The void between time had no name.
It wasn't darkness. It wasn't death.
It was waiting.
And in that still, impossible quiet, a light flickered — faint, golden, fragile.
Vaerion's soul drifted in it, disconnected, suspended in an eternity without direction. He felt nothing. Heard nothing.
Until… her voice.
"Father?"
Soft. Innocent. Impossible.
The light pulsed.
And then he felt warmth.
A hand, impossibly small, brushed against his.
Another heartbeat passed.
Then two.
And suddenly, he remembered Liora — her eyes, her rage, her tears. The way she had screamed when the spear struck him. The last thing he'd seen before the world went silent was her reaching out with both hands, refusing to let go.
Now… someone else was reaching for him.
A child.
His child.
Back on the mortal plane, the ground could no longer hold its shape.
Liora had become more than a necromancer, more than a queen.
She had become the living breath of the Shard.
Her hair flowed like a solar flare. Her eyes shimmered with every possibility not yet chosen. The veil of life and death parted for her as she walked, and reality bent gently under her feet. Threads of potential spiraled around her — new fates, rewritten legends, unborn dreams.
Kelvir fell to one knee instinctively, head bowed.
Even Veyron, prideful and ancient, dared not look into her eyes too long.
"Your Majesty," Kelvir whispered, trembling, "what are you now?"
Liora didn't answer immediately. Her voice, when it came, echoed through both mind and air.
"I am the broken prophecy made whole."
She turned toward the horizon — toward the Aether Sanctum.
And her gaze pierced it.
She saw Ilyra flinch.
In the Aether Sanctum, Ilyra stumbled back from the mirror of fate, clutching her head.
"She sees us," she rasped.
"She is us now," the Dreamer said calmly, watching the shifting starlight.
"What is she doing?"
"She's not coming to destroy us," the Dreamer replied. "She's coming to reclaim what we stole."
Liora stood once more at the Weeping Hills, beside Vaerion's still body.
Her fingers hovered above his heart.
"He's not gone," she said aloud. "He's not erased. I can feel the thread."
She closed her eyes, and the veil of time peeled back like silk.
There — a light. Small, golden.
And beside it… a presence.
A child.
She gasped.
"A daughter?"
The Shard pulsed within her.
A single word surfaced in her mind.
"Anchor."
This child — a being that should not yet exist — was anchoring Vaerion's soul.
A possibility so powerful it refused to be denied, even across timelines.
Liora dropped to her knees, overwhelmed.
A daughter. Her child. A future that should be impossible… but wasn't.
Somewhere in the spiraling chaos of fate, the two of them — her and Vaerion — would survive long enough to create a life.
And that life… was reaching backward.
Calling her father home.
But something else was stirring now.
The paradox spear that struck Vaerion had left a scar in fate, a vulnerable seam — and something was slithering through it.
Not divine.
Not primordial.
Something… hungry.
The Guardian of the Shard reappeared beside Liora, this time coalescing in full form — a titan of obsidian flame and stone.
"You must choose," it said.
"To restore him now… is to break the natural laws. The cost will ripple outward. Something will take his place in the void."
"I don't care."
"You will."
The Guardian pointed at the thread — the light where Vaerion's soul waited.
"If you pull him back, the child will live," it said.
"But something else… something that should never be born… will awaken instead."
Liora stared, fists clenched.
"Then I'll destroy it."
"No," the Guardian said. "You won't be able to."
She glared at him. "Why?"
"Because it will be your child's opposite. A reflection. A twin birthed by the paradox. If she is hope…"
"…then it will be ruin."
Liora stood, torn in a way no divine force could prepare her for.
Bring back Vaerion… and risk releasing something catastrophic?
Let him go… and lose not just him, but the possibility of a future that already refused to wait?
She looked down at his still form, her hand hovering over his heart.
And then she made her choice.
She plunged her fingers into the thread of fate — into the core where he floated.
"I'll bear it," she whispered. "Whatever comes, I'll face it."
Light exploded.
The thread snapped back.
Vaerion's body gasped once.
Then again.
His eyes opened.
Liora collapsed against him, sobbing into his shoulder.
"I found you," she whispered.
"You always do," he rasped.
But far beyond their joy…
In the Mirror Realm…
A single shard of paradox cracked open.
And from it, a child cried — not of pain.
But of hatred.