The throne cracked with a sound like a breaking heartbeat.
Light and darkness spilled from the fissure, ripping through the Origin Realm as Kael forced his way in. Blood ran down his arm, dripping into the void, and where it fell, reality warped violently, colors bleeding into impossible shades, time stuttering forward and backward at once.
"Kael!" Luna screamed.
He lifted his head, face pale, body trembling from the effort of crossing impossible boundaries.
Their eyes met.
For a single, impossible moment, everything else stopped.
The throne-Luna froze mid-movement.
The Devourer went silent.
Even the Origin Realm itself seemed to hold its breath.
"You came," Luna whispered, tears streaming down her face.
His voice was hoarse, raw with pain and fury and absolute certainty. "I told you I would."
The throne-Luna's calm shattered like glass.
"You crossed the First Boundary," she said sharply, genuine shock breaking through her composure. "Do you know what you've done?"
Kael dragged himself farther through the tear, his body shaking as forbidden symbols burned deeper into his skin, not just surface marks now, but brands that went through him, rewriting his very existence with each passing second.
"I don't care," he said.
The Devourer stirred violently inside Luna, reacting to Kael's presence like a storm answering thunder.
He is breaking the rules, it whispered, almost awed. All of them. Every law that keeps the realms separate. Every boundary between what is and what should never be.
The Origin Realm convulsed.
Fragments of timelines bled into each other. Luna saw flashes of worlds collapsing, others being born, all layered at once in dizzying succession.
A world where she never met Kael.
A world where they met too late.
A world where they were enemies.
A world where they won.
All of them are equally real, equally possible, all fighting to become the actual timeline.
The throne-Luna stepped forward, power surging around her like a living storm.
"If you take another step," she warned Kael, voice hard as iron, "I will unmake you. Not kill you. Unmake you. Remove you from every timeline, every possibility, every moment you ever existed."
She raised one hand, energy crackling.
"You will become a hole in reality where a person used to be."
Kael met her gaze without fear, without hesitation.
"Try."
The single word carried absolute defiance.
Luna moved between them instantly, arms spread wide.
"Stop!" she shouted. "Both of you!"
The throne-Luna looked at her with something like disappointment bleeding through the anger.
"You still choose him," she said quietly. "Even now. Even knowing what it costs."
"Yes," Luna said fiercely, voice breaking. "And I always will."
The throne-Luna's expression hardened.
"Then you choose poorly."
She raised her hand higher
And Kael was ripped off the tear's edge by invisible force, body flung backward, slamming onto the fractured ground with bone-cracking impact.
He skidded across the surface, blood trailing behind him.
"No!" Luna screamed.
She ran to him, dropping to her knees, pulling his head into her lap with shaking hands.
"You shouldn't be here," she cried, pressing her hands to the worst of his wounds. "You'll die. This place isn't meant for"
"You," Kael interrupted, coughing, blood staining his lips. But he smiled faintly through the pain. "Worth it."
"Don't say that," Luna sobbed. "Don't you dare say that."
His hand found hers, grip weak but certain.
"Every time," he whispered. "Every world. Every timeline. I'd choose you every time."
The throne-Luna watched them, her expression unreadable, something between disgust and longing and a grief so old it had worn smooth.
"This is why you cannot rule," she said softly. "You are compromised. Weakened by attachment. Unable to make the choices that must be made."
She turned toward the throne as it continued to fracture, larger cracks spreading with each heartbeat.
"If the throne breaks completely," she continued, voice calm despite the chaos, "all timelines collapse into one. Every possibility, every choice, every version of every world, all forced to exist in the same space."
Her eyes met Luna's.
"Reality will tear itself apart trying to accommodate infinite contradictions."
Luna looked up sharply. "Then don't let it break!"
The throne-Luna's eyes glinted with something cold.
"There is only one way to stabilize it now."
She looked directly at Luna, and the weight of that gaze carried millennia of choices, of sacrifices, of becoming something more and less than human.
"Take my place."
The realm shook violently.
The tear behind them widened further, edges crackling with unstable energy.
Something massive stirred beyond it—not trying to enter, but waking, as if Kael's intrusion had disturbed something that had been sleeping since before the first universe was born.
The Devourer recoiled in genuine terror.
That is not meant to wake, it hissed. That should never wake. That must NEVER—
"What is it?" Luna demanded.
The thing the Origin Realm was created to contain, the Devourer said. The first mistake. The original chaos that existence was built to escape from.
The throne-Luna smiled slowly, and there was no warmth in it.
"You wanted a third path," she said to Luna. "Here it is."
She gestured at Kael, bleeding on the ground.
At the breaking throne.
At the thing stirring beyond the tear.
"Sit on the throne and stabilize reality. Sacrifice him and save everything. Let the throne break and doom all worlds. Or..."
Her smile widened.
"Try to save both him and the throne, fail at everything, and wake what sleeps beyond."
The throne cracked louder, deeper.
"Choose," the throne-Luna said.
And the Origin Realm began to fall apart.
Time fractured.
Luna felt herself existing in multiple moments at once—sitting with Kael, standing before the throne, watching from outside as both versions of herself moved independently.
The Devourer screamed inside her.
This is the breaking point! Choose NOW or lose the ability to choose at all!
Luna looked at Kael, barely conscious in her arms.
Looked at the throne, splitting down the middle.
Looked at the tear, widening, something vast moving behind it.
Looked at the throne-Luna, waiting with infinite patience for her to fail.
"I..." Luna started.
The ground beneath them shattered.
They began to fall, not down, but out, reality rejecting them, the Origin Realm spitting them toward the nothing beyond.
Kael grabbed her hand as they fell.
The throne-Luna remained standing, somehow unaffected by the collapse.
"Last chance," she called as they plummeted. "Take the throne, or we all cease to exist!"
Luna's mind raced.
Every choice led to loss.
Every path ended in sacrifice.
Every option demanded she give up something she couldn't bear to lose.
Unless
Her eyes widened.
"Kael," she said urgently as they fell. "The Anchor's Brand. Can you use it?"
"To what?" he gasped.
"To hold multiple realities stable at once. To create a space where contradictions can exist together."
His eyes widened. "That would burn out the mark completely. And probably kill me."
"I know," Luna said, tears streaming upward as they fell. "I know, and I'm sorry, but—"
"Do it," Kael interrupted.
He pressed his branded hand to her chest, over her heart.
"Use me as the anchor," he said. "Use my life as the bridge."
"Kael, no"
"Luna," he said fiercely. "I didn't cross into hell just to watch you give up everything. Use me. Please."
She stared at him.
At the man who'd walked through impossible barriers for her.
Who'd broken every law of reality.
Who was offering his life as a foundation for her third path.
"I love you," she whispered.
"I know," he said, smiling. "Now save the fucking world."
Luna closed her eyes.
Reached for the Anchor's Brand burning beneath Kael's skin.
Reached for the Devourer coiled inside her.
Reached for every impossible piece of power she'd collected.
And pulled.
The explosion of power was visible across every realm.
In the shattered chamber, the Watchers screamed as reality inverted.
The Arbiter stumbled backward, mask cracking.
Rhea fell to her knees, unable to comprehend what she was witnessing.
And in the Origin Realm—
Luna and Kael stopped falling.
They hung suspended in the nothing, power radiating from them in waves that rewrote the laws of existence.
The throne-Luna stared, shock breaking through her eternal calm.
"Impossible," she breathed.
Because Luna wasn't sitting on the throne.
And she wasn't letting it break.
She was becoming it.
Merging with Kael, with the Devourer, with the Origin Realm itself, creating something that had never existed.
A living throne.
A bridge between all possibilities.
An anchor that could hold contradictions stable through sheer choice rather than power.
The throne-Luna's eyes went wide. "You're not choosing a path. You're creating a new foundation."
Luna's voice echoed with harmonics. "I told you. There's always a third option."
The broken throne began to dissolve, not shattering, but transforming, its pieces flowing toward Luna and Kael, wrapping around them, through them, becoming them.
And from the tear, the thing that had been waking
Laughed.
Not cruel.
Delighted.
"Finally," it said. "Something interesting."
A massive shape began to emerge through the tear.
Not monstrous.
Not divine.
Something between.
The throne-Luna's face went pale. "You've called the Witness."
"The what?" Luna demanded, still holding Kael as power built around them.
"The thing that watches when old rules die and new ones are born," the throne-Luna said, backing away. "The thing that decides whether the new foundation holds—"
The Witness fully emerged.
It looked like nothing and everything—a shape that refused to settle, constantly shifting between forms, between possibilities.
"New anchor," it said, focusing on Luna and Kael. "New rules. New foundation."
"The old Origin accepts your challenge."
It gestured, and the nothing around them solidified into an arena.
"But first—"
"You must survive the Trial of Foundations."
"The old order will test your new path."
"Fail, and your innovation dies with you."
"Succeed..."
The Witness smiled with too many mouths.
"And reality bends to accommodate what you've become."
The arena flared to life.
And from every direction, figures began to appear
Every version of Luna that had ever existed.
Every choice she'd never made.
Every path she'd walked away from.
All of them are real now.
All of them were ready to prove that their way was the right one.
The throne-Luna stepped forward, crown reforming on her head.
"This is your trial," she said to Luna. "Prove your third path is stronger than all the ones you rejected."
She raised her hand, and the other Lunas moved as one.
"Or be erased by your own possibilities."
The army of alternate selves charged.
Kael squeezed Luna's hand.
"Together?" he asked.
Luna's power flared, silver and shadow and something new.
"Together," she said.
And the Trial of Foundations began.
But as the first alternate Luna reached them
The Witness spoke one final rule:
"Oh, and if the anchor dies during the trial"
"The boy dies with her."
"Permanently."
"Across all timelines."
It smiled.
"Choose your battles carefully, new foundation."
The alternate Lunas attacked.
And Luna had three seconds to decide which ones to fight
And which ones to merge with.
Because killing them would kill parts of herself.
But merging with them would risk losing who she was.
The first Luna struck.
And Luna's scream shattered across infinite realities.