Kivas gripped Yevdi’s arms, eyes searching the future woman’s face as though she sought every secret etched in that delicate curve of her cheek.
The golden light that refracted through Yevdi’s essence trembled around them, a fragile aurora caught between tilines.
Kivas’s voice held steady but quivering beneath its veneer.
"Why did you do all of this?"
Yevdi tilted her head, features softening into a bittersweet smile. Her iris glowed with distant depths, as though she had lived centuries in a heartbeat.
The air between them shimred, and unspoken centuries began to weave themselves into a single, charged breath.
Yevdi squeezed Kivas’s arms gently, her fingertips brushing warmth into the tense muscle beneath the divine cloth.
"Aactually, for that, there is soone more fitting to fill the blank I left without adding more irregularity to the state of this tiline."
She then whispered a pre-concocted spell—and the space around them quivered as what Yevdi carried unfolded.
mories, compressed and gleaming, cascaded into Kivas’s consciousness like sunlight leaking through stained glass.
She felt them bloom within her, not as images but as living echoes.
The future’s Kivas spoke through them, an image of a tall and grandiose figure of light ca forth and granted Kivas with her sweet and lulling voice.
"The future might be darker than the dimst of night, as you always know. You might stumble your way forward, grasping for paths as beasts lurch at you, eat your arms, stake your heart.
"You will feel abandoned by dawn, yearn for the bones of hope, wonder if your light has any aning at all. Yet rember this—
"Fathomi may be cruel, but also indescribably kind."
Kivas felt her breath catch as the future voice continued, carrying truths that bit and comforted simultaneously.
"I used every thread of power left in to resonate with this tiline, the Dream Journey Tiline, or so I nad it. I backtracked to the day I lost most of my individuality. I sent Yevdi—one of the brightest and purest of —to guide you prevent a bleak outco.
"Thus, all I achieved will unravel because this journey must be carried anew, through raw will, pure heart, and unsullied purpose. But even if all is reverted, everything that matters will persist through the fla we ignite in this snowstorm."
Salt welled in Kivas’s eyes as each syllable struck not her mind but her spine. The future’s purpose, the love woven into the regret of erasure—it held both sorrow and hope in equal asure.
"I have endured agonies you cannot imagine, pain and suffering that might break you apart again and again, but I trust that you will stay unwavering.
"Now you follow a path I once carved. I pray you do it even better than because your soul remains whole... Please, treat yourself kindly.
"That wish you made to the three World Forgers—they have granted it." A smile appeared on the kind being’s face. "You have found your purpose already, it is ti for you to preserve and never let it slip your grasp like I did."
Kivas’s tears fell freely as the echoed mory faded.
All that remained was her and Yevdi, tethered by intangible threads of sacrifice.
Yevdi stepped forward, cradling Kivas’s hands in both of her own. Her gaze searched Kivas’s, steady yet filled with love that spanned years and worlds.
"You will find ," Yevdi said softly, and even that phrase carried gentle certainty. "In this new tiline. If all goes as written, our paths will cross again, alright?"
Kivas lifted her chin, voice trembling but resolute. "I will find you. I will give you a life worth sharing—worth living." Each word left her lips like a prayer offered in defiance of ti. "What you did is very brave, and what my future self in the future did is very cruel. But at the sa ti, there is no reason to dwell.
"I’ll chart my path, and in return, encounter yours."
Yevdi might be soone that Kivas had just t, but just like how Fathomi works, ti mattered less when a bond overgrew the stay and expanded faster than the space and sight.
Not only that, it gave Kivas a new purpose, a new mission to accomplish other than just trying her best to survive and strive in this crazy world.
"You were always like this," Yevdi murmured, leaning forward until their foreheads touched. Tears glittered on her cheeks as she spoke. "Kind. Determined. Brighter than anyone I’ve ever known."
Because there had been no reading in her mories of jokes or bravado, every victory and every failure Kivas had suffered, she had endured with that sa unwavering heart.
She fell down, but she will get up. A pole might have pierced her but she will eventually remove it and walk again.
It had always been there underneath. And now, that strand of herself reached out, again, across the fathomless sea of possibility.
Yevdi exhaled slowly, then wrapped her arms around Kivas in a gentle embrace that humd with unseen resonance. Kivas responded, returning the hug with all the warmth she held—her arms pressed around Yevdi’s waist, holding fast in a mont suspended outside of ti.
A single whisper drifted through Yevdi’s lips, as if she spoke directly into Kivas’s soul, not through ears. The words rippled through Kivas like music she’d known all her life.
"I love you."
Silence followed. But it shone. And the wound of Yevdi herself—future bride, sacrificial mirror—began to dissolve into drifting motes of golden dust that shimred against the horizon of their shared mont.
Kivas tightened her embrace for an instant longer before letting go.
Her eyes remained locked on the particles as they fell and faded beyond sight. Sowhere along the span of that silent goodbye, a single white flower drifted downward, landing in Kivas’s palm.
A gift from a tiline still unfolding, still rooted in courage and love.
The flower was impossibly white, as pure and fragile as the hope it represented. Kivas closed her fingers around it, pressing it against her heart.
Yevdi’s final glance held both relief and longing.
Then she dissipated fully—no pain, no victory, no struggle—just the quiet surrender of purpose complete, of tilines rejoined, and of love released but never lost.
The realm held no echoes. Only Kivas remained, standing alone on that seam of day and night, still holding the living testant of both Yevdi’s sacrifice and her own irrevocable promise.
She inhaled once, deeply, as the fractured sky above her stretched wider than any horizon she had known.
Fathomi itself seed to hold its breath.
Kivas turned slowly, eyes afla with both chastened humility and steeled resolve.
On the windless sea of ti and possibility, the white petals began to drift upward, carrying on currents she could not see and cannot yet command.
She clasped the flower against her chest with both hands and exhaled through lips pressed firm.
Her path was clear.
And sowhere—soon—Yevdi would walk beside her again.
"Looks like it is ti for to return."
Kivas stirred beneath the ceremonial canopy, the familiar linen folds overhead still scented faintly of incense and flower-soaked bark oils.
Her body ached, yet it was the pleasant kind of ache—the kind earned from surviving sothing ant to destroy her.
The light filtering through the freshly added sacred veil of her bed’s forest canopy was soft and blue.
She looked down.
Curled beside her, arms clinging tightly even in unconsciousness, was Oizys.
Her expression was peaceful for once. No frown. No playfully teasing or bratty smug. Just soft, even breath and fingers grasping onto Kivas’s fabric like she was afraid she’d disappear again.
Her cheek pressed lightly against Kivas’s ribs.
On her other side, seated upright with unblinking focus and arms crossed across her lap, was Samael.
That signature deadpan face t Kivas’s awakening gaze without even a blink. But beneath the mask of apathy, there was sothing else waiting quietly.
A flicker of softness in the angle of her brows. Samael must’ve had been scared to death about the sudden Apotheosis, and Kivas really bad about it.
So Kivas smiled, low and playful.
"Thanks for saving ... again."
Samael didn’t smile back. But her gaze shifted down to Oizys, and sothing in her expression changed—like a shadow being peeled away from a fire’s edge.
"I didn’t save you this ti," she said plainly. "She did."
Kivas turned toward Oizys again, fingers brushing the white-streaked bangs from her sleeping face.
"...How long was I out?"
Samael folded her arms a bit tighter, like she was holding in a sigh.
"Today is the fifteenth day you’ve survived in this tiline."
Kivas blinked slowly.
"...Fifteenth?"
Samael nodded. "You never made this far, no? I thought that it is quite the achievent."
A chuckle left Kivas’s lips before she could stop it. Her voice was hoarse but filled with tired amusent.
"Guess I finally broke the record."
"You broke it for nurous streaks already. Not only that," Samael muttered, her tone just a touch warr. "You’re still here."
Kivas sat up, gently shifting Oizys to rest more comfortably against her hip.
She stretched one leg off the bed, then leaned back against the pillows, patting the space on her lap.
"Was it hard? Waiting for to wake up?"
Samael hesitated.
Her eyes narrowed, lips pressing together in mild irritation, but she moved anyway, lying down beside Kivas with chanical grace.
Samael’s head rested on the bed, but her body stayed stiff—shoulders square, posture rigid like she’d been caught off guard and didn’t know what to do with her limbs now.
Kivas ran a hand through Oizys’ hair and Samael’s hair with her respective hands, smoothing the strands with slow, steady motions for both of them."
"You’re pouting," Kivas teased.
"I am not," Samael replied with precision and an imdiate pout.
"You are," Kivas grinned, brushing her thumb across the side of her face. "Let guess. You’re jealous?"
Samael averted her eyes toward the far wall of the chamber.
"Oizys has been clinging to you for days, regardless of whether she deserves it or not," she said flatly. "It’s excessive. She’s receiving too much... reward."
Kivas laughed softly, unable to resist the mirth bubbling in her chest. "You want compensation, huh?"
Samael’s gaze flicked back to her.
"I demand it."
Kivas leaned down slightly, her voice lilting and warm. "Then you get it. Four hours."
Samael blinked. "Four?"
"Cuddles. Four hours. Undivided attention. No interruptions. Pillow optional. Holding hands is mandatory. We might get steamy depending on the developnt."
Samael nodded once, all traces of her earlier irritation vanishing into the air like vapor. Her voice barely even shifted in tone.
"I have no further complaints."
Reviews
All reviews (0)