The door was not a door.
It was a ribbon—a pale slash in the air, suspended between stone and nothing. No hinge, no lock, just a whisper-thin veil of silvery-blue light, fluttering in a wind that didn't touch her skin.
"This is it?" Cassian asked, brows furrowed, sword slung across his back more out of instinct than purpose. "The Realm Between?"
"No," Elara said, voice tight. "It's the seam into it."
They stood at the edge of the Observatory's ruins, where the meteor's crater had reshaped the land into spirals and fault lines. Beneath them, ancient glyphs pulsed faintly under ash and moss, remnants of an older magic, long buried.
Kaelen hovered at a distance, quiet. Lyra stood guard with hands glowing faint gold, her usual storm-born arrogance subdued to an eerie calm.
"This is suicide," Kaelen finally said. "Realms aren't doors you open. They're graves you fall into."
"I'm not looking for a grave," Elara replied. "I'm looking for what we lost."
Cassian took her hand, eyes never leaving hers.
"I'm coming with you."
She shook her head. "You can't. I need you here. If the Veil cracks again, Stormwake won't survive without you."
His jaw clenched.
"Elara…"
"I'll come back."
He said nothing.
So she stepped forward.
And vanished.
The Realm Between had no floor.
No ceiling.
No sky.
Just a dim, breathable fog that shimmered like crushed diamonds. Time slowed, thickened, and then ran backward before speeding into a stuttered crawl. The only constant was the pull.
It dragged at her chest, not violently, but insistently, as though the realm itself remembered her—yearned for her.
She floated.
Or perhaps walked—there was no telling which.
Memories flickered beside her, playing like broken film strips: a glimpse of her mother laughing, a petal falling from her childhood window, her first kiss under artificial stars. Then… not hers.
A battlefield soaked in violet fire.
A woman in chains—her face Elara's, but not.
A voice. Low. Familiar.
"You've come far."
She turned.
A figure emerged from the mists. Robed in constellations, no face—just a blank, reflective mask. The voice was neither male nor female.
"You seek the Threads," it said.
"Yes."
"At what cost?"
She hesitated. "Whatever it takes."
The figure tilted its head. "Even if the thread you find unravels you?"
Elara swallowed. "If I don't find it, we all unravel anyway."
The figure reached out a hand.
"Then follow."
She was led through mirrors.
Not reflections—windows.
Each one showed a moment she'd never lived, but somehow almost had.
In one, she saw herself take the crown Cassian had refused. In another, she turned away from him during the eclipse and joined the Ashen Coil. In a third—she never entered the Observatory at all, and the world burned.
"These are your echoes," the masked figure said. "Fractures born of choice."
"But I chose this path," Elara whispered.
The mask nodded. "And yet, choice makes orphans of the unborn truths."
They stopped at one last mirror.
It showed her in a field of golden light.
Holding a child.
Cassian's eyes in hers. Her smile in his.
Tears welled unbidden.
"Is this—?"
"Not the future. Not yet. Just the possibility of one."
Elara turned. "Why show me this?"
The mask's surface rippled.
"To remind you that even broken stars can give birth to constellations."
And with that—
The mirror cracked.
And inside the shards, she saw it.
The Thread.
Golden, trembling, wrapped in flame.
She reached.
Pain ripped through her.
Every nerve in her body screamed. Her identity flickered. Names she never owned clawed at her mind. Her skin glowed, then cracked, then stitched itself back together.
The mask stepped forward, now flickering with her own face.
"You must choose the self that survives this," it warned.
Elara clenched her jaw.
And chose.
The space ruptured. Her body stretched, split, and reformed, like being born again through a sunflare. She saw visions—Cassian falling beneath a black-winged shadow, Lyra holding a broken sigil, Kaelen whispering a forgotten name into the dark. All of it could be. All of it might be.
The Thread writhed in her chest, heat and memory and starlight bundled into a living knot. She screamed—then breathed.
And awoke.
On stone. Cold. Familiar.
The Observatory's floor.
Dust fell from the cracked dome above. Moonlight streamed in. And her hand—her hand glowed faintly gold, the glyph embedded in her palm now pulsing with a heartbeat that wasn't quite her own.
Cassian burst through the corridor seconds later, skidding to his knees beside her.
"Elara!"
"I'm here," she whispered, dazed.
His arms wrapped around her. Tight. Shaking.
"You were gone for hours—"
"Years," she murmured. "And none at all."
Behind her, a new glyph had burned itself into the stone—a symbol no one had seen in a thousand years. It pulsed like an echo of thunder.
Kaelen and Lyra followed moments later, weapons raised—then lowered, eyes wide.
"Elara," Lyra said. "What have you done?"
Elara looked past them, out the Observatory's open arches.
The stars had changed.
Formations she knew were bent, mirrored, inverted. A new constellation hung overhead—the same symbol as the glyph beneath her.
The Thread of the Forgotten was now within her.
And it pulsed.
Alive.
That night, while the others slept restlessly near the rebuilt perimeter, Elara sat alone beneath the stars, her senses vibrating with something more than power—responsibility. She could feel memories not hers brushing her mind. She could taste futures like honey and ash.
Cassian came and sat beside her. He didn't speak for a long time.
Finally, he asked, "Do you regret it?"
She shook her head. "Not yet."
He nodded. "Then whatever happens next… we face it together."
She looked at him. And smiled.
The stars overhead shimmered.
And far off, in a part of the sky no telescope had yet touched, something opened its eyes.