Caelen began to unravel the second the blade left my hand.
It began at his fingers—like ash loosening from the bones—but upward. Backward. His skin wrinkled, then smoothed. His hair darkened, then whitened. His eyes flickered like lights about to give out.
He looked at me.
Mouth open.
But there was no sound.
He was trying to speak. Trying to warn me. Or maybe thank me. Or maybe beg.
I crawled toward him.
He reached out. His fingers broke into strands of light before they touched mine.
No.
No.
I screamed without sound. My throat bled, though nothing escaped.
This couldn't be happening.
He wasn't just dying. He was vanishing.
Like he'd never been here.
As if time itself were undoing him—one breath, one heartbeat, one life at a time.
I pressed both hands to the ground. Felt everything crack beneath me—not stone, not earth, but reality. It bent. Buckled. My breath collapsed inward.
And then I pulled.
Hard.
Not on the world.
On myself.
On the deepest place—the raw center I'd been hiding from.
It opened.
Light.
Not like the sun. Not like anything alive. Light like oblivion. Like seeing too far into yourself and finding only silence.
No ground. No sky. Just white that hummed in my bones.
I stood in it.
I think.
Hard to tell.
My body was here. But I didn't feel it. Not fully. I could move without moving.
When I thought step, I stepped.
When I thought speak, the air around me sounded.
It echoed me back in voices that weren't mine.
Then—
Footsteps.
Not mine. Not real. Not yet.
She emerged like a memory surfacing too fast.
Aerimus.
But not as I'd seen her.
This was full form. No mask. No veil. No shadows stitched to her feet. Just her. Terrible. Beautiful. Cracked like porcelain with light bleeding through the fractures.
She was crying.
Why was she crying?
I didn't want to ask. I couldn't.
But the space around me asked for me.
And she answered.
"You had to see it," she whispered. "You had to break it yourself. Or you'd never believe it."
What?
I backed away. But the void didn't let me go far.
Her eyes found me—red and molten and mine.
She raised her hand and thought-fire lashed toward me.
I screamed without screaming. My mind pushed back, instinctively, and the space around us shattered.
Memories erupted from the cracks—snapshots of fields, games, laughter, screams, chains, blood—
All mine.
No, not all mine.
Some were hers.
Some were—
Wait.
I lunged at her.
She blocked me without touching me.
We clashed like thought colliding with memory. No fists. Just will.
She whispered something and my knees buckled.
I screamed her name.
She didn't flinch.
She was me.
No.
No, no, no—
She circled.
"You think you're the first?" Her voice cracked. "The only one who ever tried?"
I couldn't breathe.
"You think I wanted this?" she hissed, voice splitting into dozens of voices. "I burned cities, yes. I unraveled the sun once. But I didn't start there."
She stopped.
Looked at me.
Dead in the eyes.
"I did all of this to bring him back."
I blinked.
Wait—
What?
Bring who back?
She stared at me, breathing hard.
"I did all of this," she whispered. "Every death. Every echo. Every ruin. Every lie."
Her voice broke.
"All for him."
"To bring him back."
No.
No, wait.
Who?
Who is she talking about?
Solas?
No.
No, that can't be right.
Is she talking about me?
She clenched her fists.
"I failed," she whispered. "Every time. In a thousand lives. A thousand Aeviras. Each one of us made a different choice. Failed in a different way. One of us begged. One of us burned it all before she could be left behind. None of us saved him."
A thousand—
My knees hit the ground.
I couldn't breathe.
I was shaking.
"You're not… you're not me," I thought.
But she was.
She knelt in front of me—gentle, reverent, like laying flowers on a grave. I tried to look away. But the light curved wrong around her, revealing too much. Not her eyes. Mine. Not her wounds. Mine. What she'd become—was what I'd already started.
"You just haven't finished becoming me yet."
And I broke.
Right there.
Because I saw it.
Not in her face.
In mine.
The edges of it.
What she looked like under the glow.
It was the worst parts of me—calcified. A cathedral of grief. A monument to all the ways I failed to let go. Twisted by trying. By failing. By doing it again. And again. And again.
All for him.
All for Solas.
All for a version of a boy who laughed when the sun leaned west.
She reached toward me.
And I remembered the warmth of his hand in mine.
I didn't reach back.
But I didn't pull away.
And somewhere, in the place where names unravel, I loosened my grip on the version of me that still thought she had a choice.
Rule Ten: Don't fall in love with ghosts. Even if they laugh like your brother.