Chapter Two – The Guardian of the Pendant
The funeral ended, but the silence never did.
Rain had fallen without pause that day, soaking the earth until the graves became dark, hungry mouths. The priest's words blurred into background noise for Ren. He stood unmoving, hands buried in his jacket pockets, eyes locked on the coffin as it sank into the soil. Sonya's coffin—small, white, adorned with lilies—swallowed by the dirt.
His foster mother Michelle wept loudly, clutching Ben's arm for support. Ben himself, the man who pretended at strength, looked worn and hollow. Their grief was real, but it didn't touch Ren. He felt as if a wall of glass separated him from the entire world.
It wasn't disbelief. He knew Sonya was gone. What he couldn't understand was how the world dared to go on spinning after it.
When the last clumps of soil covered the coffin, Ren whispered under his breath, almost to himself:
"It should've been me."
---
At home, the house was full of sympathy. Neighbors arrived with food and empty condolences. Flowers filled the kitchen. Cards lined the mantle. Michelle moved through the motions like a ghost, thanking people, serving coffee. Ben shut himself in the study with whiskey.
Ren climbed the stairs, closed his bedroom door, and locked it.
And then the world shrank to just him.
The textbooks scattered across his desk, the stacks of research papers, the notebooks filled with equations—his fortress of logic—surrounded him, but they offered no comfort. Science had always been his anchor, the language he trusted above people. Science gave him certainty. Predictability. But cancer had taken Sonya anyway, and all his formulas were useless against it.
Days passed. Ren barely ate. Barely slept. He filled pages with furious calculations—alternate cancer treatments, radical therapies, experimental physics as if reality could be bent backward to bring her back. When the pages failed, he ripped them apart until scraps of paper covered the floor like snow.
At night, he clutched the pendant. It was the only thing he hadn't abandoned. A trinket from a strange old man, glowing faintly, pulsing like a tiny heartbeat against his palm. Sometimes he wondered if he was going mad, if grief was warping him into seeing things.
But he couldn't let it go.
Not when the world had already taken Sonya.
---
It happened three nights after the funeral.
Ren was sitting on the floor beside his bed, knees drawn to his chest, eyes burning from lack of sleep. The room was dark except for the faint blue pulse of the pendant.
Then the light grew.
He lifted it, startled. The glow brightened, filling the room, casting strange, shifting shadows on the walls. The pendant vibrated in his hand, humming like it contained a caged storm.
"What the hell—"
The crystal flared.
A rift opened in the air before him, a crack of pure light splitting his reality apart. Wind rushed through his room, papers swirling, the lamp shattering against the wall. Ren shielded his eyes, heart hammering against his ribs.
And then, out of the light, she stepped.
Her bare feet touched the floor as though descending from the stars. Her hair, long and ocean-blue, shimmered in the glow. Her eyes were violet, steady and unreadable, yet soft when they landed on him. She was tall, poised, and devastatingly beautiful—so much so that Ren forgot to breathe.
She looked at him as though she already knew everything about him.
"So, you're the one he chose," she said. Her voice was calm, carrying a strange warmth that wrapped around the cold edges of Ren's heart.
Ren scrambled back, hitting the bed frame. His voice broke with panic: "Who the hell are you?! How did you—what are you doing in my room?!"
The girl tilted her head, amused. "My name is Miya. I am the guardian of that pendant."
His eyes darted to the glowing crystal, then back to her. His chest heaved. "Guardian? That doesn't—none of this makes sense. That's impossible."
"Impossible?" Miya chuckled softly. "And yet, here I am." She moved with elegance, no wasted motion, her presence commanding but not threatening. "That pendant isn't jewelry. It's a key. It lets its wielder travel between timelines. Infinite worlds. Infinite choices."
Ren froze. The words hit him harder than any blow could.
Timelines. Alternate worlds.
A flood of equations, theories, and half-formed ideas rushed through his mind. He'd studied the concept of parallel universes, branching possibilities, quantum superpositions—but it had always been theory. Elegant mathematics with no proof.
And here stood proof, alive, breathing, impossibly real.
"This… this is insane," Ren muttered, but his voice lacked strength. He wanted to dismiss it as grief-driven delusion, but the glow of the pendant, the hum of its energy, the warmth of Miya's presence—it was all undeniable.
"You were chosen," Miya continued softly. "The old man entrusted it to you because he saw something in you. And now, the pendant has awakened. Which means your path begins here."
Ren's throat tightened. "Path? What path? My sister is dead! Don't stand there and talk to me like fate had some plan for me—she's gone!"
The words cracked something inside him. His voice broke, his body shaking. For days he had refused to cry, burying his pain under numbers and silence. But now the dam burst.
Tears fell hot against his cheeks. He pressed a hand over his eyes, his voice raw. "She was the only one who mattered… the only one I had… and I couldn't save her. What good is any of this pendant crap if I couldn't save her?"
Miya stepped closer. Slowly, carefully, she knelt in front of him, her face level with his. She reached out, brushing a tear from his cheek with the gentlest touch.
"You're wrong," she whispered. "The pendant can't change what happened here. But there are other timelines. Other reflections of reality. In some of them… things happened differently."
Ren's breath hitched. His eyes locked on hers, searching, desperate. "…What are you saying?"
Miya's violet gaze softened, though a shadow of hesitation crossed it. "In another world, Sonya didn't die. In another world… it was you."
Ren's mind fractured under the weight of the words.
He saw flashes—Sonya alive, laughing, vibrant, running through the house while he was the one fading in a hospital bed. Sonya's smile, untouched by pain, unburdened by cancer.
Hope flared in his chest so violently it hurt.
"I can see her again," he whispered, almost to himself. Then louder: "I can see her again."
Miya's hand lingered against his face. "Yes. But you must understand: the longer you stay in a timeline not your own, the more fragile the rift becomes. Reality can only bend so far before it breaks. If you stay too long… you risk destroying not only that world, but this one as well."
Ren's eyes burned, but his resolve solidified. He gripped the pendant tight in his fist. His voice was iron. "I don't care. If I can be with Sonya again, I don't care what it costs."
Miya's lips parted as if to argue, but she stopped. Something unspoken flickered in her eyes—an emotion she buried quickly. Perhaps sorrow. Perhaps something else.
At last, she nodded, her voice barely above a whisper. "Then I will guide you. No matter the cost."
Ren rose to his feet. The pendant pulsed brighter, answering his will. Fear still curled in the pit of his stomach—he was always afraid, of everything—but something stronger drowned it out.
Hope. Determination. The fierce genius inside him now had a singular purpose.
He looked at Miya, eyes blazing. "Take me to her."
The pendant flared with light, and for the first time, Ren Williams—boy genius, coward, brother—stepped into the paradox.
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