appeared within Velhara itself, beginning to consume and disintegrate everything.
Everyone was dragged toward that opening, and Astrid reached desperately for her younger sister—the only one who had not yet been consumed. Yet their fingers barely brushed against each other before Astrid lost sight of her within the darkness of the fissure.
"SISTER!!!"
She screamed with unbearable helplessness.
At only nineteen years old, Astrid witnessed her world, her people, her mother, and her little sister being devoured by the rift that had appeared in the middle of the city and swallowed it whole.
Her planet—and even the entire universe—was left completely destroyed and desolate.
Nothing remained.
No screams.
No shadows.
Nothing.
Only Astrid, the remnants of cities, and a barren landscape stretching across the entire planet.
The eternal silence of the universe was interrupted only by Astrid's inconsolable cries and sobs as she stared at the ruins of what had once been her home.
How did she survive?
No one knows.
Not even her.
A dimensional rift connected to an existence far more corrupted than her own appeared and cast her into another universe: a corner of the void between dimensions. A place without time. Without bodies. An abstract prison where the ruins of worlds that no longer existed drifted endlessly.
There, within that graveyard of possibilities, Astrid found the brooch.
It was not hidden.
It simply existed.
An object of shifting metal, embedded with a crystal core that constantly rotated, displaying scenes of infinite overlapping realities. The moment Astrid touched it, she felt the universe bleeding from within. She witnessed the creation of everything—and of the object she now possessed. She understood and saw things that would have been utterly incomprehensible even to the wisest members of her race.
The brooch had a purpose.
Not to seal.
But to create.
To unite.
With it, Astrid learned to travel between dimensions, leaping across the remnants of the multiverse like a ghostly nomad. She infiltrated alternate worlds, gathered forbidden knowledge, saw universes just as ruined as her own, and came to understand that the multiverse was not stable.
It was a lie held together by fragile scraps and weak stitches.
Her world was merely one among hundreds doomed to eventual collapse.
And after seeing all of that, she understood what she had to do.
She decided she would create something new.
A single universe.
One solid, indivisible reality where the mistakes of Velhara could never happen again.
She knew it would be cruel.
That it would shatter entire realities.
But she also knew the alternative was eternal collapse.
She did not see herself as a savior.
Nor as a villain.
She was simply the only one left.
And that thought forced her to act.
The vision dissolved, and Elisa fell to the ground gasping for air. The hat had gone completely still, as though it too had been left in shock.
The rift remained there, vibrating with that same strange pulse. It was no longer merely an opening.
It was a threshold.
A whisper from the failed existence.
"Did you see it?" Astrid asked, appearing beside her without warning.
Elisa nodded, still on her knees.
"I saw… everything."
"Then you can't hate me anymore."
"No…" Elisa murmured. "But I still can't let you continue. I promised myself I would fix all of this."
Astrid lowered her gaze. The brooch on her chest rotated slowly.
"I made that promise too. And I can't stop either. I want to fix everything just like you do… I suppose you still don't understand my different approach."
"I do understand it… but that doesn't mean it's right."
Astrid simply looked at her in silence.
And both of them understood.
It had begun.
The true journey of these two travelers was not merely between opposing forces.
It was between two survivors.
Two women dragged forward by decisions they never wanted to make.
Two symbols of a cosmic paradox.
To close.
To unite.
To save.
To destroy.
The rift trembled.
And from within it, something moved.
Something that should never have awakened.
But it had.
And the multiverse…
Was listening.