Luna could not move.
The throne loomed before her, carved from light and shadow twisted together so tightly they no longer fought. It felt alive. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
And sitting upon it.
Her.
The other Luna rested one arm on the throne's edge, posture relaxed, expression serene. She wore a crown shaped like a broken moon, half silver, half void, the pieces rotating slowly around each other in an impossible orbit. Power radiated from her in slow, steady waves—nothing frantic or unstable about it.
Perfect control.
Perfect peace.
Perfect wrongness.
"So," the throne-Luna said gently, her voice echoing through the endless white-dark realm, "you finally made it."
Luna's breath shook. "You said no one comes back from here."
"I didn't say no one comes in," the throne-Luna replied, smiling faintly. "Just that they don't leave."
Luna forced her feet to move, though each step felt like walking through memory instead of air. With every movement, pieces of her past flickered around her like ghosts.
Childhood laughter in her mother's kitchen.
First fear when the mark appeared.
First blood when the binding took hold.
Kael's hands holding hers, warm and steady and real.
Her chest tightened painfully.
"What is this place?" Luna asked, voice barely above a whisper.
"The Origin Realm," the throne-Luna said calmly. "Where all possible versions of us begin. Where choices branch before they become fate. Where every Luna that could ever exist waits to be chosen."
She gestured around them.
For the first time, Luna noticed the others, dozens of figures standing in the distance, all frozen, all wearing her face.
All waiting.
Luna swallowed hard. "Then why are you here? On the throne?"
The throne-Luna leaned forward slightly, crown glinting.
"Because I chose correctly."
The words struck harder than any blow.
Luna clenched her fists. "You let the world burn."
"No," the throne-Luna replied softly, almost gently. "I saved it."
With a flick of her fingers, visions burst into the air like shattered glass.
A timeline where Kael was sacrificed, and the Primordial was sealed forever.
A timeline where the Devourer was erased, and magic stabilized across all realms.
A timeline where the rifts closed and stayed closed.
A world at peace.
But in every vision, Kael lay lifeless. His body was broken. His eyes were empty. His future was erased.
Luna's heart shattered at the sight of him dying in a thousand different ways, each one necessary for the world to survive.
"You call that saving?" Luna whispered, tears streaming down her face.
"Yes," the throne-Luna said simply. "Because the world survived. Billions of lives continued. Magic remained stable. The balance was held."
She stood slowly, crown pulsing with power.
"One life for countless others. One love for universal peace."
Her eyes hardened.
"That is what it means to choose correctly."
The Devourer stirred faintly inside Luna, weakened but aware.
She traded love for order, it whispered.
"And you traded order for love," the throne-Luna said, as if she'd heard the thought. "Which is why you are unstable. Which is why you created an impossible third path. Which is why the Primordial found you."
Luna lifted her head, meeting her other self's gaze.
"You're afraid," she said.
The throne-Luna laughed quietly. "Of you? No."
"Of losing control," Luna said, stepping closer. "Of the fact that I proved there's another way. That your 'correct' choice isn't the only one."
The throne-Luna's smile thinned.
"Your way leads to chaos," she said coldly. "To instability. To the very collapse you're trying to prevent."
"Maybe," Luna said. "But at least it's mine."
The throne-Luna's expression darkened.
And the realm trembled.
Outside the Origin Realm, in the shattered chamber—
Kael stood beneath a tearing sky, symbols blazing across his body as forbidden power poured into him. The Anchor's Brand burned so bright it turned his veins to light, spreading through every cell, rewriting his very essence.
The Watchers screamed as ancient seals shattered one by one.
"Stop him!" one cried, raising a staff that cracked and fell to dust.
"It's too late!" another shouted. "He's invoking the First Bond!"
The Arbiter stepped forward, mask gleaming.
"If he completes the invocation," it said, "he will tear a permanent hole between realms. The Origin Realm will bleed into ours. Reality will become... negotiable."
Rhea grabbed Kael's arm desperately. "You'll kill everyone!"
Kael looked at her, and his eyes were no longer entirely human.
They glowed with the same brand that burned beneath his skin.
"Then they die," he said simply. "I'm bringing her back."
He raised both hands toward the sealed tear in the sky.
The symbols on his body screamed with power.
Reality buckled.
And the door to the Origin Realm ripped open.
Back in the Origin Realm, Luna felt it.
Kael.
Coming for her.
Tearing through impossible barriers, burning through his own life force, sacrificing everything—
For her.
Her heart surged painfully with love and terror.
The throne-Luna rose slowly to her feet, all serenity gone.
"You see?" she said sharply. "He will destroy everything to reach you. That is the consequence of your choice. That is why love makes us weak."
"Then let me stop him," Luna said desperately.
The throne-Luna shook her head. "You can't. Not from here. Not unless you take the throne."
Luna stared at the seat of infinite choices.
The place where she would become fixed.
Where every possible version of herself would collapse into one.
Where she would have to choose, finally and forever, which Luna she truly was.
"No," Luna whispered.
The throne-Luna's eyes went cold.
"Then you will watch him die trying to save you."
The realm trembled violently.
A tear ripped open behind Luna, not a gentle opening, but a wound in reality itself.
Kael's presence burned closer, hotter, and desperate.
The throne-Luna lifted her hand, power gathering in her palm.
"If he crosses fully into this realm," she said, voice hard as stone, "I will erase him myself. I will not allow his love for you to destroy what I've built. What I've sacrificed for."
Luna spun toward the tear, terror and determination colliding in her chest.
"Kael, don't!" she screamed into the void. "Please! It's not worth it!"
But she could feel him. feel his absolute refusal to stop, to turn back, to accept a world without her.
The tears widened.
And a bloodied hand reached through.
Grabbing the edge of reality itself.
Pulling.
The throne-Luna's expression twisted with rage.
"Fool," she hissed.
She raised both hands, gathering power enough to unmake him entirely.
Luna moved without thinking.
She threw herself between the throne-Luna and the tear, arms spread wide.
"No!" she shouted. "If you hurt him, you go through me!"
The throne-Luna stared at her.
"That can be arranged," she said coldly.
Power exploded from her hands
And Luna felt it strike her chest like a bolt of lightning.
She screamed.
But she didn't move.
Didn't fall.
Because the moment the power touched her, something answered.
The Devourer.
The silver light.
The impossible third path she'd created.
All of it surged to the surface, meeting the throne-Luna's attack with equal force.
The two powers collided.
And the Origin Realm shattered.
Reality broke.
Not metaphorically.
Actually.
The white-dark space fractured like glass, revealing what lay beneath—
Nothing.
True, absolute, terrifying nothing.
The space before creation.
Before thought.
Before anything.
Both Lunas stumbled as the ground beneath them dissolved.
The frozen figures in the distance began to fall into the nothing.
And the throne
The throne began to crack.
Deep fissures spread across its surface, light and shadow bleeding from the wounds.
The throne-Luna's eyes went wide with genuine fear.
"What have you done?" she breathed.
Luna looked at her hands, at the power still crackling around them.
"I don't know," she whispered.
Behind her, Kael finally pulled himself through the tear, collapsing onto the dissolving ground.
"Luna," he gasped, reaching for her.
She turned
And the throne shattered.
Completely.
Utterly.
The crown on the throne-Luna's head cracked and fell to pieces.
And from the broken throne, something began to rise.
Not a person.
Not an entity.
A voice.
Ancient beyond comprehension.
"Finally," it said, and the nothing itself trembled. "The false throne is broken."
"The pretender queen falls."
"And the true Origin can finally wake."
The throne-Luna backed away, all composure shattered, terror naked on her face.
"No," she whispered. "No, that's impossible. The Origin is a place, not a—"
"Incorrect," the voice said.
And the nothing opened its eyes.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
All staring at Luna with the weight of eternity.
"I am the Origin," it said. "The first consciousness. The original choice. The moment existence decided to BE rather than NOT BE."
"And I have been waiting for one strong enough to host me."
One massive eye focused entirely on Luna.
"Hello, daughter. Shall we merge?"
Luna felt the nothing pulling at her, trying to absorb her, to make her part of its infinite awareness.
She looked desperately at Kael, who was struggling to stand.
At the throne-Luna, who stood frozen in terror.
At the Devourer coiled inside her, equally afraid.
And she realized
This was the real test.
Not choosing between love and duty.
Not choosing which version of herself to be.
Choosing whether to exist as an individual
Or dissolve into the infinite and become everything and nothing at once.
The Origin's eyes pulsed.
"Choose quickly, daughter."
"Your world is still falling. Your love is still dying. Your futures are still collapsing."
"Merge with me, and I will give you the power to fix it all."
"Refuse..."
The nothing began to close around them.
"And we all fall into NOT BEING. Forever."
Luna's hand found Kael's.
His fingers closed around hers, weak but certain.
"Whatever you choose," he whispered, "I'm with you."
The throne-Luna grabbed her other hand desperately.
"Please," she said, and for the first time, she sounded young. Scared. Human. "Don't let it take us. Don't let everything we were mean nothing."
Luna stood between them.
Between Kael and her other self.
Between love and power.
Between existence and oblivion.
And the Origin waited for her answer.
The nothing pressed closer.
Time was running out.
And Luna opened her mouth—
The ground beneath them vanished completely.
They fell.
All three of them.
Into the nothing.
And as they fell, Luna heard the Origin's voice one final time:
"Falling is also a choice, daughter."
"The question is—"
"What will you become before you hit the bottom?"
"If there even is one."
The nothing swallowed them.
And everything went dark.
In the darkness, Luna felt three heartbeats.
Hers.
Kael's.
The throne-Luna's.
All of them are still real.
Still existing.
For now.
But nothing was patient.
And hungry.
And in the distance, impossibly far below
Luna heard something.
A thud.
Like something massive hitting the bottom of the fall.
Like something that had been falling for eternity.
Finally landing.
And beginning to climb back up.