The world was burning.
Not with pain not yet but with truth.
Elara sprinted through the warping halls of the alternate palace, Corven beside her, his face pale and slick with sweat. Behind them, the Queen's scream echoed like a blade drawn across glass. The Flamekeeper's fire had bought them a moment. That was all.
"This way!" Corven shouted, grabbing her arm and veering into a corridor that hadn't existed seconds ago. The architecture of the palace was changing alive, resisting them, reshaping itself with the Queen's rage.
"She's altering the layout," Elara said between breaths. "It's like she controls the building."
"She doesn't just control it," Corven replied. "She is it. This version of you built Ravaryn into a fortress fed by blood magic. Her memories shaped its walls. Her fears carved the shadows. You're inside her mind as much as her throne."
Elara's stomach twisted. "So how do we escape?"
"We have to find the fracture point," Corven said. "The moment your timelines truly split. That's where the Flamekeeper can intervene."
"And if we don't?"
"Then she absorbs you. And there will only be one Elara left."
A pulse of red light tore through the corridor behind them. Doors snapped open and slammed shut. The Queen was hunting them.
They passed a cracked mirror hanging crookedly on the wall. Elara froze. Her reflection blinked out of sync.
In the glass, she looked older. Cold. Blood on her hands.
"Keep moving!" Corven barked.
They burst into a room Elara didn't recognize. A circular chamber lined with dozens of ornate silver mirrors each with a different scene behind the glass. Not reflections. Realms.
"The Hall of Selves," Corven muttered.
"What is this place?"
"A manifestation of your possible lives. Every version of you that could have existed."
Elara turned slowly. In one mirror, she was a smiling scholar, laughing in a sunlit garden. In another, a grieving widow with ash on her hands. In yet another, a dark queen draped in black armor, sitting on a mountain of skulls.
"They're… me?"
"They're you, but not all of them lived," Corven said. "Some died young. Some were erased. Some never even existed, not fully."
Elara's gaze locked onto one mirror the version of her who had never returned from the pyre. She was still burning, endlessly, over and over.
"Why is she still suffering?" she whispered.
Corven reached out. "Because she's the part of you that never let go. The part the Queen is feeding on."
The air shifted.
The temperature dropped.
A shadow pooled across the floor and from it, the Queen emerged. Unburned. Unfazed.
"You ran," she said, voice calm. "But where will you go, Elara? You're surrounded by your own failures."
The mirrors began to warp. The peaceful reflections bled into darker ones, ones of pain, of power twisted by vengeance. One shattered outright, raining silvered glass at Elara's feet.
"You see it now," the Queen said. "You need me. You created me."
Elara stepped forward. "No. I needed to understand you. And now I do."
She glanced at Corven. "Where is the fracture?"
He closed his eyes, reaching outward. "It's close. The Queen keeps it hidden behind a memory she never wanted to relive."
The Queen's eyes narrowed. "Don't you dare"
Elara moved.
She plunged her hand into the nearest mirror one of a girl standing alone at a funeral. Her own, she realized. Her mother's. The Duchess Valeblume's death, one that had haunted her, driven her into isolation.
But this version? In the mirror, Elara smiled.
"No grief," she muttered. "No love."
"This is where she began," Corven said softly. "Where she severed herself from everything human."
The Queen screamed and the illusion shattered.
Behind the mirror, a stairway spiraled down into blackness.
Corven didn't hesitate. He took Elara's hand and leapt through.
They landed hard in a subterranean temple.
Torches burst into flame along the walls. The room was massive larger than anything that should've existed under the palace. At the center stood a basin of molten glass, floating above a stone altar.
"The fracture point," Corven said. "Her rebirth."
Elara stepped closer, heart thudding. Inside the molten basin swirled fragments of memory: her death, the scream, the light… and then, two diverging paths.
One where she fought her way back.
And one where she embraced the power of vengeance fully and never stopped.
She looked at Corven. "If I seal this, do I kill her?"
"You choose," he said. "Only one path can go forward."
Tears welled in her eyes. "She's a monster. But she's me. The part of me I wanted to be strong enough to survive."
"You did survive," he said. "But you chose mercy."
Behind them, the Queen burst into the temple, flames trailing her steps.
"You dare pity me?" she spat. "You dare reject me?"
Elara stood between the altar and her double. "You're not my ending."
"Then you'll be my beginning," the Queen hissed.
She lunged forward.
Elara met her head on blades drawn.
The room exploded into sparks as magic collided.
Memories cracked across the walls like lightning.
Elara saw Kaelith's betrayal. Her mother's silence. The flames. The screams. But then… she saw Corven's hand reaching for her. Lysara's innocent smile before it curdled into scorn. The moments that broke her… and the ones that gave her strength.
She heard every name she'd ever been called traitor, monster, villainess.
But she also heard another voice, quiet but strong.
"Elara, you came back for a reason."
Not to win. To choose.
She turned her blade not toward the Queen but the basin.
"NO!" the Queen shrieked.
Elara drove her blade into the molten glass.
The fracture screamed.
Light and darkness split the chamber apart.
The Queen reached out for her, desperation tearing at her perfect features.
"I AM YOU!"
"No," Elara whispered. "You were a choice."
And then everything went still.