Light swallowed her whole.
And then there was nothing.
No sound.
No gravity.
Just... memory.
Or rather, fragments of it. Words with no mouths. Colors with no shape. Ruo Qing floated in a tunnel of time—not time as humans measured it, but raw, coiled, endless. Some parts were warm and golden, others burned like frost.
She blinked.
The world shifted again.
She was standing in a city—but it was wrong.
There were no stars in the sky. Only a long, twisting crack of silver lightning permanently etched across the heavens. Skyscrapers leaned at impossible angles. People walked with glass eyes and repeated the same phrases over and over, like broken records.
And everywhere—nowhere—there were reflections.
Not mirrors. Reflections.
She saw herself, over and over, in different clothes, in different ages, laughing, crying, screaming, killing. And each one looked back at her.
One of them even smiled.
"This is a collapsed branch," came the voice of the Echo Watcher, who appeared beside her, hovering inches above the cracked pavement. "A version of your world where you failed to choose."
"What happened here?"
"You didn't go back for him."
Ruo Qing's throat closed. "He died?"
"No. Something worse. He lived... and forgot."
Her knees buckled. "Why are you showing me this?"
"Because understanding costs more than love," the Watcher said gently. "And you must pay."
"You keep saying that. Why?"
"Because you think this story is about you and him."
"It's not?"
"No. It's about what you both become when you run out of time."
Suddenly, the air tore again.
But this time, it wasn't the sky. It was her chest.
Pain rippled through her heart—not metaphor, literal searing pain. And with it, a new vision crashed into her like a falling comet.
A wedding. Again.
But this time, she wasn't walking the aisle.
She was watching.
From behind a veil of mirrors.
The bride wore white—her again. And the groom stood tall, radiant. A different man. Not Murdoch.
He had eyes of gold.
A voice like thunder whispered her name: "Ruo Qing."
She turned—and the man at the altar looked at her, through time, across time.
And smiled.
"You thought the prince was him," the voice echoed in her skull. "But Murdoch was only the first page."
She screamed.
The vision shattered.
The Watcher knelt beside her, for the first time speaking with emotion in its voice.
"You were never meant to love only one. You were meant to choose between the worlds."
"And if I don't?"
"Then they all collapse."