Salem Grey's foot hovered over the fractured ground, the golden thread burning like molten light between his fingers. Every heartbeat reverberated in a dozen realities at once, each pulse echoing versions of himself screaming, cheering, warning, mocking. His mind was a storm of possibilities, and yet, amid the chaos, he felt the tug of something heavier—inevitable.
The figure before him didn't move but filled the Choice Plane with presence. Its eyes reflected infinite timelines, and with every blink, a thousand alternate realities unraveled or twisted anew. Salem could feel it probing, assessing, weighing him against the impossible.
> "Who… are you?" he whispered, voice trembling.
> "I am the consequence," the figure said again, each word striking like a bell through his skull. "Every skipped moment, every fractured choice, every shadowed self… I am the result of what you refuse to face."
Salem swallowed hard, gripping the golden thread. "And if I step forward?"
The figure's outline shimmered. "Then you begin the trial of alignment. Only by reconciling your fragments… can you survive the unraveling of your multiverse."
Behind it, the Choice Plane stretched infinitely, platforms floating in impossible geometries, doors leading to nightmares, memories, and futures that shouldn't exist yet. Skeletal Ferris wheels spun in the distance, their carriages filled with versions of him, some screaming, some laughing, some staring blankly. The echoes of his own life—every skipped day, every decision, every failure—were stacked upon one another like fragile glass waiting to shatter.
> "Trial of alignment?" Salem muttered. "Great. Just what I needed."
> "Necessary," the figure replied. "Every step counts. Every hesitation fractures reality further. Fail, and not just you… but all of them, die."
Salem's chest tightened. Memories of the July revolution, the skipped days, the children lost… all surged in his mind. Every choice he'd ignored, every timeline he'd cheated by existing, pressed down on him. Yet amid the terror, a strange exhilaration grew. He was at the center of chaos. He could survive this. He had to.
He stepped forward, and the Choice Plane reacted violently. Platforms spun, twisted, and dissolved into streams of light. Shadows of himself lunged, not to attack, but to test. The younger Salem whispered warnings, the older Salem glared with exhaustion, and the faceless one tilted its head mockingly.
> "Stay focused," the shard in his hand urged. "Every thread you grasp… is a lifeline."
He lunged from one floating platform to another, narrowly avoiding a collapsing spiral of clocks. Each step pulled fragments of his past and future into sharp focus: his first memory of loss, laughter with forgotten friends, the scent of rain on skipped days, whispers of conversations that never fully existed.
The mysterious figure watched silently, letting the plane punish him. Platforms collapsed beneath his feet, clock faces spun backward into fractals, and shadows lunged relentlessly. Each fragment he touched seemed to burn into his consciousness, forcing him to confront who he had been—and who he might become.
> "You're learning," the shard said. "But comprehension alone won't save you."
Ahead, a faint light flickered—a door, suspended in midair, golden and impossibly radiant. Beyond it, a figure in the shape of a child beckoned. Somehow familiar, yet alien. Salem's gut twisted. That child… that version of him… held the answer—or the trap.
> "Step carefully," Nexus's voice echoed across the plane. "Every choice is alive. Every hesitation has teeth. Move wrong, and the multiverse devours you."
Salem exhaled sharply, focusing on the thread in his hand. It pulsed with a warmth that contrasted the frozen weight of the plane. Step by step, he navigated the floating platforms, ignoring the screams, whispers, and laughter of the countless selves circling him.
Then a platform shattered. Salem fell, plummeting into a stream of raw time. Numbers, letters, conversations, and memories hurtled past him in every direction. He grabbed at the golden thread desperately, its grip tightening like a lifeline. Somewhere in the chaos, the shadowy figure moved closer, its presence more oppressive than ever.
> "Almost there," the shard whispered. "Don't lose yourself now."
Salem's fingers brushed the glowing edge of the golden door. The child within raised its hand—tiny, impossibly patient, full of knowing—and the entire Choice Plane seemed to hold its breath. The fractured versions of himself froze mid-action, the Ferris wheel halted, the skeletal carousel suspended.
> "This is it," the shard said. "One step. One choice. Everything… depends on it."
Salem swallowed, heart hammering. He had faced bureaucracy, fractured timelines, endless echoes of himself, and impossible metaphysical carnivals. But this… this was different. This was the convergence point. The moment where choice became destiny, and destiny became chaos.
He stepped forward.
---
The golden door swallowed him.
Time exploded. Every fragment, every shadow, every version of Salem greyed into a kaleidoscope of sound and color. Memories merged with possibilities, laughter with screams, love with loss. The child reached out, and for a fraction of a second, Salem felt his entire life, past and future, align perfectly—and then snap.
He gasped. The plane was gone. The Ferris wheel, the skeletal carousel, the floating platforms—they had vanished. He was alone, standing on a single clock face suspended in infinite darkness. The golden door floated before him, cracked, leaking shards of light.
A voice, deeper and colder than the shard, reverberated through his mind:
> "Salem Grey… the choice you just made… will not be yours to command."
The clock beneath him began to crack, splintering into a thousand shards. The golden thread pulsed violently, then snapped. Salem fell, screaming into darkness.
And then… silence.
But it wasn't peaceful. The darkness shifted, forming a face—smiling, cruel, impossibly familiar.
> "Welcome… to the moment you should have feared," it whispered.
Salem's eyes shot open. The infinite plane was gone. He was somewhere else, somewhere wrong. A city stretched around him—buildings tilted, skies flickered, and the air smelled faintly of burnt time. He took a step forward, but the shadows of his fractured selves emerged from every corner, circling him, whispering:
> "It's too late… Salem. Too late…"
And above it all, the cracked golden door hovered, glowing faintly, a final challenge waiting.