The world did not break all at once.
It sorted itself.
In cities where loss had hollowed generations, people welcomed Ilyr's quiet influence without knowing his name. Records stopped contradicting themselves. History became clean, linear, efficient. Grief dulled—not healed, but filed away. Choice narrowed, gently, until no one noticed it had gone.
"It's… peaceful," some said.
In other places, resistance flared.
Artists painted things they could not explain. Elders told stories that changed every telling. Children remembered things adults insisted had never happened. Memory fractured—but lived.
The web strained between these futures.
Mara felt every divergence.
"They're choosing him," the glyph-reader said, voice shaking. "Not because he's right—but because he's easier."
"Yes," Mara replied softly. "And because pain makes certainty seductive."
Cael watched the shifting threads with a grim expression. "Ilyr isn't forcing alignment. He's offering relief."
The Vestige stood motionless, eyes distant. "Relief without growth is stagnation. I've lived that eternity."
The pressure inside Mara intensified—not from the web, but from within.
A solution presented itself, seductive in its clarity.
She could end it.
Not by defeating Ilyr—but by surpassing him.
If she let go fully—shed the last remnants of self, grief, preference—she could become a singular Continuance. A perfect mediator. No loss. No sacrifice. No fracture. Memory stabilized, choice preserved in theory, but never sharp enough to wound.
The war would end.
So would becoming.
Cael sensed the shift immediately. "Mara," he said carefully. "You're standing at a precipice."
"I know," she replied. "And I can see the bottom."
She stepped closer to the threshold, its presence now constant, humming beneath reality.
"I could finish this," she said. "No more gods acting unevenly. No more Ilyr rewriting alignment. I would hold everything in balance."
"And what would you lose?" the scholar asked quietly.
Mara hesitated.
"I wouldn't lose anything," she said. "I would cease to require it."
The Vestige moved then—placing herself between Mara and the threshold.
"That is the lie," she said firmly. "That was the lie the gods told themselves when they sealed the First Silence."
Mara met her gaze. "You endured because of that choice."
"I endured," the Vestige replied, "but I did not live."
The words struck deeper than any attack.
Around them, the web trembled—threads brightening, dimming, tugged by millions of small, human decisions.
"Look," Cael urged.
Mara did.
She saw a woman choosing to forgive without forgetting. A man refusing the comfort of certainty to protect a story that hurt. A child asking why history contradicted itself—and being told, because we do.
Messy. Painful. Alive.
Ilyr's voice brushed her mind then—calm, precise.
You feel it too, he said. The inefficiency. The suffering. End it. Become what they need.
Mara closed her eyes.
"No," she whispered. "I won't become what erases the reason for memory."
She stepped back from the threshold.
The pressure eased—but the cost came swiftly.
Another memory slipped.
Not a face. Not a name.
A feeling.
She could no longer remember what it felt like to be carefree.
Cael saw it in her eyes and swallowed hard. "What did it take this time?"
Mara managed a small, sad smile. "Something I won't get back."
Far away, Ilyr felt the refusal—and for the first time, something like anger cracked his composure.
"Then I'll force the choice," he said to the bound Marked Ones. "If they won't accept permanence willingly… they'll accept it in ruins."
The web convulsed as multiple threads collapsed at once—cities where memory suddenly froze, histories locking into singular, unchangeable lines.
The Vestige gripped Mara's arm. "He's accelerating."
Mara straightened, exhaustion and resolve braided tightly together. "Then we do what I've been avoiding."
Cael met her gaze. "Which is?"
"We stop reacting," she said. "And confront him—not as a bridge… but as a person who made the wrong choice."
The echoes warmed—not bright, not loud, but present.
Mara was still human enough to hurt.
And that, she knew, was exactly why she could still win.