The sudden stillness of the wind, the rapid fading of light—Allan knew he was back.
The sigil on the ground had dimmed to a whisper, its golden glow extinguished. Above, the sky was a familiar blue again, the sun now a weary orange, dipping fast toward the western horizon. Dust still hung heavy in the air, yet the world felt… irrevocably changed.
He knelt within the circle, his hand still outstretched, as if reaching for someone long vanished. A familiar ache tightened his chest, but hope—the stubborn, burning hope of seeing her again—became his only balm. He wasn't sure if the person from his dreams, the one he'd just seen, was truly Lulu, but as long as he could glimpse her, it was enough. The future remained a tangled mess, with Debora and Thomas pulling him into their worlds, yet one thing was clear: no one would ever sway him from his quest to find her.
Across from him, Debora stood. Her face was calm, grave—but in her eyes, something more stirred. A flicker of sorrow, yes, but beneath that… a profound relief.
She gave him a single, slow nod. "You remembered," she said softly. "You broke free."
Allan opened his mouth, but before a word could escape, a violent tremor ripped through the ground. The sigil on the earth pulsed a harsh, angry red, jagged and menacing.
Behind him, Thomas let out a ragged gasp. He was clutching his chest, staggering back as if struck by an unseen blow. A strange light glimmered around his body—fraying red cords of energy, snapping, vanishing one by one.
"No… no, no, no!" Thomas gasped, his voice thin with panic. "You broke it! I held it together—I bound it all together—through her—through you!" He reached out a trembling hand toward Allan. "Do you know what you've done?"
Allan rose slowly, watching in horror as the man's face contorted—not from guilt, but from a raw, soul-deep terror.
"I was the vessel," Thomas rasped, voice cracking. "I carried the old spell—the ancient thread. Through her, through me, through you… I held the prophecy…"
And then, as the last thread snapped, Thomas' body violently convulsed. He let out a final cry—not of anger, but pure, absolute fear—and collapsed to the ground like a felled tree. His body hit the earth with a sickening finality, raising a cloud of dust.
Silence. For one heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then Canya screamed. "Father!"
She ran to him, skidding across the red dust to his side. Her hands fluttered frantically around his face, his chest, his neck. She pressed her head to his chest, desperate for any beat—any sign of life. But there was none.
"Father, wake up! Don't do this. Don't go. Please!" Her voice cracked, dissolving into choked sobs. "Please…"
Allan moved toward her, but Debora caught his arm gently. "Don't," she said.
"He's dead," Allan whispered, the words heavy.
"Yes," Debora confirmed, her voice devoid of emotion. "He had bound himself to whatever he thought was the prophecy—too tightly. When you chose not to be caught in his web, its power unraveled. It took him with it. A dangerous magic he was playing with."
Canya cried harder, shaking her father's still form. "Don't talk about him like that! He was trying! He was trying to make sense of all this madness!"
"And in trying," came a voice—gentle, firm—from behind them, "he lost his way."
It was the woman with the staff. She stepped forward, the hem of her robe stirring the dust. Her eyes, deep and endless, looked at Canya not with judgment, but with profound pity.
"Canya," she said softly. "It is time."
Canya looked up, her face streaked with dust and tears. "Time for what?"
"You must choose."
"No," she whispered, shaking her head.
"You are of his blood. He never showed his true self to you, but because of your shared blood, you are a piece of a chain you both belonged to. Now that he's gone, this chain is almost extinct, with only you remaining. Your choice will either discard this chain or bind you to it."
"I don't understand—what do you want from me?"
"The gods will no longer accept passivity. You must choose your path: continue your father's works, or burn the link completely and walk your own."
Canya stared at her father's lifeless body, then at the cracked remnants of the sigil, now bleeding slowly into the earth. Her hands clenched into fists. "I—I don't want to choose."
"You must."
"Why me?" she sobbed. "Why now? Why when everything just broke? When my father's body is still warm in my hands?"
Debora stepped forward, her voice calm. "Because power passed to you the moment he fell."
"But I didn't ask for this!" Canya screamed, her eyes wild with grief and anger. "I have only wanted to understand! And now you want me to—what—become him? Replace him? Choose between what and what?"
No one answered. Even the wind, once stirring, now held its breath.
Canya bowed over her father's chest again, her tears falling silently onto his still form.
"Why," she whispered, the sound raw and broken. "Why must the ones we love break before we even understand them?"
The gods gave no answer. Only the dust listened.
She had lost her mother a year ago to some unknown horror. Now her father was dead, in a pursuit she finally understood had also led to her mother's demise. Cursed, she thought, was her family.