Elisa had arrived in a new universe. She now stood between two twin moons trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. Around her, a storm of liquid light danced as though the sun itself had melted.
Before her, a rift slowly opened. It was not large, but its shape trembled like a wound that refused to close.
It was the nineteenth.
With the hat in her hands, Elisa felt the now familiar pressure in her chest. Every seal was another weight added to her soul.
A tiny death.
A possibility erased.
"How many are left...?" she whispered wearily, though she expected no answer.
She pointed the hat toward the fissure. A ray of silent darkness emerged from within it, covering the rift like a veil of shadow.
And the rift... closed.
Only the echo remained.
The echo of something that no longer existed.
In another reality, Astrid walked through a world made of living geometry, where mountains breathed and trees spoke in languages no human could understand.
There, an opening shone between the sky and the earth.
Astrid raised her brooch. The object answered with a golden vibration, opening its core like a heart ready to beat.
Then the rift merged and joined with another universe. A gentle union. An integration.
A new world was born, an amalgamation of two worlds that should never have touched.
"This is how things are truly healed," Astrid said. "Not by closing them... but by accepting them."
At that moment, Astrid sensed a presence behind her, one that felt... familiar.
"Are you sure about that, sister? Because to me it seems like all you're doing is trying to escape the fate you know you were meant to have. You can believe that by uniting the universes into one you'll redeem yourself, erase all this guilt you feel for surviving, and create a better world for everyone, but deep down you know that nothing you do will change the fact that all of us died, and that in the end you're only doing this because you're afraid and because you desperately want to die, just as you know you should have."
Astrid did not turn around. She already knew perfectly well what stood behind her: an illusion.
Unlike Elisa, every time Astrid used her brooch she did not feel weight, nostalgia, or anything similar. Instead, her fears and regrets materialized into illusions that reminded her of her past.
She had grown accustomed to them and now simply ignored them, though she could never avoid being affected by them. She knew they were not real, knew they were not truly her family, but hearing them still hurt every single time.
The brooch could unite entire universes and create new life, but ironically it could not return beings or worlds to existence. She had tried. She had exhausted every possible method to bring back her family and her world, but... she had never succeeded.
Astrid remained silent as a tear slipped down her cheek and she opened a portal to another world.
As both of them walked through their respective universes, separated by realities and time, a question began to grow in Elisa's heart:
What is lost every time I seal a rift?
A universe? A life? An opportunity? Am I preventing a dimension that could have flourished from ever even beginning?
Elisa found herself in a dimension where time moved in spirals. The beings there did not live in a straight line, but in existential circles. They were born, died, and were reborn knowing exactly what would happen, yet unable to avoid it.
One of them approached her, a creature made of thinking clouds and liquid eyes.
"Why do you close these openings?" it asked.
Elisa did not answer immediately. She thought for a few seconds before speaking.
"Because if I don't, everything will collapse," she replied.
"My world and my people have already collapsed. What difference would sealing that opening make?"
Elisa fell silent.
She sealed the rift quickly and left without answering.
In a floating station at the edge of universal consciousness, Elisa observed a mural carved from cosmic stone. It depicted two opposing figures: one with a hat that absorbed stars, the other with a brooch that multiplied them.
Their fingers touched.
At the center: the multiverse.
Beneath the image was an inscription in a dead language:
"Only within contradiction is balance born."
Elisa stared at her reflection in the mural's black crystal, at her hair and eyes, now a different color from what they once had been.
She still remembered the first time she noticed those changes.
The morning she woke up, looked into a mirror aboard her ship, and saw that her appearance had transformed.
Her hair and eyes still looked human, but something about them was different. It was not only the color. It was the way light reflected off them, the strange sensation they conveyed, as if they no longer belonged to an ordinary person. That unusual glow in her eyes made it seem as though a sky existed within them.
The cosmic pieces and their radiation had altered her body. Her hat had prevented the transformation from progressing beyond her appearance and affecting her health, but that did not make the change any easier to accept.
Because every time she saw her reflection, she felt the same stab in her chest.
That was not the girl she had once been.
She recognized her face.
She recognized her voice.
She recognized her memories.
But she struggled to recognize herself. She looked like a distant version of herself, someone shaped by forces that should never have touched a person.
And then she understood.
No matter how she looked at it, time had passed and everything was different.
This was her new life now, and that realization was what made her cry the first time she saw her new appearance.
Elisa kept staring at her reflection in the mural, and for the first time... she did not fully recognize herself. She simply asked a question while looking at her hat.
"Why me? Why did you choose me? Why did I have to be the one who found you in that forest? Why do I have to be the one who seals the rifts?... Why do I have to be the Vessel of Nonexistence? I swear I want to change, to accept myself, but it's easier said than done. I want to fulfill the dream I always had, but... how?"
She waited in silence, as if she truly expected an answer from the object.
None came.
Lowering her gaze, she sighed.
She summoned her ship through a portal and entered a room she had not visited in a long time: her plushie room.
There, Elisa kept the stuffed toys she had owned since childhood. On her planet, where she had always been an outcast, those small toys had been her only companions, the only ones who hugged her and comforted her. When she escaped Aetheris, besides her hat, they were the only things she had taken with her.
She picked up her favorite and hugged it for several minutes.
A small tear slid down her face as she felt the effects of using the hat to seal the rifts. The pressure inside her grew stronger and lasted longer each time, so she decided she needed at least a brief rest.
She went to her bedroom, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes.
Maybe she would feel better.
Elisa opened her eyes, but she was not awake.
She stood within a lucid dream.
Suddenly, she heard a voice behind her. It belonged to none other than her younger self.
"It's you! I can finally see you again. You have no idea how hard it's been. I... I'm so tired. I swear I want to become the person you want me to be, but I don't know how. The more I travel, the more I doubt myself... and I can't stop feeling like I'm wrong. I want to be better, but I feel like I'm no longer myself. The hat even chose me to become a goddess, but why me? What am I supposed to do? What does it expect from me?"
"Oh, Elisa." Her younger self looked at her with a comforting expression. "Whether you're good or bad, you're still yourself. You're still possibility. You're still capable of changing everything. The fact that things happened and changed you doesn't mean you can no longer fix them. It only means the options have changed. What hasn't changed is the reason that brought you here. I already told you, Elisa: don't forget me. Don't forget why you're here doing all of this. That's why the hat chose you. Because you're you... it wanted you."
Elisa smiled and let out a soft laugh through her tears.
"You know, I don't understand you. You're supposed to be the younger version of me, and I definitely wasn't this mature or kind. You're more like some kind of superego. I don't know whether to take you as divine guidance or a sign of schizophrenia."
Her younger self giggled.
"I guess people see what they want to see. But who says you weren't like me, or that you still aren't? I already told you: despite everything, you're still yourself, Elisa. I am you, and you can still keep improving. Elisa Holstar is standing right in front of you. You just have to reach her."
In the real world, while she slept, Elisa smiled peacefully and remained asleep for a few more hours.
Meanwhile, on her own path, Astrid had entered another universe. She too was beginning to feel the effects of her mission.
Not all worlds accepted fusion.
Some screamed.
Others imploded.
Some... fought back.
"I can't stop," she said, alone, resting her forehead against the brooch. "I'm going to fix this multiverse. I'll do it for everything that was lost."
Astrid tried to maintain her composure, but she increasingly felt that her method was becoming less effective. She could not allow herself to yield. This was the only way to truly fix everything.
What she was doing was not perfect.
But she believed it was necessary... no, she didn't merely believe it.
"It is necessary... right?"
At that moment, another hallucination appeared before her.
It was herself.
A younger version of herself, without the brooch, looking far happier.
Astrid froze.
"Yes, it's necessary," the illusion said. "But not to save the multiverse. It's necessary so you can keep even the smallest reason to stay alive. So you can cling to a purpose that lets you feel like you didn't fail to protect what you loved most. So you can redeem yourself for everything you lost."
"Shut up..." Astrid stammered.
"Don't you see? It doesn't matter if you 'save' the entire multiverse. You couldn't save the one thing that truly mattered to you. Astrid, don't you realize? You've already failed. You've already lost everything."
"Shut up!"
"Wouldn't it be easier to just give up? All you have to do is accept that there's nothing left you can do. Even if you merge all the universes into one, you won't be able to guarantee they'll be safe, because you will be the one protecting them, and you can't protect anything."
"I said shut up!"
"JUST GIVE UP AND DIE ALREADY, ASTRID!"
"SHUT UUUUUP!"
Astrid unleashed a blast of light at the illusion. It vanished, but the attack continued onward and struck a distant planet, annihilating it completely.
Astrid stared in horror.
She had shattered a planet into pieces.
Velhara flashed through her mind, and she collapsed, covering her face as she began to hyperventilate.
"No... What have I done?! No, I... it's fine. It was only one world. I still have to save all the others. I'll save them. I will. This was just a mistake, and I'll fix it."
She could almost hear the voices of her family—and of herself—laughing and telling her to give up. The sound drove her into a scream.
"I CAN FIX EVERYTHING! THIS MULTIVERSE WILL BE SAVED, AND IT WILL BE SAVED BY ME! I WILL FIX THIS WORLD!"
And throughout the vastness of existence, the universe around her began to tremble.
"I AM ASTRID EVERSHINE! THE LAST VELHARIAN ALIVE! THE GREATEST PRODIGY OF THE MOST EVOLVED RACE IN REALITY! THE CHOSEN OF THE MULTIVERSAL CREATION BROOCH! THE CHOSEN ONE TO BECOME THE GODDESS OF EXISTENCE, AND I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN FIX THIS WORLD!"
All of creation was about to turn upside down.
Not because of the rifts.
Not because of the fusions.
But because of the clash of wills that was approaching.
A choice.
A divided destiny.
Two forces fated to confront one another, not out of hatred, but because their convictions could never be reconciled.
And while the rifts closed... and the worlds merged...
...Astrid was beginning to understand that she was not saving the multiverse.
She was fixing it.