The quiet hum of Lisbon had faded behind me, but the weight of my choice clung to my chest. I had walked away from Selene's memory, from the safety of the weave, from the one place where I could have had her forever. I had chosen the living world—the fragile, dangerous reality where nothing was certain, not even love. Damian was the first to find me when I returned. His eyes were sharp, yet there was something in them—a relief, maybe. "You're back," he said simply, but I could hear what he didn't say: I thought I lost you. "We don't have time," I told him. "The Accord is vulnerable. Tromsø wasn't just a trap, Damian. Someone else knows about the memory weave. They know how to fracture timelines." Damian's jaw tightened. "Who?" "I don't know yet. But they're already moving." For weeks, we tracked anomalies—fractures appearing in places they shouldn't. Some were subtle, like photographs that had lost their faces. Others were violent, like entire buildings erased from the timeline. The threads of Selene's last message haunted me. "Protect the Accord. Help others remember." I carried her photo with me, folded neatly inside my jacket, its edges soft from my fingertips. Promises, I thought. Unfinished promises. The fractures led us back to the Duran Estate. The place I had once called home now loomed like a monument to old lies. Ezra met us at the gates, his expression unreadable. "You shouldn't have come back." "You know why I'm here." "Gabriel, things have changed." "I've changed too." The halls echoed with the ghosts of my first life—the betrayal, the isolation, the silence that followed me like a shadow. But now, I walked these halls with purpose. Ezra lowered his voice. "They're planning to sever the Accord. They want to control the fractures—to weaponize them." "Who?" "Father. And the Voss family." My stomach twisted. Liana. She had once been my enemy, then my reluctant ally. We had shared moments that blurred the lines between hate and something dangerously close to love. But if she was part of this—if she had chosen to stand against me—then those moments meant nothing. Or maybe they meant everything. The Duran Council convened that night. My father, cold and unyielding, presided at the head of the long table. "You should not have returned," he said, his voice like steel. "You were given your freedom. You chose exile.""I chose to remember." His gaze flicked to the photo in my hand. "Still clinging to the past?" "The past is the only reason I know the truth." His lips tightened, but he gestured for me to sit. "We are not here to debate your ghosts. We are here because the Voss alliance is failing." I leaned forward. "Or is it because you plan to break it yourself?" The silence was sharp. Ezra's eyes darted between us, his loyalty hanging by a thread. "What you want to control is not a weapon," I said. "It's a story. A living, breathing story. If you fracture it, you fracture everything." My father's fingers tapped the table, slow and deliberate. "You are still too sentimental." "And you are still blind." The tension with the Voss family erupted days later. Liana confronted me in the old greenhouse where we used to meet in secret. "Did you really think you could come back and not draw fire?" she hissed. "You sided with my father." "I sided with survival." "You knew what the fractures could do. You knew the cost." "And you knew that staying with me would mean losing everything. But you left." Her words cut deep, sharper than I expected. I came back for the Accord. For the people we swore to protect." "And what about me?" I hesitated, just long enough for the silence to wound us both. "It was never just about you and me," I said finally. "That's where you're wrong, Gabriel. It always was." She turned away, but I caught her hand. "Liana, you don't have to stay in this. We can still—" "I already made my choice." And when the Voss family broke their pact with the Durans, the fractures widened. Memories collapsed. Timelines bled. The war had begun. The war didn't come with guns or armies—it came with silence, erasures, and fractured timelines that disappeared like breath in cold air. The Voss family had withdrawn from the alliance, but their absence left something worse: unpredictability. I met with Damian in the courtyard of the old Duran manor, the air sharp with winter's bite. "They moved faster than we thought. Liana—" "Liana made her choice," Damian interrupted, his voice like stone. "Stop chasing the past." "It's not past that I'm chasing." "Then what?" "The future I promised. The one I thought I could build without her." The fractures intensified across the city. Ezra struggled to maintain what little control he had within the Duran Estate, but his loyalty remained unsteady. He was slipping, and I could see it. I met with him in the eastern wing, a place we once played as children. "The Voss family won't stop until they control the Accord," I warned. Ezra glanced away. "And if Father hands it to them?" "Then we burn everything down before they get it." His eyes snapped to mine. "Are you serious?" "Do you trust me?" Ezra didn't answer, and that silence told me everything. I followed the fractures through the city, chasing rumors, anomalies, and the faint pull of Selene's memory. At a diplomatic gala, I crossed paths with Liana again. She moved through the crowd like a shadow, her dress the color of dying embers. "You shouldn't be here," she murmured when our hands briefly touched. "Neither should you." She handed me a folded note before stepping away, blending into the sea of dangerous smiles. Later, in the quiet of my room, I unfolded the paper. They're watching you. Even now. The fractures aren't random. They're hunting you. Don't trust the next message you receive. Even if it's from me. Damian's trust in me had never wavered, but mine in myself did. I questioned every decision, every step. I questioned whether I had already lost the war before it began. When the next coded message arrived—seemingly from Liana—I hesitated. I took the risk. The trap was immediate. Armed men surrounded me in an abandoned warehouse, their faces hidden, their weapons raised. But I had prepared for this. I dismantled them with precision, with rage, with the memory of promises I had yet to fulfill. When I left, my hands were bloodied, but my path was clear. Someone inside the Duran circle had fed them my movements. Someone I trusted. Ezra called for me at dawn. "We need to talk," he said, leading me to the west wing—our old hiding place as children. "You're playing a dangerous game, Ezra." "So are you." He hesitated. "I know what Father plans. He doesn't want control. He wants to collapse." "What?" "He believes the Accord—the timelines, the stories—they're too fractured to be saved. He thinks if he breaks them, he can rebuild a world where we control everything." I felt my chest tighten. "And what do you believe?" "I believe…" Ezra's voice cracked. "I believe I've been working with him too long to walk away now." "Ezra." "But I want to believe in you. I want to believe you can save this." "Then help me." "If I help you, I will destroy him." "If you don't, you destroy us all." He lowered his head. "I need time." Time. The one thing the fractures refused to give us. The fractures escalated into violent surges, entire streets vanishing and reappearing broken. Panic spread through Valencia like wildfire. Master Aldric summoned me in the dead of night. "You're unraveling," he warned. "The fractures are not just breaking timelines. They're breaking you." "I don't have the luxury of slowing down." "You have the luxury of failure if you don't." "Selene's memory is said to protect the Accord. That's all that matters." "No. What matters is what you become when everything else falls apart." I left him with his warning ringing in my ears. When I returned to the Duran Estate, I found Damian waiting, his face pale, his eyes dark. "There's a traitor in the house," he said. "I know." "We need to move before they do." "We will. But first, I need to know…" "What?" "If Ezra is still my brother." Damian didn't answer. He only handed me a sealed folder. Inside were surveillance reports, intercepted messages, and a photo of Ezra—meeting with our father in secret. Trust was a currency I could no longer afford. The crossroads had arrived. And I was about to burn one of the paths to the ground Selene's memory wasn't fading. It was becoming something else—a living echo, a presence stitched into the fractures that I couldn't escape. I encountered her in a pocket of fractured time, a street that shouldn't have existed. The stars flickered above us, rearranging themselves with each passing second. "You're not supposed to be here," she said, her voice a trembling note between longing and warning. "Neither are you." "You chose to leave me." "I chose to remember." Her hand brushed my cheek, and though I knew she was just a memory, the warmth felt real. "I left myself in the weave to protect you. But the fractures are binding me to you in ways we never planned." "What are you saying?" "I'm not just a guide anymore. I'm a threat." "No, you—" "If you keep chasing me through these fractures, you might bring me back. But if I return, I won't be me. I'll be what the Accord fears." The timeline trembled around us. "You have to let me go." But I couldn't answer her. I couldn't choose that. Damian and I uncovered fresh fractures near the outer edge of Valencia. The Voss family was accelerating their assault, but it wasn't just them. Someone inside the Duran estate was feeding them classified data. Ezra. I wanted to believe there was still a way back for him. I wanted to believe we could fix this before it broke him completely. Liana found me at the Accord's shadow market. "Stop pretending you don't know what's coming," she said, her voice low and urgent. "I know. Ezra is in too deep." "He chose your father. And he chose the Voss family. There is no saving him now." "You still believe in me, don't you?" Her eyes softened, just for a heartbeat. "That's the worst part. I do." She slipped me a data shard. "Your father is planning to use the main archive as the detonator point. Once the core fractures, everything collapses." "Why tell me this?" "Because I want you to win. Even if I can't stand with you." Master Aldric summoned me beneath the Accord's oldest chamber. "There is something you must understand," he said, his voice like stone scraping against time. "Selene's weave is not just a memory vault." "What is it then?" "It's a failsafe. If the Accord falls, Selene will not simply vanish. She will trigger the collapse. She will unravel every story to protect the core from corruption." "That's not possible." "It is. She chose this. She knew what the cost would be if the wrong hands took control." I felt like the ground was slipping from beneath me. "She would never destroy everything." "She would if it meant saving you from a worse fate." Aldric placed his hand on my shoulder. "Gabriel, the fractures aren't just following you. They are responding to you. The more you resist letting her go, the more unstable this world becomes." I wanted to argue, but I couldn't. Because I knew he was right. I set the final bait. I leaked false plans about a secret archive vault beneath the Duran estate—a place my father and the Voss family would not be able to resist targeting. Ezra arrived first. "You knew I'd come," I said when we faced each other in the silent hall. "You left me no choice." "You always had a choice." He hesitated. "It didn't have to be this way." "But it is." The confrontation was brutal. Words became fists. Fists became blades. I pinned him against the cold marble, my hand shaking around the hilt pressed to his throat. "I won't kill you." "Maybe that's why you'll lose." I let him go. "Tell Father he failed. Tell him I'm still writing this story." As Ezra stumbled away, the trap I had triggered sealed the vault—locking the Voss operatives inside, cutting them off from their escape routes. But I had underestimated the cost. The fractures exploded across the city, consuming streets, swallowing entire districts, tearing through the Accord's protected zones. And through it all, Selene's voice whispered to me. "You're running out of time, Gabriel."
