The woman standing at the entrance to the First Road looked exactly like Sarya. Same face, same height, same eyes — but something in her bearing was profoundly wrong, a stillness that didn't belong to anyone who had just witnessed what Sarya had witnessed.
She didn't look surprised to see herself.
She looked relieved.
"Don't listen to her," the older Sarya called from across the collapsing Road.
"You said that last time," the newer figure answered, unhurried.
Present Sarya froze. "Last time?"
Neither woman answered her directly.
The implication settled over her with a cold, disorienting weight.
This had happened before.
Sarya looked down at her own chest, where the Nexus had gone completely dark, and braced herself for pain, for weakness, for some hollow ache where its constant presence had lived for nearly two years.
Instead, she felt silence.
