The mending horizon dimmed.
Colour bled out of the sky in slow ribbons, as though dawn itself had been wounded. The gold at the edge of the world faded first, then the pink, then the fragile blue, until only a pale, glassy light remained.
Celeste tightened her grip on Lumina’s hand.
Behind Karethiel, the air began to ripple.
Not like mist.
Like memory.
The empty space folded inward, layer upon layer, until a city appeared in the haze.
A floating kingdom hung above an endless sea of cloud, its towers suspended by bridges of living mana. Crystal spires rose like spears of frozen song, their surfaces shifting with opal, sapphire, and pearl. Waterfalls poured from impossible heights and vanished into glowing vapour before ever touching ground. Streets curved through the air in graceful spirals, lined with silver-leafed trees whose roots grew through moonstone balconies.
And everywhere—
Kymara.
Radiant beings moved through the vision, their forms shimmering with colours Celeste had no names for. Some bore horns like polished starlight. Some had wings of glass and flame. Others laughed with fox faces, dragon tails, alicorn crowns, rabbit ears, feline eyes—so many shapes, blended without shame, without fear, without anyone asking which part of them was allowed to exist.
Children chased floating lights through the streets.
Musicians played instruments strung with glowing thread, each note drifting visibly through the air before bursting into little flowers of sound.
A woman with a crown of woven crystal danced beneath a balcony as others clapped around her.
Laughter rang through the kingdom.
Warm.
Careless.
Alive.
Celeste felt it in her chest as if she had once stood there herself. As if her paws had once known those streets. As if some buried part of her remembered the smell of rain on crystal stone and the taste of festival sweets melting on her tongue.
Then the music faltered.
One note went sour.
The clouds beneath the city darkened.
A shadow spread across the horizon, thin at first, like ink spilled into water. It rolled upward, swallowing the light. The silver leaves blackened. The mana bridges flickered.
Someone screamed.
Then everyone screamed.
The vision lurched.
The floating kingdom trembled as the Void poured over the edge of the world.
It did not burn like fire.
It erased.
Towers vanished without falling. Streets ended in nothing. People turned to run and found pieces of themselves missing before fear could even finish crossing their faces.
Kymara warriors rose into the air, blazing with power. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Their cores shone through their chests like captive stars as they joined hands, wings, horns, tails, prayers—every soul pulling together in one great lattice of light.
For a heartbeat, it was beautiful.
For a heartbeat, it looked like enough.
Then the Void struck them.
The lattice shattered.
Cores fell from the sky.
One by one, they dropped through the smoke like dying stars—red, blue, violet, gold, green—each carrying the last echo of someone who had laughed only moments before.
They struck the ash below without sound.
Celeste’s breath caught.
Around her, the vision filled with falling lights.
Not bodies.
Cores.
All that remained.
The floating kingdom cracked apart above them, its impossible towers sinking into darkness, its songs swallowed before their final notes could land.
Beside Celeste, Lumina made a tiny broken sound.
Karethiel did not turn around.
She watched the ruin with eyes that had never stopped seeing it.
Karethiel’s voice lowered.
“Our cores were not unlike thine. Bright. Living. Bound to memory. When flesh failed, the self endured awhile in the core. My people did not vanish at once.”
Her gaze drifted across the sky, as if she could still see them.
“They called to me. As thine called to thee.”
Celeste clutched her chest.
Karethiel’s eyes sharpened.
“And this shall befall them.”
Celeste went still.
“No.”
“Aye,” Karethiel said. “If thou remainest unready. If thou trustest gentleness where command is required. If thou lettest fear and affection make thee slow.”
She stepped closer.
Her voice became softer.
Almost tender.
That made it worse.
“Let me come with thee,” Karethiel said. “Let me guide thy hand. Let me lend thee mine eyes. I know the shape of this enemy. I know the path of ruin before the first stone falls.”
Celeste’s ears flattened. “Lend me your eyes?”
“To see what thou canst not.”
“And your hand?”
“To strike where thou hesitatest.”
Lumina’s face tightened.
Karethiel’s gaze flicked toward her.
Cold again.
Celeste followed the look.
Then she asked quietly, “Why did you try to stop Lumina?”
For the first time, Karethiel did not answer at once.
Lumina looked down, guilt already rising before the words came.
Karethiel’s voice was smooth.
“Her mana was hurting thee.”
Lumina flinched.
“I…” Her voice broke. “I didn’t mean to.”
Celeste turned at once. “Lumi, no.”
Lumina’s eyes filled. “But if I made it worse—”
“You were trying to help me.”
Karethiel’s gaze remained fixed on Celeste, unreadable.
Celeste looked back at her, suddenly sharper despite the fear trembling through her.
“You need to be less cryptic,” Celeste said. “And nicer.”
Lumina blinked.
Karethiel’s brow lifted.
Celeste seemed to realise what she had said only after saying it. Her cheeks flushed beneath the glow.
“I mean—sorry. No. Not sorry. A little sorry. You keep appearing in mirrors and throwing my sister and saying things like doom has excellent table manners. It’s very stressful.”
Karethiel’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Celeste took a breath.
“Would you take over my body?”
The question dropped like a stone into water.
Lumina stared at her.
Karethiel said nothing.
Celeste’s heart sank.
“That’s an answer, isn’t it?”
Karethiel’s voice came low. “Thou dost not understand what I offer.”
“No,” Celeste said. “I don’t. That’s the problem.”
“I would save thee.”
“You won’t even tell me whether helping you means losing myself.”
Karethiel’s expression hardened.
Celeste’s voice trembled, but she held her ground.
“So… I’m sorry. I can’t.”
For a moment, the mended world seemed to darken.
Her fingers pressed over the place where her own core burned, white-blue and impossible beneath her ribs.
“So…” Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. “How did you get in here?”
Karethiel’s eyes moved to her.
Celeste swallowed hard.
“And what happened to the core that was there before you?”
For the first time, something in Karethiel’s expression shifted too quickly to name.
Almost an answer.
Almost pain.
Almost guilt.
Her lips parted.
Celeste held very still.
But then Karethiel closed her mouth.
The old sorrow sealed itself behind her eyes.
“That truth is tangled,” she said at last. “It would be better shown than spoken. Thy making, thy breaking, thy vessel, the place where one core ended and another began…” Her gaze lowered to Celeste’s chest. “Such things are not small enough for this exchange.”
Celeste blinked.
“Oh.”
Then, because terror made her mouth run ahead of sense, she added, “That’s true, probably, but perhaps a little answer? A tiny one? Like the sort that fits before someone wakes up confused and possibly on fire?”
Lumina squeezed her hand.
Karethiel studied her.
“If thou wouldst allow me within thy mind for but a moment, I could show thee clearly.”
Celeste went rigid.
Lumina’s wings flared at once.
“No,” Celeste said.
Karethiel’s brow lowered. “Thou refusest knowledge because thou fearest the manner of its giving?”
“Yes,” Celeste said, then winced. “I mean—yes. Actually yes, that is exactly what I’m doing.”
“I would not need long.”
“That does not make it better.”
“It would spare thee confusion.”
“I think I prefer confusion to someone walking around in my head without shoes on.”
Karethiel’s eyes narrowed. “Thou speakest as though I am a stranger.”
Celeste’s ears flattened. “You are a stranger.”
Something cold passed between them.
Karethiel’s voice softened, but the softness had edges. “I am in thy core.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed in my thoughts.”
For a heartbeat, the mended world trembled.
Lumina stepped half in front of Celeste, though her hand stayed locked in hers.
Karethiel looked at them both.
Then she lifted her chin.
“Then I shall not tell thee of thy former core.”
Celeste’s stomach dropped.
“That’s not fair.”
“Nay,” Karethiel said. “It is not.”
The honesty of it made Celeste falter.
Karethiel stepped closer, her opal light casting pale colours across Celeste’s face.
“I offer thee truth, little one. I offer thee memory. I offer thee the sight to know what was done to thee. But thou wouldst have it gentle, trimmed, made safe enough to cradle.”
Celeste’s eyes stung.
“I want it to be mine.”
Silence.
The words hung there, simple and shaking.
Celeste swallowed, then said more quietly, “If the truth is about me, then I should get to choose how I receive it.”
Karethiel stared at her for a long moment.
Then something like disappointment crossed her face.
Deep.
Ancient.
Personal.
“So thou canst not help me.”
Celeste’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry.”
Karethiel looked past her, toward the ruin of the remembered kingdom.
“I am sorry also.”
Celeste looked up.
Karethiel’s expression had gone still again.
“For I cannot help thee as thou desirest.”
The air between them cooled.
Karethiel looked at her with something close to disappointment.
Deep.
Ancient.
Personal.
“Fine,” she said at last.
The word was soft, but it carried the weight of a closing door.
“Do it thy way.”
Celeste swallowed.
Karethiel stepped backward, opal light gathering around her edges.
“But thou wilt need me eventually.”
Her eyes moved to Lumina one last time, cold as distant stars.
“When love faileth. When mercy breaketh. When the Void remembers thy scent.”
Celeste reached for Lumina’s hand.
Lumina gripped it tightly.
Celeste lifted her chin.
“I won’t let what happened to you happen to them.”
Karethiel’s expression changed.
For a heartbeat, grief showed through the mask.
Then it vanished.
“We shall see, little one.”
The horizon brightened.
Colour bloomed like dawn after eternal night.
Then Karethiel’s eyes shifted.
Not toward Celeste.
Not toward Lumina.
Past them.
Beyond the mending horizon, as though something had touched the edge of the Trial from the outside.
Her expression tightened.
Annoyance flickered across her face—quick, sharp, and strangely mortal.
“Hm.”
Celeste followed her gaze, but saw only light.
“What is it?”
Karethiel’s mouth thinned.
“It seemeth I am not the only one who wisheth to speak with thee.”
Celeste’s ears lifted uneasily. “What do you mean?”
Karethiel looked back at her, the opal glow around her body beginning to unravel.
“Thou shalt see when thou wakest.”
The light around her flared.
Then her voice sharpened, no longer soft, no longer coaxing.
“Tell him to cease his meddling. He walketh the traitor’s path.”
Celeste’s stomach dropped. “Who?”
Karethiel’s eyes moved, briefly and coldly, toward the space beside Celeste.
“As doth she.”
Lumina stiffened. “Me?”
But Karethiel was already fading.
Celeste reached out. “Wait—who is she? Who are you talking about?”
Karethiel’s form dissolved into prismatic motes.
No answer came.
Only her final words, carried like a whisper through Celeste’s bones:
“We shall meet again.”
Celeste held Lumina’s hand tighter.
Lumina leaned against her, trembling.
“Cece?”
“I’m here.”
“Are we waking up?”
Celeste looked at the restored sky, at the floating cores turning back into voices, at the fading place where Karethiel had stood.
“I think so.”
Lumina squeezed her hand.
“Don’t let go.”
Celeste smiled weakly.
“Never.”
Hand in hand, they stepped into the brightness.
And woke.
