he girl didn't blink.
She stood at the center of the root-ringed hollow, barefoot on stone soaked in ancient sorrow. Her eyes held no whites—only mirrored galaxies collapsing and reforming with every breath. She looked small. Breakable.
But the moment she spoke again, the world listened.
"I was never meant to exist," she said softly. "You chose the seed… and now I am."
Orion approached carefully. "Who are you?"
"I'm what your choice made," she replied. "Not a reflection. Not a prophecy. Just a beginning. But beginnings must forget… to survive."
Behind them, the Rooted One bowed low.
"She is the first sprout in a forest that never grew. A sovereign soul with no lineage. No throne. Only potential."
Kael's hand hovered near his blade. "Is she a danger?"
"No," Lyra said, her voice filled with awe. "She's a chance."
The girl stepped forward. As her feet touched the ground, the obsidian roots shifted, curling away in reverence. A light spread from her—soft but unyielding—pushing back the sorrow embedded in the stone.
Then the cavern reacted.
Visions flared across the walls. Not memories—offers.
Futures unraveling in fragments:
A multiverse where the Hollow Kingdoms had never fallen.
A realm where Kael and Lyra ruled as guardians of equilibrium.
One where Orion was never fractured—never burdened by choices not his own.
Orion staggered back, heart pounding. "These aren't real."
"They could be," the child whispered. "But only if you let go of what already is."
Lyra shook her head. "We didn't fight to erase ourselves."
"Then you'll have to decide what stays—and what doesn't."
A new pedestal rose from the floor.
No artifacts.
No weapons.
Just a book.
Unwritten.
A single line inked on its cover: "Begin again."
The girl looked at them, tears in her galaxy-eyes.
"You planted me. But what I grow into… depends on your next story."
Kael approached the book. "So… we write this?"
"No," she said, taking his hand. "We live it. But you must choose the first chapter."
Orion, Lyra, and Kael looked to one another.
A new story.
A sovereign with no past.
An unwritten world.
And as the first light of that world broke through the cavern roof, cracking the sky above, Orion opened the book—
And the cosmos held its breath.