Chapter 31: The Blind Path
Senra had always known where she was going.
Not in the way mortals did—with maps and guesses—but with certainty. Every step she had ever taken rested on quiet knowledge: this choice leads there, this moment bends that way. The future had never been fixed, but it had always been visible.
Until now.
She reached for the weave out of instinct, seeking even the faintest outline of what lay ahead.
There was nothing.
No branching.
No resistance.
No light.
It was not darkness—darkness implied absence. This was severance. The future existed, she could feel that much, but it was sealed behind a wall she could not perceive, like sound behind glass.
Senra staggered back, pulse erratic.
"…You've never done this before," she whispered, more to herself than to the Force.
The Force, indifferent, did not answer.
She tried again—probing gently this time, testing a single moment forward. Her senses slid forward… and stopped. The thread simply ended, not broken, not cut—inaccessible.
For the first time in her long existence, Senra did not know whether she would live past the next hour.
Panic rose sharp and sudden.
She crushed it.
Panic was useless. Panic belonged to beings who believed the future owed them continuity.
She exhaled slowly and took stock of the damage.
Her power remained. Her memory remained. Her influence over present threads still functioned—but only in the present. Every action she took now was blind, irreversible, stripped of foresight.
Each choice became a gamble.
And that was the point.
The Force had not removed her agency.
It had made her accountable.
Somewhere deep within the weave, a subtle mechanism activated.
Every time Senra altered a thread now, the Force recorded it—not as deviation, but as debt. She felt it like a weight behind her sternum, an invisible counter ticking upward.
"What happens when it fills?" she asked aloud.
The silence pressed in.
She already knew the answer.
Collapse.
Not of her body—but of everything she had anchored herself to. Identity. Continuity. Memory. She would unravel from herself, becoming a wandering remnant without context or purpose.
A living paradox.
"Cruel," Senra murmured. "But elegant."
She pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the tremor in her legs.
From now on, she could not rely on strategy that extended beyond the moment. No long games. No layered protections. Elena was no longer a calculated project—she was a risk taken without guarantee.
That terrified her more than the Force ever could.
In Pony Village, the elders felt the change as a sudden imbalance—not violent, but wrong. Eldorin Vael pressed his palm to the ancient stone altar as the runes flickered uncertainly.
"She's blind," he said quietly.
One of the younger seers turned pale. "Blind? To what?"
"To tomorrow."
At the same moment, Elena awoke with a sharp inhale, heart pounding. Sunlight spilled through the window, warm and ordinary—but the sense of safety she had grown used to felt… thinner.
Like glass stretched too far.
She sat up slowly, rubbing her arms.
For the first time since Senra's interference, the dreams had returned.
Not clear ones.
Fragments.
A woman standing at a crossroads with no signposts.
Silver light dripping like blood.
A voice saying, Choose anyway.
Elena swallowed.
She didn't know why, but the certainty lodged in her chest like a truth she hadn't earned yet.
Someone had given up something for her.
Something big.
Back in the forest, Senra smiled faintly despite the ache spreading through her core.
"Alright," she said to the unseen weave. "No future, no safety net."
She took one step forward—into a path she could not see.
"Let's see who flinches first."