Eryndor slept.
That alone felt unusual.
The last few days had blurred together into fractures, towers, underground cities, impossible doors, and a regressor who seemed personally offended by his continued existence.
His body finally gave up before his mind did.
The room was small.
A cheap inn above an old workshop in the lower districts.
The owner had asked no questions.
Eryndor appreciated that.
Questions were becoming increasingly difficult to answer.
Rain tapped softly against the window.
The city outside remained restless.
Even at night.
Especially at night.
Somewhere in the distance, bells rang.
Then rang again.
Not because time fractured.
Because another church had begun checking whether time was still functioning.
The fact that this had become necessary disturbed everyone involved.
Eryndor closed his eyes.
Darkness followed.
Then—
he opened them again.
Sunlight.
Warm.
Bright.
Comfortable.
A field stretched before him.
Green grass.
Clear skies.
Birdsong.
No fractures.
No Threads.
No pressure.
No blood.
No fear.
Eryndor stared.
"...What?"
The field ignored him.
A young woman laughed nearby.
A man waved from the distance.
Children ran through the grass.
Someone called his name.
Not Eryndor.
Another name.
One he didn't recognize.
Yet somehow felt familiar.
He looked down.
Older hands.
Calloused.
Different.
Not his.
A strange chill crawled through him.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Then years.
Eryndor worked.
Laughed.
Ate.
Grew older.
Made friends.
Lost friends.
Buried family.
Watched seasons change.
Watched children become adults.
Watched adults become memories.
And through all of it—
he never once saw a Thread.
The life felt real.
Painfully real.
More real than some of his actual memories.
Decades passed.
One evening, sitting beneath a fading sunset, the old version of himself smiled quietly.
Satisfied.
Tired.
Complete.
Then the sky cracked.
A single golden Thread appeared above the horizon.
The old man froze.
His smile vanished.
The world around him began trembling.
The grass flickered.
The trees shifted.
The sunset repeated itself three times.
Then a voice echoed somewhere impossibly distant.
Not speaking.
Remembering.
—This life never occurred.—
The field shattered.
Eryndor awoke violently.
The inn room returned instantly.
Rain.
Darkness.
Cold air.
Reality.
He sat upright breathing heavily.
Sweat covered his body.
His heart hammered inside his chest.
For several moments he simply sat there.
Trying to stabilize himself.
Trying to remember.
The dream.
The life.
The family.
The decades.
The memories.
All of it was fading.
Already.
"...Frey."
But not completely.
One memory remained.
A small one.
A child laughing beneath a tree.
Someone calling him father.
A feeling of happiness so genuine it hurt.
Eryndor lowered his head.
A strange grief settled over him.
Not because someone had died.
Because someone had never existed.
And somehow—
that felt worse.
Far beneath Velkaris Prime—
the underground city trembled.
Only once.
A subtle movement.
Like an ancient mechanism recognizing something.
Within the Scholar Tower, observation arrays briefly activated during the middle of the night.
Several researchers immediately woke up.
One nearly fell out of bed.
"What happened?"
The projection flickered.
Golden resonance.
Extremely brief.
Then gone.
Lysandor Vehl stared at the report silently.
"...Interesting."
Elsewhere—
deep within the Cathedral of Binding Light—
Seraphine suddenly opened her eyes during evening doctrine meditation.
The sacred flames surrounding her had shifted.
Only slightly.
But enough.
Something had changed.
Not in the city.
Not in the underground structure.
Not in the fracture.
In the individual connected to them.
Far away, in a forgotten corner of the lower districts, the veteran regressor from the previous battle sat alone atop an abandoned rooftop.
He looked toward the distant city center.
Toward the hidden structure beneath it.
Toward the anomaly called Eryndor.
Then quietly spoke to nobody.
"...I remember a sequence where you died."
A pause.
"...I remember another where you never existed."
Another pause.
His expression darkened.
"...So why do I keep remembering lives that contradict each other?"
The wind carried no answer.
But somewhere beneath the city—
a golden Thread pulsed once.
And for the first time since the fracture began—
someone else noticed it.
A figure standing in the darkness.
Watching.
Not Eryndor.
Not a Scholar.
Not the Church.
Not the Imperium.
Someone who had been searching for that Thread for a very long time.