(Sora)
"Fate."
"Hmmm?"
I swallowed, snapping involuntarily with a sharpened blade for tone.
I've had enough of this playful shit—I felt you every time I saw her die. You were there. So why...?
"...Why did you make me suffer?"
Her playful expression dropped. Just gone entirely, switched up immediately. Fate blinked once, long and slow, as if she genuinely couldn't understand what she'd just heard.
"Suffer?" she repeated quietly.
"You heard me."
Something shifted in the air around us. The living mist physically tensed, my shoulders alongside it. Yet, I continued,
"You showed me Ariana dying. Over. And over. And over again. Thousands of times. You made me watch that. You—"
"What?"
My tongue caught as she cut me off. This was a Princeptus after all. Someone I had no business angering. Someone I shouldn't be angering. 'What?' That single word alone was so simple, yet she said it so sharply that it forced fear to emerge down to my core. It hollowed me out. I swallowed again—harder this time, but before I could say anything else...
"You think... I did that to you?"
Her voice cracked like a whip, and I felt the void around us literally tighten. She dropped from her chair, and the mist separated for her as if it was afraid too.
Fate's nose wrinkled, but this time it wasn't out of playfulness, and I saw it in her eyes.
Her tiny hands clenched into really tight fists as she stormed towards me, stopping right in front of me and looking up at me.
She spoke, quieter this time. "Do you actually think I did that...?"
"Yeah! What else am I supposed to believe? I was—you have no idea—I was put through so much torture. Like actual torture. Watching someone die in your arms, repeatedly, does something to a person. Even if I didn't care about her—"
"You DO care about her!"
Her words stung because she said them with such certainty, as if she were stating the sky was blue.
My mouth shut.
Her iridiscent purple-blue eyes narrowed, burning with a mix of annoyance and… something else.
She jabbed her finger into my chest. "Don't accuse Fate of orchestrating something she never touched. Fate had... I had nothing to do with your—your visions!"
"…But then why—"
"The futures you saw were directly linked to your soul. It's what you wanted to see, what you wanted to fix! I had nothing to do with it besides the power being mine. A power YOU stole!"
My breath hitched.
Wanted… to fix?
Do I look like a mechanic?
I don't believe you.
She snapped her fingers, and I suddenly found myself on my knees, no longer seated on any chair, staring up at her.
She—she can do that?!
"You dare call me a liar?!"
Tears began to well up in her eyes... like genuine tears I didn't even know she could cry.
Looking down at me with tightened eyes, calmer this time but with some sort of twisted underlying emotions still simmering through, she said,
"Your soul is intertwined with hers. Intertwined. Meaning, whether you like it or not, Sora, you two are connected on a fundamental level. You two are destined for each other in every possible timeline. And yes, that means you care. Even if your brain and heart haven't caught up yet, it will soon."
"Wha... what?"
"And don't pretend you haven't felt it—the weird pull. The unexplainable awareness. The constant sense of her. This weird need to want to protect her." She tilted her head. "You felt it."
My mind flicked back to last night at that alley with Jad and the rest of those thugs.
'I felt you.'
So she literally sensed me? Not my arcane. But literally me...?
"Yes."
"Does she even know?" I murmured.
"Her soul? Absolutely. Her, consciously? Probably not. But she feels it too."
I dragged a hand down my face, mind spinning, heart pounding, anger dimming into something more tangled, fear, dread, something unnamed and unwanted twisting in my chest.
"But—then why did I have to die to see all of that? Why did I have to…" My throat tightened. "Why did it loop so many times?"
Fate's expression softened. Not playful nor smug, simply irritated.
Which somehow made everything worse.
She stepped closer, just a little, folding her hands behind her back as if she were trying to look less threatening—but the way she was now... nothing could make her less threatening.
"Every future is different, Sora."
I blinked.
She nodded academically once.
"I'm sure you noticed."
I did.
I hated that I did.
"The way she fell into you. The way her blood felt against your hands. Sometimes her eyes were open. Other times, closed. Sometimes she tried to say something. Sometimes she didn't. Those were all possibilities. All threads. All potential futures."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Fate let out a tiny breath, tired breath.
"In every possibility, Sora… she dies."
My stomach dropped. My hands went cold.
"What?"
"In every possible future up to this moment, Ariana dies. By the end of the year. The moment you two get married... she dies. Every path. Every permutation." Her eyes dimmed with something like regret—or what passed for regret in a divine being.
"Your soul kept showing you her death because it was searching desperately for the one thread where she lived."
I felt sick.
Actually sick.
"But if she dies in all of them… why—"
"Because you are different."
That shut me up.
She lifted her chin. "You are not bound by the same rules as other mortals. Even more so now that you're my servant. A soul intertwined with another always tries to avoid the other's death. But your soul doesn't just avoid... it pushes. Resists. Tries to carve something new."
She paused, taking in a deep breath.
Then she smiled. A small, crooked, oddly hopeful smile.
"You might be the first mortal in a very, very long time, maybe ever, capable of creating a new future beyond the possibilities entirely."
My voice cracked. "…So why did I have to die to see the future?"
"I... don't know."
"And why did I see the same vision over and over again... like a loop?"
"That part is simple. The poison reached your heart. It killed you. Instantly. Over and over. And because Death's gift dragged you back each time, the poison killed you again. And again. And again. Until your heart merged with the toxin."
I blinked. Then blinked again.
"So I'm… immune to poison now?"
"Completely." She grinned, her playful demeanour washing back onto her.
"Congratulations. You're an abomination."
"Thanks," I muttered dryly.
"But as for why you have to die to see the future…"
I stared as she turned away, walking back toward her chair.
"Fate has no idea."
"…You refer to yourself in third-person when you're confused."
"I do NOT."
"You literally just did."
I snorted despite myself, rubbing a hand over my face. Exhausted. Raw. Breathing too fast. But finally, I understood enough to stop feeling like I was drowning.
I exhaled shakily.
"…So all of that wasn't you."
She replied firmly, "No. Not even a little."
I nodded slowly, because what else could I do?
Fate straightened sharply, eyes widening as she'd just remembered something horrifying.
"Oh. Right."
"Wh—what now?" I asked warily.
She pointed at me with both hands, leaning forward as her tiny face twisted into genuine alarm.
"You've been unconscious for a month, meaning you have eleven more months until Ariana's death."
I shot upright. "WHAT?!"
"Oh, and the palace is currently under attack in the dead of noon, your assassins are trying to well... assassinate you again right this moment."
"P—pardon?!"
"Okay, bye! See you soon!"
"W—wait!"
She lifted her hands, one with an enthusiastic wave goodbye and the other to snap her fingers.
The next thing I knew, I was slowly opening my eyes, still lying on my back.