I looked at Kai and said softly, "I'm sorry to say this, but I think we need to go our separate ways for now, Kai. I still need to find Sarah."
A quiet tension hung between us, and I could feel the weight of what I was about to do pressing against my chest. I wasn't just setting out to find anyone—I was going after her, the woman Kai once loved. That truth carved a strange ache in me, one I didn't quite understand yet. But I knew this had to be done.
"She might hold the answers to everything… even the pieces of you that you don't talk about," I added, trying to mask the mix of resolve and uncertainty in my voice. "But the good news is… our pendants glow when one of us is in danger."
Kai's expression shifted—his usual calm fractured by something deeper, something unreadable. But I couldn't let his emotions—or mine—pull me back. Not now.
Inside, I battled a storm of conflicting feelings. I told myself I wasn't doing this out of jealousy or desperation. I was doing it because if Sarah truly knew something—anything—that could change the course of what was unfolding around us, I needed to hear it. Even if it hurt. Even if it meant walking into shadows alone.
I would face Sarah not just as a seeker of truth, but as the woman who refused to be haunted by another's past. And in that quiet promise to myself, I turned toward the swirling expanse of time-space, ready to follow the faintest echo of her presence.
Kai stared at me in silence, his eyes narrowing as if trying to read every unspoken thought in my mind. The usual warmth in his gaze flickered, giving way to something far more complicated—regret, perhaps, or a ghost from the past he hadn't fully let go of.
"So… you're going after her," he said quietly. His voice didn't carry anger, but there was a sharpness to it, a tension laced in every syllable. "You don't even know what you'll find out there, Anna. She's not the same person I once knew—time and space have twisted her. She may not even remember who she was."
I opened my mouth to speak, but Kai stepped closer, his hand brushing the edge of my pendant. "I know you think this is your path to walk alone… but I need you to understand something." His voice dropped lower. "Sarah—she was never just a chapter I closed. She was part of why I became who I am. Part of what broke me."
He clenched his jaw, then looked away for a moment as if ashamed of the truth trying to claw its way out.
"But you… you're the one who made me feel again."
His eyes snapped back to mine, glowing faintly, like embers burning behind a storm. "I want to stop you, Anna. I want to protect you from her. But I know I can't chain you down—especially not when you're chasing answers I was too afraid to face."
He reached into his cloak and pulled out a shard of something silver—a broken piece of Sarah's old pendant. Placing it gently into my hand, he said, "If she still has her memories… this will draw her out. Or warn you if she's changed beyond recognition."
Then, after a long pause, Kai touched my forehead, his fingers trembling slightly. "Come back to me, Anna. Even if you hate what you find… come back."
As Kai's hand lingered against my forehead, I felt the warmth of his magic fade like the final flicker of a fire. The broken shard he gave me pulsed faintly in my palm—cold and silent, yet heavy with unspoken memories. I slipped it into my pouch, nodded once, and turned away without another word. If I looked back, I might lose the strength to walk forward.
The rift into time-space shimmered just ahead—an unstable corridor of light and shadow that rippled with the echoes of forgotten timelines. The air around it buzzed with impossible sounds: whispers that weren't voices, footsteps that hadn't yet been taken. The closer I stepped, the more reality unraveled.
My breath caught as the edges of my vision blurred. The trees that once stood behind me twisted, fading into translucent outlines. Gravity shifted sideways. Even my thoughts began to stretch unnaturally, as though I were already being pulled between what was and what might have been.
But I pressed forward.
This was my choice. Not just to find Sarah, not just to uncover the truth—but to prove to myself that I wasn't defined by Kai's past or my own fears. I was more than the girl caught in fate's web. I would make my own story, even if I had to walk through the broken folds of time to do it.
As I stepped fully into the rift, a sudden jolt ran through my body—like falling and flying at the same time. Memories not my own flashed before my eyes: a woman standing at a cliff's edge, her hands bloodied; a voice crying out for someone who never answered; and a golden pendant shattering beneath a blade of violet fire.
I gasped, stumbling through the vortex. The shard Kai had given me glowed faintly from my pouch.
Something… or someone… was waiting.
And I would find her.
The world around me had no up or down—only swirling colors, fractured light, and endless motion. It was as if time itself had been unraveled and stretched thin across a horizon that didn't exist. I floated, walked, and fell all at once. Every breath I took echoed like a question with no answer.
The sky—if it could be called that—was layered with translucent images, flickering in and out like living memories. Some belonged to others. Some, horrifyingly, felt like they might be mine from another life.
I reached out instinctively, and the space around my hand rippled like the surface of water. As it parted, a vision revealed itself:
A younger Sarah—fierce and wild-eyed—stood beside Kai, her fingers brushing against his as they faced a shattered mirror. They were laughing. They were whole.
Then the mirror cracked. And Kai vanished.
Sarah turned slowly toward me, her face morphing into something cold and hollow-eyed, her voice barely audible as it passed through the rift:"Why are you chasing ghosts?"
I staggered back as the image dissolved into smoke.
The path forward was constantly shifting, a bridge made of scattered memories and floating fragments of forgotten realities. There was no gravity, no solid ground—just determination.
I passed a doorway with no frame, hovering midair. Inside, I saw a version of myself standing alone before a throne. The blade of Anaria pulsed in my double's hand, and a crown of fire rested on her brow. Her eyes were glowing—empty. Terrifying.
I tore my gaze away.
The shard Kai gave me began to glow—faint, but constant. I held it tight, following the direction it pulled me. Each step through the realm felt like tearing through a web of half-finished stories, unraveling paths that never should have been walked.
Then I heard it—a whisper. Not in my ear, but in my mind.
"You're close. But she doesn't want to be found."
Suddenly, the space twisted violently. Dark tendrils of broken timelines lashed toward me like living chains, trying to drag me off-course. I raised my hand, instinctively calling on the blade's power. It pulsed in response—not just steel, but will—my will. The illusion trembled.
I pushed forward, heart pounding, knowing I was no longer alone in this place.
Sarah was near.
But so was something else… something watching.
The path narrowed, if it could be called that—a thread of silver light winding through collapsing images of forgotten battles, broken promises, and futures that never came to pass. My heart beat faster, not from fear, but from the sense that something—someone—was drawing near.
Then I saw her.
Or rather… something that looked like her.
She stood in the center of a shifting storm, her cloak of dark violet woven from strands of fading timelines. Her face was Sarah's—sharp, elegant, undeniably familiar from Kai's old sketches and the flash of memories that sometimes surfaced in his eyes. But her expression was wrong.
Her eyes were voids.
Soulless. Hungry.
"You're still chasing things that don't belong to you," she said, her voice echoing with multiple tones—one soft and sorrowful, the other sharp like broken glass.
I stepped forward, my blade humming faintly against my hip. "You're not her."
The distorted Sarah smiled, the gesture brittle and cruel. "But I could be. Isn't that what you're afraid of? That if you find her… you'll find he never truly let her go?"
That hit deeper than I expected. I clenched my fists. "I'm not here to compare myself to her. I came for answers. I came for the truth."
She tilted her head. "And what if the truth is that you're nothing more than a shadow chasing after someone else's place in his heart?"
The realm around us began to distort—projecting images from my own fears. I saw Kai reaching for Sarah instead of me. I saw myself fading into nothing while echoes of the past consumed him. I saw Sarah laughing in my place. My chest tightened, breath catching.
But then… I remembered Kai's touch, the way his voice cracked when he told me to come back. The way he looked at me, not at a ghost.
I stepped through the illusions and faced her again. "You're not real. And even if you were, I wouldn't back down."
The distorted version of Sarah twitched, her form glitching, fractured by my refusal. Her voice turned harsh, desperate. "He will never choose you in the end."
"No," I said quietly. "I choose me. And that's enough."
The mirage screamed—a sound made of heartbreak, rage, and unraveling timelines—before the entire illusion shattered like glass under pressure. I shielded my eyes, and when I opened them again, the distorted version of her was gone. The space was silent, calm… and ahead, a soft blue light flickered.
The pendant shard in my pouch pulsed warmly.
The real Sarah was close.
And this time, I was ready.
The quiet after the illusion shattered was unnerving. The time-space realm seemed to hold its breath, like even the fragments of reality were watching, waiting. My pendant no longer glowed, but the shard Kai had given me was warm against my chest—a steady pulse leading me toward a dense mist ahead.
I stepped through it.
The shift was immediate.
One moment I was walking across flickering memories, and the next, I stood at the threshold of a space unlike the rest of this fractured realm. It was still—a rare, unnatural stillness. Time here wasn't broken. It was preserved. Sealed away like something precious… or dangerous.
The floor beneath me became smooth black stone laced with glowing runes, and above, the sky faded into a frozen dusk. In the center of this forgotten pocket of time… sat her.
Sarah.
The real Sarah.
She rested on a broken throne of crystal and ash, surrounded by floating mirrors that reflected versions of her that no longer existed. One showed her laughing with Kai. Another crying alone, covered in blood. A third—her face blank, soulless, drifting through an empty world.
She looked up when I entered. And she froze.
Her eyes—still sharp, still intelligent—narrowed ever so slightly as they locked onto me. Her gaze dipped to the shard pulsing at my chest. Then back to my face.
"You're carrying his piece," she said, her voice calm—but I caught the bitterness laced behind the words. "You came here… because of him."
"Yes," I said carefully. "I'm Anna."
Something flickered across her face. She stood slowly, her movements graceful but tight, controlled. "Anna." She repeated the name like it tasted wrong. "He never told me he gave that shard away. It was always meant for me."
Her tone was sharper now—jealousy buried beneath civility. Her eyes scanned me, not with curiosity… but comparison.
"You're the one with him now," she said, stepping down from the dais. "He chose you."
I stayed still. "He didn't forget you. But he moved forward. You didn't."
A pause. Then Sarah gave a dry, brittle laugh. "Of course he didn't forget me. You think you're the first woman to step into the ruins of someone else's love story, trying to make it yours?"
I felt the air between us shift, grow colder.
"I didn't come here to fight you," I said, my voice steady, even if my heart wasn't. "I came because something about you is still tied to all of this—to Kai, to the blade, to the truth we don't yet understand."
Sarah tilted her head. "And if the truth is that he only chose you because I wasn't there to be chosen?"
That one struck a nerve. I clenched my fists, but held her gaze.
"Then I'll still be the one standing beside him now," I said. "You can hate me. You can doubt me. But I'm not afraid of your past anymore."
Sarah's lips twitched—whether in irritation or reluctant respect, I couldn't tell.
"You have his fire," she said softly, almost to herself. "That same reckless loyalty."
She turned away from me then, her voice low. "Very well. You want answers? I'll give you more than you bargained for."
The mirrors around her began to spin, light pooling at their centers. "But once I show you what happened between me and Kai… you may wish you'd never come."
The mirrors slowed their spin, dimming like breath held in a fragile moment. Sarah stood with her back to me, fingers brushing one of the floating shards. Her reflection stared back at her—cold, beautiful, and tired. When she finally turned around, her expression had changed.
No longer guarded.
Now... sharp. Calculated.
"If I give you the truth," she said, her voice smooth but weighted, "you should first understand what you're standing in the middle of. You stepped into the space between love and loss, Anna. But you're not just some bystander, are you?"
I said nothing. I didn't trust her tone.
Sarah stepped closer, gaze fixed on mine like a blade pressing against skin.
"Tell me something, then," she said. "When he touches you, when he says your name, can you tell if it's you he's really seeing? Or is he just trying to love a version of me he no longer has?"
That stung deeper than I wanted to admit. She was digging—deliberately, cruelly—but not out of spite alone. No, this was a test. A final wall. She wanted to see if I'd break.
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat and forced myself to meet her stare. "Maybe he does see traces of you in me," I said honestly. "But I see traces of someone else in him, too. That's what it means to love someone with a past. You learn to love the whole of them—including the parts they still grieve."
Sarah's jaw clenched. Something in her eyes flickered—something wounded.
I pressed on. "I'm not here to compete with you, Sarah. I'm here because whatever happened between you and Kai didn't end in truth. And I think you're still waiting for someone to ask what really happened instead of deciding for you."
Silence hung heavy between us.
Then Sarah stepped back, slowly, the pressure in the air shifting.
"You're more dangerous than I thought," she said softly. "Not because of what you are… but because you're not trying to take my place. You're trying to understand it."
Her voice faltered just slightly. "No one ever did that before."
She raised her hand, and one of the mirrors cracked with a sharp, clean sound. A single shard drifted down into her palm, glowing faintly with golden-blue light.
"When I show you," she whispered, "you'll see why I never came back. Why I couldn't."
She turned toward the center of the chamber, her hair brushing over her shoulder like smoke. The light around us shifted again.
"Come. The past is ready to speak."
Sarah stood before the central mirror now—its surface no longer reflective, but fluid, like a pool of memory waiting to be stirred. She glanced back at me, her voice quieter this time. Not weak. Just… stripped of armor.
"I didn't leave Kai because I stopped loving him," she began. "That's the lie everyone assumed. Even him."
The mirror rippled, and a scene began to bloom within it—colorless at first, like a fading painting touched by grief. I saw a younger Sarah and Kai, laughing as they sat beneath a ruined archway surrounded by wildflowers. His arm was around her shoulder, and her eyes were radiant with something I recognized all too well: hope.
"I thought we could change fate," Sarah said, her fingers tightening around the glowing shard in her hand. "Together, we were unstoppable. We had the blade. We had each other. But that was before… the curse revealed itself."
The image shifted—now showing a battlefield drenched in twilight. Shadows loomed across the ground. Kai stood in the center, his blade alight with blue fire, facing a monstrous figure wreathed in distortion. Sarah was behind him, casting a protective shield over a wounded ally. Then… something shifted in the magic. The shield faltered. The blade flickered.
"I was the one who hesitated," she whispered. "Just once. But it was enough. The curse latched onto me. It showed me a vision—Kai's death. Over and over. The future, the fall, the scream… the silence."
I turned to look at her, but Sarah's eyes were fixed on the memory like she was still trapped in it.
"So I did the only thing I could. I cut myself out of his fate."
The vision shattered with a high-pitched ringing, transitioning into another—Kai kneeling alone in the ruins of that battlefield, holding a bloodied pendant. His face was pale, lost. No words. Just silence.
"I left him without goodbye," Sarah continued. "Told everyone I vanished. Let them believe I was dead. I thought that would sever the bond. That he'd move on."
She finally turned to me now.
"But you know Kai. He doesn't forget. He doesn't let go."
I nodded slowly, heart tightening.
"I didn't come here to blame you," I said. "But he deserves to know the truth. You both do."
Sarah hesitated, then looked down. "Maybe. Or maybe the truth is only a wound we never learned how to close."
She turned toward the mirror again. This time, it shimmered with a soft, pulsating light.
"I'll let you see it now, Anna. All of it. Not just the fall… but what came before it. The love. The fire. And the breaking."
Her eyes met mine, and in them, I saw not just jealousy—but sorrow. Longing. A fear she hadn't outrun.
"You think you're strong enough to carry the truth?" she asked, almost like a challenge. "Then step into the memory. And don't look away."
The mirror pulsed once, then again—like a heartbeat synced with something ancient and heavy.
Sarah stepped aside, her expression unreadable, but her posture tense. "You'll feel what I felt. See it through my eyes," she warned. "This isn't just a vision. It's a scar."
I drew a deep breath, letting my fingers graze the surface of the mirror.
The moment I touched it, the world fell away.
The shift was immediate.
Suddenly I was standing on a sunlit cliff overlooking a valley filled with violet bloom. Wind rushed through my hair—not mine, hers—and I felt a strange tightness in my chest. Joy. Anticipation. And love.
A hand slid into mine. I turned and saw him—Kai.
Younger. Unscarred. A flicker of laughter in his eyes that I hadn't seen in my timeline. He looked at Sarah like she was everything. The world. The anchor.
I felt that look in my bones.
His voice—familiar but softer—whispered, "We're going to change it, Sarah. This time, no death. No broken destinies."
My chest ached.
Because I could feel her answer in my own mouth: "Even if it's me who pays the price?"
Kai pulled her into an embrace. "Then we'll face it together."
The memory jumped—
Now we were in the middle of war. Fire split the sky. The blade—Anaria's Blade—was pulsing wildly in Kai's grip. Sarah stood beside him, casting shields, calling on spells, her hands glowing with unbearable light.
And then—it happened.
Time split.
A curse, like a living shadow, surged out of the collapsing rift. It wrapped around Kai—then her. And suddenly Sarah was standing in two places at once: the now… and the future.
And in the future—she saw Kai die.
She screamed.
Tried to sever the connection, but it was too late. The vision burned into her.
Kai's body falling.
Her voice calling his name.
And silence.
The magic recoiled. Something cracked. And when she opened her eyes again, the battlefield was still—but Kai was alive, barely. And he didn't yet know what she'd seen.
But Sarah knew what was coming.
And she made a choice.
The scene shifted one last time—
Sarah standing in a dim room, writing a letter she never sent. Her eyes full of tears. Her hands trembling as she crushed her pendant and placed a spell on it—a binding severance.
"I love you," she whispered aloud, even as she wrote nothing but a cold goodbye. "That's why I have to disappear."
Then… she walked into the rift. Alone.
The mirror released me.
I stumbled back into my own body with a gasp, knees buckling. My hands shook. My heart raced.
I had felt everything—her love, her fear, her grief. And in the end, the devastating decision she made to save him… even if it meant breaking both of them.
Sarah stood quietly nearby, watching.
"Well?" she asked, her voice a whisper. "Do you hate me now?"
I looked up at her, tears pricking the edges of my vision—not from anger.
But from understanding.
"No," I said softly. "I think… I finally understand why he still mourns you."