The space wasn't a room anymore.
It felt too still to exist, too loud in silence to be real. Shadows moved like reflections without light, and Hale stood in the center breathing, barely. His chest rose like gravity disapproved.
And then, ALP emerged.
No sound. No footsteps. No beginning.
Just... presence.
It didn't have a face, but Hale knew it was smiling.
"You called me," ALP whispered. The words slithered through the air like wet wires.
"Now ask."
Question 1. "What is Ivy?"ALP didn't move.But the shadows behind it recoiled. The floor shivered. The air tightened around Hale's throat, like the truth was trying to stay unspoken.Then came the laugh.Not cruel.
Not amused.
Mourning.A slow, shuddering sound like a father burying the same child again and again across lifetimes."She is the part of you the world kept forgetting.""She was memory given shape.
The anchor to hold what you couldn't.
The echo that refused to stay dead. She is Ivy.
But she has been… so many things."ALP's voice cracked mid-word, like a scratched record. Like it remembered too much."A child. A mirror. A ghost. A tether. A blade.
And once…
the reason you tried to survive."Then it leaned forward.
The light in the room went out."You didn't find her.
You left her.
In every loop, you left her behind first.
So now?
The timelines just beat you to it."
The pain came slow this time.No fire.
No blood.
Just weight.Grief without shape. Grief that had been waiting.
His lungs forgot how to move.
He collapsed forward and the ground didn't catch him right away. Like even gravity had lagged behind the truth.His mind screamed a name.But he no longer knew whose.And still… he stood.Shaking.
Barely human.
But standing.
"Why do you haunt me at 3:12 A.M.?"
This time, ALP laughed faster.
Not mourning.
Madness.
A spiraling, spiraling sound like every version of Hale laughing at once, and none of them sane.
Then it stopped. Too suddenly. Too quiet.
"Because that's the only time your soul is unlocked."
"The world resets too fast to let you see.
But at 3:12 A.M.?
Time holds its breath.
And in that breath…
you remember you're broken."
"It's not when I appear.
It's when you appear
The real you.
The one who asked for the mark.
The one who begged to be remembered by Ivy.
The one who wrote the prophecy himself."
Then ALP spoke in a voice not meant for language.
But Hale understood it anyway.
"Hael'nai Ivrae'nal. Vaas e'kael. Vaas e'morin."
The sound shook the air.
And then the pain came.
Not in the mark.
Not in the body.
In the timeline.
The air screamed.
The walls bled light.
Memories fractured across the room like shattered mirrors.
Hale saw himself
As a child.
As a man.
As a broken thing reaching for Ivy's hand in a burning hallway.
And then
Nothing.
The pain was too large to feel.
It didn't break him.
It erased him.
Slowly.
And then silence.
Hale collapsed.
His skin steamed.
The mark on his chest bled black light pulsing like a dying star trying to restart itself.
ALP leaned down.
Voice thin. Final.
A whisper woven from glass dust and static.
"One more question left.
Ask carefully, Hale.
Some truths aren't doors.
They're weapons.
And don't wait too long, Hale.
Every timeline has an expiration date."
Hale was barely breathing. On the floor. Mark glowing faintly. Skin pale. One of his fingers twitching like it hadn't gotten the message to stop.
ALP knelt. Its form bent at impossible angles like a reflection through cracked glass.
As ALP faded
The walls pulsed.
The mark pulsed.
And the air whispered a single sentence:
"Everything you remember about her…
may have been what killed her."