The other side of the Rift was not another place.
It was the same place—
only honest.
The plaza stretched wider than it had a heartbeat ago,
cobblestones warm beneath their feet as if the sun had only just remembered how to touch the earth.
The sky above was still that impossible, aching blue—
but now it had depth, like staring upward from the bottom of a clear lake
and realizing the surface was farther away than you thought.
The city had grown while they were gone.
Not in height.
Not in streets.
In memory.
Every road they stepped onto shimmered faintly,
the echo of future footsteps glowing violet—
paths walked centuries from now by people who didn't yet exist,
already leaving their warmth behind.
A baker handed them steaming bread
from an oven that hadn't been built yet.
Its crust crackled—
crkk-krk—
as if warmth was trying to speak.
A little boy with newborn shadow wings tugged at Kael's coat.
"Are the stories true?" he whispered.
"The ones about the three who broke the world?"
Veyra ruffled the boy's hair, somehow gentle despite everything jagged inside her.
"Yeah, kid," she said.
"But we're trying to put it back together better."
They kept walking.
The city let them.
At the far end of the plaza stood what remained of the grand cathedral.
Not a ruin—
a memory of one.
Only the rose window remained,
hovering in mid-air like a coin tossed by a god
and never allowed to land.
Inside the floating circle of stained glass
drifted a single object:
The original seal-stone.
The first ever carved.
The one the Horned Silence had used
before an empire stole their song
and turned it into chains.
It was cracked down the center
and bleeding soft white light
like a wound that had forgotten how to close.
Seraphine stopped beneath it.
Her dress wavered—
now Queen Elyra's coronation white,
now the Calamity Witch's charred black—
flickering with every memory she had ever been forced to carry.
The seal-stone lowered itself into her waiting hands,
as if recognizing its first true keeper in centuries.
It was warm.
It was alive.
And it was afraid.
Seraphine closed her fingers around it.
"I'm sorry," she breathed.
"We were supposed to keep you asleep.
We thought that was mercy."
The stone answered with a single heartbeat—
th-thm—
a pulse of forgiveness.
Veyra watched, thorns rustling under her skin like restless snakes.
"So what now, witch-queen?
Do we put it back to sleep?
Or do we finally let the poor bastard wake up and live?"
Seraphine looked to Kael.
Kael looked to the little girl—
Veyra's Final Mirror—
who was trying to catch the stone's falling light
like fireflies.
Kael knelt in front of her.
"What do you think?"
She blinked once.
Twice.
Then she stepped forward,
rose onto her toes,
and kissed the cracked stone on its broken heart.
FWOOOM—
White light burst outward—
not blinding,
not violent,
just honest.
Bright enough to remind them what hope felt like
before anyone taught it to be quiet.
The stone dissolved into pure sound—
a single shimmering note.
The same note Seraphine had once used to unmake a kingdom.
Only this time,
it was making something.
The rose window exploded outward—
shhh-CRRRAAACK—
into a thousand violet butterflies.
They drifted across the city
and became new windows,
new doors,
new openings.
Where each butterfly landed,
a Rift bloomed—
Not wounds.
Not tears.
Doorways.
Some led to places that had never been real.
Some led to places that had been real and forgotten.
All of them were invitations.
The city held its breath.
Then, slowly,
people began to step through.
Not in fear.
In wonder.
A woman emerged from a doorway made of sky-music,
fell to her knees,
and found her dead husband waiting with open arms.
A boy born without a shadow
found one waiting for him
on the other side of a violet arch—
a shy silhouette waving hello.
The dead did not return as ghosts.
They returned as possibilities.
Kael watched a version of Alcris—older, scarred, peaceful—
walk past holding the hand of a small silver-haired girl
with shadow wings.
They nodded to him,
and he nodded back.
Nothing needed to be said.
Veyra squeezed his hand hard.
"Look."
At the edge of the plaza,
a new tree was growing.
Its trunk was made of the Pale Serpent's discarded scales.
Its leaves were pages torn from every book
the empire had ever burned.
And hanging from the lowest branch—
A single fruit.
Heart-shaped.
Beating with three rhythms.
Seraphine reached for it.
The tree bowed to her touch.
She plucked it
and held it out.
One fruit.
Three people.
Veyra barked a laugh—rough, wet, real.
"Guess we're sharing."
They did.
The fruit tasted like the first breath after drowning.
Like the moment before a kiss.
Like chains falling off in the middle of a quiet morning
when no one is watching.
When only the seed remained,
Seraphine knelt and pressed it into the ground—
right where Kael's execution platform had once stood.
The earth shivered.
Accepted it.
A sapling burst upward—
thorn, shadow, and flame
braided into a single living spiral.
Its first leaves unfolded into tiny, perfect doors.
The city cheered—
bells ringing forward for the first time in centuries,
the sound like a world remembering itself.
Kael looked at Veyra.
Veyra looked at Seraphine.
Seraphine looked at the girl
who was no longer small—
now grown to match them,
thorns quiet,
eyes clear and unafraid.
"Where to?" Kael asked.
She grinned—
Veyra's grin,
but gentler.
"Anywhere," she said.
"The world's big again."
So they walked.
Not as harbingers.
Not as monsters.
Not as legends balancing the end of all things.
Just three people—
and the echo of a fourth—
wandering into a world
that no longer needed saving
to be worth loving.
And somewhere,
very far away,
a tree made of doors kept growing.
Its roots drank from every Rift that had once been a wound.
Its branches reached toward skies that had always feared themselves.
And on its highest limb,
a new fruit began to form—
slow, patient,
beating with the pulse
of whatever came next.