The voice that answered the original Archivist's question came from behind them all, cutting through the chaos of collapsing reality like a blade forged from pure certainty.
"Because it's not his choice to make."
Every fragment turned as one, their forms trembling with disbelief. There, standing at the edge of the bubble of calm that surrounded the original Archivist, was a figure that shouldn't exist in any form—memory, fragment, or otherwise.
Shia.
But this wasn't the Shia from Lio's memories—the gentle woman who had held him through his darkest moments and drawn impossible futures with stick figures and hope. This Shia blazed with an authority that seemed to bend reality around her presence. Her eyes held depths that rivaled the original Archivist's own, and when she moved, the very fabric of the Inkless Realm responded as if she were its rightful queen.
