They could have left.
No one would've blamed them.
The woman they'd discovered was alive, sort of. Her body is intact, but her spirit not. Anna had left her a small charm a thread-woven ember knot, faint with warmth. It pulsed with her vitality, enough to let the woman know she had not been forgotten.
And yet the next step was still there an array of sigils burnt into stone and cragged flameglass, dim and twisted, leading into the depths of the Span.
Kael was standing at its edge now, arms folded, frown creasing her forehead. "We should report this. Let the summoner orders dispatch their clean-up crews. This is… bigger than us."
Michael stood next to her, uncertain. His ghost shimmered behind him once more, agitated this time.
He glanced at Anna, who hadn't budged from the shrine.
She knelt in front of a broken monument older than the city, perhaps older than the Realm itself. One hand lay lightly on the stone. She wasn't praying. She was recalling something none of them could see.
Then she spoke.
"They wanted to know, who is she," Anna said gently. "And she couldn't answer. Not because she forgot. But not because anyone had taken the time to remember her for her. Just what she could summon. What she could burn. What she could give."
Michael felt it. A silence beneath her words, deeper than sound.
Anna stood slowly. Her tone didn't escalate, but her demeanor shifted. Brighter. Sharper. Sadder.
"I've led a lot of lives," she said. "Somewhere I had titles. Somewhere I didn't. But there were people like her in every life. Folks who poured it all out "until there was no more."
She turned to face them.
"And no one came for them."
Michael swallowed. Kael lowered her eyes a little — not ashamed, just listening.
"If we do walk away," Anna said, "someone else is going to end up like her. Someone who believes their value is over if their Thread is severed. "Someone who begins to think that the silence is all he or she always was."
She paused. Not for effect but because her voice caught.
"I can't fix the Realms. I can't stop the fire. But I can walk toward it."
Then she looked at Michael. "You don't have to come."
He didn't hesitate. "I do."
Kael nodded once. "Yeah. Me too. Guess I was already walking. Just didn't know where."
Anna smiled. And it wasn't grand. It wasn't tragic. It was real.
The sort of smile that comes when someone knows the world is broken… and still makes an active choice to be kind to it, anyway.
They pressed forward.
Not because it was heroic.
But because Anna did what no one else thought to do.
She gave a damn.
...
They went deeper into the Span.
Above, the sky was dimmer, as if even Pyrrhion's flame had no mind to burn too bright in here. The ground beneath their boots fractured with every step not from pressure, but from unmaking. The Thread of the world was growing thin.
Michael heard it before he saw it.
Not pain. Not fear.
Displacement.
Like he wasn't walking with Kael and Anna anymore, but a step to the side half-in, half-out. As if someone not his and yet his had tugged the thread of his soul.
He staggered, just slightly.
Kael noticed. "You alright?"
Michael didn't answer. He glanced up, and for a moment he was not there.
Memory Fracture I The Sprawling Field
He stood in blackened armor, a broken blade gripped in both hands. Bodies around him. Ash in the wind. His name wasn't Michael. It had been Rynn, and he had died protecting a city nobody remembered.
Memory Fracture II — The Spirit That Screams
Now he donned summoning robes ill-fitting at the throat, blood running down his eyes. A bound spirit screamed in chains before him. He had called upon it to be the last hope for a child, but too late. The corpse of the child burned behind him.
Memory Fracture III — The Threadbreaker
He lingered in a room of gilded splendor, fingers quaking above a broken Thread-core. Someone behind him wept. He had been the cause. Not the savior. Not the victim.
The cause.
Michael dropped to one knee.
His breath became ever more shallow, chest tight. Blue flickered next to him, but wouldn't come in close. The edges of the world twisted, memory blurring the sky, the ground, his skin.
He whispered, "I'm not him. I'm not all of them. I didn't mean to…"
The voices were stacking now. All of his past selves overlap. Accusing. Begging.
Failure. Coward. Weapon. Burnt.
Then—
Warmth.
A cool, steady hand touched his cheek.
Not firm. Not hesitant. Just present.
Anna was kneeling in front of him, her hands in the space beside his face in a grip as gentle as anyone could ever hope to get. Her thumbs traced the side of his temples, grounding him, creating a line he never knew he needed until it was there.
"Michael," she said.
Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't demand. It didn't plead.
It reminded.
"You're here."
His breath hitched. His vision cleared a little bit.
"You are here," she repeated. "Not there. Not then. Just now. Just with me."
The spiral snapped.
His heartbeat steadied.
Kael positioned himself nearby, silent and observant, but he didn't step closer.
Michael stared into Anna's eyes not her powers, not her Thread, not her grace—her. And for the first time, he didn't feel that he was made of broken parts.
He felt seen.
Not as a spirit splintered between lifetimes.
But as Michael, right now.