POV: Aphrodite
Some decisions close every other door. She makes hers anyway.
The pocket ends.
The temporal fracture resolves and the physical world's time reasserts itself and I'm back in the battlefield with the Moon Goddess waiting and the twins injured on the ground and Kai at the position where the prophecy says the mortal heart stands.
Time restored.
Choice made.
The Moon Goddess is waiting with the certainty of something that has been certain since before the war began — not the impatience of a force that doubts its outcome but the specific certainty of an authority that has presented the forced choice and is waiting for the forced choice to resolve in the direction that forced choices resolve in.
She expects me to choose Kai.
